Lonni J Friedman wrote:
Based on what criteria? I'm still amused how people keep making that
claim yet never provide any criteria, as if its just glaringly obvious
to all but the most casual observer.
OK, random example: where is the nvidia bug tracker? Pretty standard
support tool for anything linux-related - the kernel, xorg, gnome, kde,
openoffice...
The only "bad" thing is that all current intel devices are integrated on
the motherboard, and you generally need an ADD2 card to get the DVI port
(and a LCD monitor with "DDC/DI" capability - obscure but important!)
But if you have that... it just works!
So if you have specific hardware, it works. That seems like a rather
huge hurdle (and a rather poorly documented one, at that).
Not a huge hurdle, but it is limiting, I agree. Nonetheless, it is a
lower hurdle than making closed binary drivers work reliably, I find
personally.
How do you mean "if the integrated intel chip doesn't work for you"?
I thought you said that support for Intel is superior to non-open
source options. Either it is superior or its not.
Glad to clarify: It is superior.
The point was, if you get the cheap integrated chip and you find it
doesn't meet your needs (for whatever reason: there's a bug that affects
you, you decide that you really need to edit full-length motion pictures
in real time on your computer, you become a competitive gamer, etc) you
can slap in an ATI/nvidia card. You can go both ways: decent open driver
on the intel hardware, or closed higher-performance binary driver on the
add-in card. Doesn't apply to laptops of course, but hopefully you
aren't editing movies on a laptop.
As long as "everyone else" doesn't include anyone running workstation
graphics applications or anyone in the film industry or anyone doing
GPGPU work, or even casual gamers who want to play Quake every now &
then. I could go on and on, but I think my point is clear. You're
concept of "everyone else" is an extremely small percentage of the
graphics market from a revenue perspective.
Fair enough - from a revenue perspective. MS Windows also dominates
server OS sales - from a revenue perspective. Not true from a count of
installations, of course.
Fan boy much? Opening the driver does not equate with aggressively
supporting linux. The list of companies that have released the specs
or an open source driver, and provided very poor support (the source
only works with a specific kernel version, its buggy, its incomplete,
etc) is rather long. Open sourcing a driver does not equate with
aggressive linux support. You're deluding yourself if you truly
believe that it does.
Are you trying to say that intel doesn't really support linux? Or that
nvidia's linux support is actually better? Or what?
Are you comfortable with the fact that the source code and development
process for the kernel, the application software (word processors, image
browsers, the gimp, cinepaint), the other drivers (mouse driver, network
driver, ...) are open, but the video driver is binary and secret?
Is it good that the kernel bugzilla says "NO BINARY MODULES or other
tainted kernels. Do not file bugs here if you have any binary kernel
modules loaded, reproduce without that module first. NVIDIA users - THIS
MEANS YOU!"?
In what way is the closed nvidia code and process better than being
open? How does that benefit users?
- Mike
