On Tue, 2006-14-02 at 10:47 +1030, Tim wrote: ...snip... > That's not Microsoft porting to things, that's things being designed to > work with Windows. The opposite direction. That's done by > manufacturers paying through the nose for the details from Microsoft > about how to be compatible with it. > > Nvidia, ESS, S3, et al, don't have to buy documents to find out how to > make their hardware work on Linux, but they don't. They'd like, if they Just for clarity, are you saying NVidia does not provide drivers for Linux? They most certainly do, and they are good drivers. They may have a binary component which is not open source, but that is not relevant to this topic. > cared, for other OS system developers to pay for details for their > products, but no free system's going to be in a position to do that. > > Windows-compatible product development: Hardware manufacturer pays for > Windows information from Microsoft. > > Linux-compatible product development: Expects someone else to buy > information from them, or sort it out by themselves, but doesn't want > outsiders knowing how their devices work. Then buy from one of their competitors, who does co-operate and or contributes to the development of drivers for their products. Most Linux Users are using products that do work, and often are better products, than competing products that are not supported. It doesn't make too much sense for an "el cheapo" manufacturer to provide support for Linux, when they have little chance of recovering there development costs. On the other hand good Manufacturers such as 3Ware and NVidia do help, and can sell enough to make it worth while. If there is enough demand some manufacturers will play nice, I have heard rumours ATI came around, but I still haven't seen theme provide decent official support. Their video capture hardware is better, than most on Windows, but for Linux they say to use Gatos but it won't compile on Red Hat Kernels. > ...snip...
