Re: [SLUG] Video Card

From: Mark (mark@bish.net)
Date: Sun Jul 22 2001 - 22:00:39 EDT


On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, R P Herrold wrote:

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Frank Roberts - SOTL wrote:
>
> > > > There is about a 50% improvement in the RH 7.1 drivers to the Nvidia
> > > > drivers and about a 200% from the RH 6.1 system. I must admit though the
> > > > latter is not a fair comparison since it is different hardware.
>
> Nvidia drivers are not free -0- they won't release drivers as
> Open Source, they have lagged in releaseing support, and so
> have lagged. By supporting them in the market, by buying
> their hardware, you reward this 'closed source mentality'
> behaviour.

You also reward companies who are willing to port their drivers over to
Linux. It is a double edged sword. Just a year or so ago we were
clamoring for ANY linux hardware support from companies and not just from
companies who had open sourced drivers. Just because it isn't open source
doesn't make it bad.

>
> There is no technical reason NOT to open them -- the hardware
> is not directly replicable by other vendors. If they have
> used libraries which are not re-releasible in source, this too
> bneeds to be discouraged.
>

I completely disagree. If you discourage them then they might not release
any drivers at all next time. Other companies will see this backlash and
not even try to support linux. This has happened. It is already hard
enough for me to get companies to release drivers or even the specs for
drivers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Mark Bishop (mark@bish.net) | Computer Engineer |
| 813.258.2390 | Network Engineer |
| http://bish.net | Embedded Programmer |



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 16:36:19 EDT