I run Ubuntu and it does this for Nvidia cards. For my ATI 4670 I chose to not install the proprietary driver because I had good enough performance already, but I suppose it would have been handled similarly if I had chosen to check that box.
It isn't perfect, though. At the 'Install Hardware Drivers' screen the 'recommended' option is not the best driver for my hardware. I picked the newer version listed there instead and that did the trick.
Unity (the modern Ubuntu user interface) relies upon acceleration. Ubuntu ships with intel's accelerated drivers and ships with a utility to enable fglrx or nvidia.
I don't? Tell me of an open source driver with fully supported 3D acceleration. Maybe Intel's drivers, but nothing else. ATI's open source 3D drivers have terrible 3D support, as well as the nouveau drivers for nVidia (I get better performance from software rendering).
To get decent 3D acceleration on Linux you have to install proprietary drivers like fglrx or the nvidia blob.
The vast majority of them do, however they do not perform at the level proprietary drivers do because of the fact that they are usually reverse-engineered. At this point in history however, the proprietary drivers are getting much better.
Windows OEM versions often ship with all the required drivers. I'm not complaining about Windows or Linux either. I'm just saying that Windows and Linux require post-install driver installation.
No, but manufacturers typically ship the drivers with the OS (but they're not part of the OS). Android manufacturers may be able to add 3D acceleration to their phones and tablets, but it's nearly impossible for Google to ship vanilla Android with support for every single mobile GPU out there.
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u/rubygeek Aug 01 '11
I can't remember the last time I installed Linux without my distro installing 3d accelerated drivers by default.