On Thu, 2005-20-01 at 18:51 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote: > Guy Fraser writes: > > > On Tue, 2005-18-01 at 21:37 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote: > >> > >> There are many graphics cards with reliable, open source, native x.org > >> drivers. I suggest that you pick one, and support the vendors that support > >> open source. > >> > > Again you are so wrong. > > What's wrong with supporting vendors that support open source? Nothing, unfortunately the reasons for closed source binaries has to do with components on the board that due to third party patent licencing does not allow disclosure of the source. Most card vendors don't provide the source to the developers, but rather the developers have reverse engineered the drivers. If you can tell me which modern card vendors actively provide open source drivers for there most current high end cards, then I will look at buying one of those cards. If you say ATI, I will barf. The last ATI AIW card that allowed video capture was the Rage 128. ATI claims that the Gatos project supports there hardware, but just try to get an AIW Radeon to work. The proprietary licence the have with the chipset used for capture does not allow them to provide source code. Rather than provide binary drivers they provide nothing. > > > Go to : > > > > http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html > > > > As you can see, these are the supported platforms : > > I don't see any open source drivers there, so why do you say that they > support open source? Who cares if its closed source, you said it would not work at all. > > > Linux AMD64 > > Latest Version: 1.0-6629 > > Archive > > Well, these closed source drivers may be there today. Will they be there > tomorrow? When a new kernel comes out, is there any chance that NVidia > might change their mind, decide not to invest any more resources into > support AMD64, and stop providing bug fixes and updates? > > I know I won't have that problem with an open source driver. Horse pucks. Open source does not mean "will not break", it more or less means that when it does break a group of committed individuals will do there best to get it to work when they can. A number of times there have been changes in XFree86 and/or the kernel that have broken open source video drivers. They may not have affected you but they did affect other people. The last time the nVidia closed source drivers broke in FC it was due to RH making preemptive changes to the stack size of the kernel. Within a week or so nVidia had updated there binary driver to work with RH kernels. A number of years ago there was talk of using SDL or something like it to allow manufacturers to provide platform compatible binary drivers for video, audio and possibly other devices as well. These drivers would work with any machine regardless of what OS they were running. Using that system would allow manufacturers to only need to create on driver for all i32 systems and still be able to protect there intellectual property rights and those of there chipset suppliers. You can thank certain influential persons and lobby groups for the demise of that endeavour.
