AMD/ATI and Linux

[Kevin]

So rumour (and major news sources here (http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com: 20060724:MTFH37167_2006-07-24_02-26-26_N23284653&type=comktNews&rpc=44) ) are saying AMD is going to buy ATI tomorrow morning. I'm curious as to what people think this could do for Linux support of Ati graphics.

We all know Intel has great open source graphics drivers for their integrated chips, and they help out by documenting them and helping with drivers. (as I understand it at least) AMD has traditionally been very good about linux support with their processors, and they now have to compete with Intel in the graphics department.

Basically, what I'm hoping for, is AMD will release specs or open source drivers that can be included in distros :) But we'll see if that ever happens...

Just curious to see how other people think this could affect the state of linux graphics.

[schurtek]

And what do you know... it happened... now the best gaming cpu maker owns the best gaming GPU maker... now we just need to get them to make some open source drivers for linux...

[leetcharmer]

whatever! nVidia > ATi anyday.

[kigina]

i have amd and ati
i pwn

[mips]

They are not going to open source their driver code, trust me on this. Why give away highly valuable information to your competitors and secondly not all the code was written by ati but some components are from 3rd party companies.

[krazyd]

I don't really think that AMD is going to release any of the sources for the ATI drivers. However, I do hope that this could mean more resources for ATI's linux driver development team..
After all, AMD have shown a lot more interest in linux than ATI ever did. Eg.: http://www.x86-64.org/