Build Nvidia driver for Fedora 9, AMD?

[Erich Zigler]

I disagree with you on one key point. Nvidia works on Linux it is not
distro specific. Using nvidia binary drivers was broken by Fedora not
the other way around.

As in ATI vs Nvidia I can't comment. I have not used ATI in 5 years now

Nvidia does not dictate what distro I use. I do based on my
requirements. For example this weekend I had to rebuild my wife's
computer which was running Fedora 6. She uses her computer for Email,
web browsing and World of Warcraft. Following these simple
requirements I was not able to load Fedora 9 on her machine. I loaded
Ubuntu 8.04 and after two days of use I asked my wife if she noticed
any substantial differences. She said no.

To a normal user GNOME is GNOME, KDE is KDE, etc. the only real
differences between the distros now is how packages are distributed.
But I digress.

Linux is all about choice and choosing the right tool for the job.



On 5/19/08, Gilboa Davara <gilboad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 06:58 -0500, Erich Zigler wrote:
>> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 4:08 AM, Mike Evans <mike at tandem.f9.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> > Whoah!
>> > Thanks both for this warning.  This has put my plans to upgrade to F9 on
>> > immediate and indefinite hold.
>>
>> Mine as well unfortunately.
>>
>> > Just a thought - but I suppose a retro-grade to the supported version of
>> > Xorg is going to break too much?
>>
>> In one of the forum links I posted earlier in the thread there is a
>> walkthrough on how to install xorg from Fedora 8 and people have had
>> some success.
>>
>> > I know Fedora likes to be on the cutting edge - but releasing
>> > development
>> > snapshot as the default for something as fundamental as X?  Hmm.
>>
>> This has been a hot topic as of late. Fedora's stance from what I've
>> read is that they were all set to release Xorg 1.5 but it missed its
>> release date. However to go back to an earlier version would have been
>> a lot of work and they deemed the pre-release version to be far enough
>> along to include it in the distro.
>>
>> Nvidia's position is that they don't support pre-release versions of Xorg.
>>
>> My position is that in shipping with a pre-release version of Xorg
>> that is not supported by the video card manafacturers I cannot use
>> Fedora 9 as it does not meet my requirements of a desktop.
>
> I'm not trying to start a flame war, but be aware it just a matter of
> time until you nVidia will be determine factor on which version of Linux
> you can or cannot use.
>
> A couple of examples:
> nVidia doesn't support Xen (under both Linux and Solaris) - would you
> consider dropping Fedora altogether if it decides that ship Xen-only
> kernels?
>
>>
>> I do not believe Fedora or Nvidia put the users who depend on the
>> proprietary video card drivers in this position knowingly but here we
>> are just the same.
>
> In essence, nVidia -is- putting users in this position by letting the nv
> driver stay an inch above (?) the generic vesa driver.
>
> nVidia users do -not- have an option: Either be limited by nVidia's
> choice of supported kernel and user-mode features (CONFIG_4KSTACKS
> anyone?) or get a partially working 2D only OSS driver.
>
> Having said all that, the choice is ours to make. I for one, plan on
> slowly phasing out the large fleet of nVidia cards that I have under my
> command and replace them with ATI/AMD cards - not because nVidia's
> drivers are bad (quite on the contrary) but because I rather pay twice
> for the same performance and not be limited by the manufacturer's (-any-
> manufacturer's) choice of what/when to support my hardware.
>
> - Gilboa
>
>
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