Re; 4KSTACKS again.

[William Hooper]

Dan said:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 at 16:15, Andy Ross wrote:
>
>> ...., but simply an "early access" breakage that NVidia would
>> have had to deal with eventually in any case.
>
> <cough> I'm sorry - no-one says nVidia or ATI or anyone else *have* to do
> anything.

I agree.

> If I've spent my hard-earned development dollars on a driver
> that - admitedly being closed source - actually WORKS,

It doesn't work, that is what this thread is about.

> and the kernel goes
> and changes such a fundamental thing as to completely break things, with
> absolutely no way to config-option things to a working state again, then
> I'm affraid I would say "stuff you too".

nVidia's drivers have been in the past broken by un-fundamental things. 
Heck, didn't someone post recently about an SELinux issue with them, too
(granted that isn't an example of an un-fundamental thing)?  Development
continues.  If everyone wanted nVidia to be happy we would still be on the
very first kernel they released drivers for.

> What motivation is there for
> nVidia to go BACK to the drawing board and re-do all their drivers?

Their commitment to have working drivers for Linux.  That same thing that
motivated them to make them in the first place: profit.

> I just think it's a bit rude to go breaking compatibility, with NO
> OPTION to back out of the compatibility change, and then have the attitude
> of "well, too bad. if you wanna run with working 3D drivers, go use
> Windows".

If you *need* working 3D drivers, I suggest you use a distro that nVidia
supports.  nVidia doesn't support test releases, and test releases will
not hold back development to keep nVidia drivers happen.  History has
proven that once FC2 goes gold that nVidia will start working on drivers. 
Maybe they work on them before hand, but (being just as much a black box
as a company as their drivers are) they don't release them.  It's worked
so far.

Just like some of the complaints about "test releases aren't stable
enough" I think it is just showing that a segment of the community hasn't
had experience with test distro releases in the past.

-- 
William Hooper