Easily try the Gallium3D driver in Ubuntu10.04

Easily Test Driving Gallium3D In Ubuntu 10.04
Easily try the Gallium3D driver in Ubuntu10.04

Posted by Michael Larabel on Limit l 24,201 0

If you have been wanting to test drive the Gallium3D drivers on your new Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" installation but have been put off by the idea of building the Mesa stack yourself, fear not any longer. there's some new packages in the Ubuntu xorg-edgers PPA for easily facilitating the switch from classic Mesa to Gallium3D for Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA hardware.
If you have long planned to test the Gallium3D driver on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, it will take a long time to build the Mesa stack. However, some new software packages provided by Ubuntu xorg-edgers PPA can easily replace the Mesa driver with the Gallium3D driver on Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA hardware.

While Gallium3D is still in development, it's stabilizing well and the Radeon Gallium3D driver is out-memory Ming the classic Mesa driver though it's not yet outscaling Ming the Catalyst driver. the Nouveau Gallium3D driver, which is the first open-source 3D driver for NVIDIA graphics processors, is also working fairly well. of course, you can check out our your Gallium3D articles and news postings for other details on the drivers and state trackers, if you haven't been staying up-to-date with our frequent information.
The Gallium3D driver is still under development, but it is stable enough. Radeon's Gallium3D driver is better than the classic Mesa, even though it cannot be compared with the Catalyst Driver. Nouveau's Gallium3D driver, as the first NVIDIA open-source 3D driver, has already performed well. Of course, you can see other details and official records on our Gallium3D products and news.

Being dropped inside the xorg-edgers PPA is now Gallium3D drivers for Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA. this is different than the Gallium3D support found in earlier PPAs as the Intel and NVIDIA drivers have been added and a libgl1-mesa-dri-gallium package has been introduced, which makes it easier to switch to/from the classic and Gallium3D drivers. the Mesa stack has also been updated against the 7.9-devel code-base as of the 22nd of each L, so it's also nice and fresh.
The xorg-edgers PPA released internally is the Gallium3D driver of Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA. Unlike Gallium3D, earlier PPA, such as Intel and NVIDIA drivers that have added libgl1-mesa-dri-gallium packages, enable easy switching between classic drivers and Gallium3D drivers. Mesa stack also updated the code for April 22-devel In 7.9, so the new Mesa is also very good.

This work was announced by Tormod in our forums, which is one of the Ubuntu X contributors, and makes our forums one of the places you can go (along with all of the other developers and testers that are there) if you run into any problems once tossing in ppa: xorg-edgers/ppa and updating your graphics stack. for those just interested in trying out the NVIDIA Gallium3D and kernel mode-setting support, an easy way to do that is by trying Fedora 13 as even their LiveCD ships with the Nouveau (classic Mesa for old hardware, Gallium3D for all non-vintage ASICs) by default.
Tormod announced the progress on our forum. Tormod is also one of the contributors to Ubuntu X. He has created a forum in our forum. You can check it out, if you have any questions, please update ppa once: qorg-edgers/ppa. If you are interested in NVIDIA Gallium3D and kernel mode, you can try the startup screen of Fedora 13 LiveCD. By default, the startup screen uses the Nouveau Driver (the classic Mesa driver used on the old hardware, other hardware is the Gallium3D driver ).

By the time that Ubuntu 10.10 (codenamed the Maverick Meerkat) rolls around in October, hopefully we will find at least the R300g (ATI's Gallium3D driver for R300-500 hardware, up through the Radeon X1000 series family) and the Nouveau driver become part of the Ubuntu stack to provide a more pleasant "out of the box" experience.
When Ubuntu October was released in 10.10 (codenamed Maverick Meerkat), we hope we can see that at least R300 drivers are supported (ATI's Gallium3D drivers are for R300 to R500, they all belong to the X1000 series) and the Nouveau driver enter the Ubuntu stack to provide an out-of-the-box experience for more people.