On 08/12/2019 23.30, Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| Isn't the graphics coding done by graphics card makers and not MS?
|
Good question. I don't really know. I would guess that
they do at least some. At one time it was left to Linux
people to write drivers for Linux, but I suppose someone
like ATI probably writes Windows drivers. So I don't
know how to explain the difference in display.

Linux people do write graphics drivers, like for NVidia, but as many
companies refuse to publish the specs, they have to make do with reverse
engineering. Thus the drivers arrive later and may not have all the
features, like 3D. On the other hand the 2D open driver is very reliable
and stable.

Some companies, like that NVidia, publish closed source drivers for use
in Linux. As they are closed source, they have integration, legal, and
distribution problems. But they allow similar performance as their
Windows equivalents.

This situation makes very difficult to investigate problems that may be
partly due to the driver or to the kernel. Both sides do not coordinate
well (one wants secrecy, and the other wants full public view).


A problem example that affects me, my Nvidia card has about 10 years,
which means that the driver is obsolete and little maintained by Nvidia
(legacy driver?), which means that lacks certain modern features in
Linux that are needed by some demanding apps like the flight simulator.


People say that AMD integrates better, more open. Intel even better.


As an example of good coordination, consider exFAT, a very proprietary
format of Microsoft, useful for memory cards and sticks. AFAIK Linux
kernel people refused to implement it (via reverse engineering) for
legal reasons. But other people implemented a driver outside of the
kernel, in userland.

However, recently Microsoft listened to the demands, not only from
Linux, but card makers and camera makers, to open the format. And they
did so.

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3080947/microsoft-exfat-open-source-linux-kernel

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

«On 28 August 2019, Microsoft published the exFAT specification for
the first time[7], and new driver was included in Linux kernel version
5.4.»


Most often, Linux devs do not demand that makers create Linux drivers.
What they want are the specs so that they can write drivers, at no cost
to the manufacturers. But they often prefer secrecy.


--
Cheers, Carlos.