OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list]

Sean seanlkml at sympatico.ca
Tue Jun 7 22:44:01 UTC 2005


On Tue, June 7, 2005 6:19 pm, Denis Leroy said:
> Sean wrote:
>> On Tue, June 7, 2005 5:38 pm, Matthew Lenz said:
>   > If you're going to undermine the integrity of your system and the open
>> source process at the same time, you're better off just going back and
>> using Windows.  Actually, do whatever you want personally, but don't
>> spread this bad advice here.
>
> That's a very naive thing to say. You can't deny the fact that people want
> graphics hardware acceleration for various reasons, whether it's games,
> video
> apps or openGL development. Now F/OSS can't provide that, at least not
> yet,
> and not well enough. Not everyone uses the NVidia driver by choice. And if
> you
> think their driver is a pain to deal with, don't ever try to get a USB
> wireless device working. I need this for one of my boxes and I have to
> deal
> with the infamous linux-wlan driver, an absolute piece of garbage that
> doesn't
> even implement the wireless extensions and is riddled with SMP race
> conditions
> :-( Unfortunately, it's the only way to get some 3-year old USB wireless
> receivers to work (anything newer isn't supported). Now you can't say it's
> my
> fault for needing USB-based wireless connectivity (it's not my fault is
> the
> media box i use has no PCI slots). I'm the first to agree it's all
> NVidia's
> fault for not releasing their entire driver under the GPL. Maybe if the
> companies that owned the most powerful Linux distros were to put some
> pressure
> on them...

Frankly, the power of a few distros is nothing compared to the power of
more people waking up to what is at stake in the decisions they make.  
There are way too many apologists for nVidia et. al.   Most of these
people don't have a clue about how Linux managed to get where it is today.
  That's fine, but it doesn't mean we have to let their bad advice go by
without comment.

It's pretty annoying listening to all the newcomers unthinkingly thumb
their nose at what got us to where we are today.  You simply can't move
Linux forward by undermining exactly what makes it important and
successful.

Anyway, choosing a binary driver has real risks involved.  If you value
the data in your computer, you understand the open source process, and
you're thankful for the great O/S that you find yourself using; the
decisions become rather easy.

Signing-off,
Sean.





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