On Sun October 28 2007, Ric Moore wrote: > You know me, Claude ...I bitched for months trying to figure out what > was wrong, before finally getting Croquet to run. When the solution > appeared, I was floored for wasting those months. While I'm grateful > that nVidia supports linux and offer a driver package, I hope that > nVidia will open their code, so this kinda stuff doesn't happen to > anyone else. I seriously doubt that they would lose one bit of their > sales. Ric I would be curious to know the answer to that one. The implication might be that the Livna packager is removing something from the nVidia package before making the Fedora rpm...but, that may not be right. Since the guts of the nVidia driver is a binary, I don't understand what the packager could be removing -- I'm sure there's something I don't know in all this. Learning the answer would expand my knowledge. Have you tried the packages from freshrpm's? I run nVidia cards in 5 of my 6 Linux boxes, and I use the freshrpm driver in all. It's a done-once installation because the Dell dkms package takes over after that, and automatically builds a new kernel-module on the fly as I'm rebooting after each kernel upgrade. I have noted over time, that several people assert that the tar-balls from nVidia are superior to the rpm's that are available from Livna (there's very little discussion of the freshrpm variant on this list) - in my experience, that has not been the case, but, I don't use croquet, for example. So far as Les' argument, I don't have a strong view. I can see both sides. For most of my friends who are not real interested in computing as a hobby, but who decide to try Linux, I generally put PCLinuxOS on their machines. PCLinuxOS does make one-click installation of nVidia drivers possible. They do much else that makes the experience much easier for the novice. (That happens to be their stated goal, a 'Windows-like' experience) I prefer Fedora for many reasons. AND, I happen to respect their position on the free software question. I think that there's room for both positions in linux-land. I think there's a strong case to be made for a significant faction in the Linux community to stick their free-only guns -- it helps drive the whole open-source movement, and the general goals of that movement I do support, especially the development of open-source superior alternatives to all proprietary software. The devil is in the details...how to get there from where we are. There's room for different approaches as I see things right now. -- Claude Jones Brunswick, MD, USA
