nvidia vs kmod-nvidia

[Hadders]

Ed Greshko wrote:
> Hadders wrote:
>   
>> Ed Greshko wrote:
>>     
>>> Hadders wrote:
>>>  
>>>       
>>>> Hi people,
>>>>   I'm just wondering why the Linux group prefers the livna kmod-nvidia
>>>> driver for Linux over nVidias downloadable driver?
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> I don't.  So, better to rephrase your question.  Why do *some*
>>> people.....
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> This is a good question.  I'm stuck at the base FC5 kernel until I can
>> make an initrd for the latest kernel that works with my Intel SATA RAID
>> container, yes I know I should be using software RAID, but I'm sharing
>> this container between Vista, XP and Linux.  Of course this makes life
>> hard for me. ;-) However, I can't find an old kmod-nvidia-smp that
>> matches my kernel.  So I'm thinking I may as well just go get the Linux
>> drivers from nvidia and do it the "old" way.
>>
>> Then I thought, how many people use livna's drivers?  why isn't nvidia
>> running a yum repository and doing the same thing?
>>     
>
> Please understand one thing.  People are not using "livna's drivers", they
> are using Nvidia's drivers that are packaged specifically for FC and
> specific kernels.  Nvidia doesn't run a repository or create rpms or
> anything distro specific.  For them to do so, would be too much work.
>
>
>
>
>   
Yes, I understand that livna is packaging the nvidia drivers.

I suppose you could argue that it's to much work for nvidia to support 
one of the largest Linux distros. However, they seem to handle 
supporting Windows okay, but then again, there's a much larger market 
share and I'm sure there's a greater financial incentive.

It would be nice to see nVidia support FC by incorporating livna, but 
then again, I also understand it's easier for them from many many 
perspectives to make the drivers available and let the distro fend for 
itself.

My question was, is their any idea what percentage of the users (nvidia 
users) use the livna repackage vs the drivers direct from nvidia?

Thanks