Re: Rationale for using non-free video drivers in live images

[Michal Suchanek <hramrach@gmail.com>]

On 31 January 2014 06:44, Daniel Baumann
<daniel.baumann@progress-technologies.net> wrote:
> On 01/31/2014 12:54 AM, Corey Velan wrote:
>> Is the rationale for using non-free video drivers to get better
>> performance (resolutions, etc)? Or are there some graphics cards where
>> the open source drivers simply won't work?
>
> both.
>
>> When open source drivers don't work, what are the symptoms?  Would the screen just remain black
>> or are there other symptoms?
>
> both; depending on the card/the driver, the vesa xorg failback works or
> does not work.
>
> or in other words: it depends and if you want a specific answer you'll
> need to give specific information (what system built/configured how,
> which hardware, etc.).

And sometimes the vesa driver works but the non-free Radeon driver
shows a black screen. This is because the Radeon driver relies on BIOS
for everything and the BIOS part that is meant to be used by the
driver is obviously bogus on many boards, especially ones with early
Radeon IGP chipset.

Note that the Radeon driver is not in the non-free section of the
Debian archive but there is almost no hardware on which it would work
without a non-free firmware blob and non-free BIOS blob.

Thanks

Michal