Re: [Gnash] Gnash speed and free software

[Timo Jyrinki]

>> I tried Gnash and it's good to have such a nice tool.
>> One cons: as it was already reported, it is really slow. I read that
>> it is recommended to get a 3D card to cope with that.
>>
>> However these days, all the 3D cards out there require proprietary
>> drivers to be useful in this regard.

The situation is not that sad, even though it's problematic at the moment.

NVIDIA does not have any 3D support for any of its cards, that's true.
Even 2D support in open source drivers is not too good, though at least
supports all the cards.

ATI does not support developing 3D drivers much, but nevertheless specs
for Radeon 7000-9250 series have been available (via NDA at least) at
some point and open source 3D drivers for those cards are quite okay.
Radeon 9500-X800 series of cards have nowadays a working 3D support,
which looks promising though not perfect yet - it's reverse-engineered
using the knowledge from 7000-9250 series of cards. X.org 7.0 and 7.1
include this 3D support for 9500-X800 series of cards, and it's
improving all the time. I think AGP version is a safer bet than
PCI-Express version at the moment, though. ATI series X1300-X1800 do not
have any support, not even 2D, and should be avoided by all means
possible and ATI should be pressurized to at least first provide open
source 2D support for those cards.

If you have the possibility to buy a computer with a recent Intel's
integrated graphics, they have completely open drivers, developed by the
vendor itself (I don't think there are closed drivers for Intel graphics
devices at all!). The performance of GMA900 and especially GMA950 is not
that bad all (think a performance of separate card 1,5-2 years ago), and
supports even the new shader technologies.

Well... I've actually written these things down already, so maybe I
shouldn't continue but point you to:
http://www.iki.fi/tjyrinki/proj_info.html#gfx (note also that there's a
new attempt to bring 3D to NVIDIA cards as well)

-Timo