Possibly offtopic : Binary only driver

[Michael A. Peters]

On 11/21/2004 11:44:39 AM, Stephen Pollei wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-11-21 at 07:40, Mike Hearn wrote:
> > On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 16:29:12 +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > Sometimes the choice is like this.
> > I bought a 3D game. I want to play it.
> > a) Go back to Windows
> > b) Use a binary driver on Linux
> Well I haven't used windows for years and don't plan on starting up
> again. I also will not allow a binary-only module in my kernel.

Exactly my position - I'm not a kernel developer by any stretch of the  
imagination and I won't pretend to know whether or not the Linux Kernel  
should be done differently, but I am not ever buying a video card again  
that does not have a kernel 3D driver.

My VooDoo3 cards just worked. I was happy. They don't work with my  
current mobo, so I bought an NVidia card.

I'm using the open source nv.o driver because NVidia's binary driver  
didn't always work properly even for 2D stuff. Sometimes it did,  
sometimes it didn't.

Sometimes a newer driver from nvidia worked better, sometimes it  
didn't.

Maybe I wouldn't have to worry about that if Linux did things the way  
things were suggested here, I don't know - but I do know is that my  
experience is that hardware with OSS drivers in the kernel almost  
always just plain work, and when they don't just plain work - like what  
happened with my FireWire driver - it is quickly fixed by people who  
work on the kernel every single day.

I don't mind closed source software. I use divx4linux on my system  
right now - but divx4linux isn't going to bring the system down if it  
fails, it is user space.

I think I'm with the kernel people on this one just because I have seen  
that their method DOES provide quality drivers, I have not seen the  
closed source method provide quality drivers.

Upgrading to WinXP SP2 gave me problems with some drivers, for example  
- as did every OS 7/8/9/X update I ever did.