Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: > On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 07:08:34AM +0800, Ed Greshko wrote: >> Luciano Rocha wrote: >>> You're comparing apples to oranges. On one hand, you have people >>> complaining that a vendor refuses to give full documentation for a piece >>> of hardware the user bought and wants to use. >> So, it is a bad thing for a hardware maker not to give away its trade >> secrets. Right? > > If only that were true... NVidia has stated plenty times that they don't > make many parts of the cards (which leads me to think they're crapware > producers) as the reason for not publishing. Care to cite a credible reference? > Besides, the biggest trade secret might be that many things are done in > software at the main CPU instead of the GPU. Who knows... maybe you're > eating a cat while wondering what a nice rabbit stew NVidia allowed you > to use. I suppose it is easy to speculate on almost anything. Yet, I wouldn't eat one of my cats as they are family and my wife would kill me to boot. >>> You won't have people complaining that VMware Server isn't OSS. They can >>> use qemu, bochs, xen, whatever. The drive images format is relatively >>> known, so you can use them with some of the other systems. >> IMO, qemu, bochs, xen, and whatever are just not as easy to use. > > plonk... any user who uses virtualization shouldn't be so technically > challenged as to think qemu is hard at all to use... Ahhh, but isn't qemu an emulator and therefore doesn't directly use the system's CPU? >> Of course you are not locked into nVidia either. Don't like their policy, >> don't buy their hardware. Sounds simple enough to me. > > Tell that to laptop owners who unknowingly bought it thinking it was > supported thanks to illuminated comments like yours :) If they "unknowingly" bought it they didn't do much homework. I've never seen a laptop advertised that didn't specifically state what video hardware was included and even had a sticker on keyboard area. >> I guess I'm not clear on what kind of unencumbered hardware documentation >> you want nVidia to supply. Care to elaborate? Or, maybe point to the >> equivalent documentation that Intel provides on their video hardware. > > I don't know enough about GPUs to say what's enough, but if you compare > Intels behaviour with that of NVidia with such dismissal... I'd say you > know even less. So, you're saying that Intel doesn't provide any more (or even less) hardware detail than nVidia? So, how does that dovetail with claims that we should use Intel integrated video chipsets and their OSS drivers? >>> The Nouveau project is trying to document and implement a 3d driver, see >>> http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FAQ. But the last time I tried the >>> graphics card entered an invalid state just after entering my username >>> in gdm. >> Yeah, I've heard about that...but I still can't figure out why I would use a >> free "clone" of something else that is already free and supported by the >> OEM. Can you help me out there? > > Because your definition of support is short-sighted and lasts only so > much. And what is my definition of support? Please tell me. > My older GeForce that I got rid of isn't any longer supported by NVidia. > I wouldn't be able to use FC7 in that computer. Fortunately I bought a > fully supported ATI card, a 7200, and today lo and behold... I even get > a fast compiz there! OK, let me get this straight. You had an older GeForce where you have the nVidia legacy drivers that you did or did not try. So, you went out and bought a new ATI card and it works. Why didn't you go out to eBay and get an older ATI card? > What about PPC people? Are they forbidden to have a graphics card > because NVidia doesn't care about them? No, but they just don't use nVidia products. Should every vendor supply products for every platform? > *sigh* This is even denser that an idiot who defends DRM. Why is it that when someone's opinion varies from theirs the other person suddenly become an "idiot"? Is there any good purpose to resorting to name calling or labeling? -- Schizophrenia beats being alone.
