On Mon, 27 Feb 2006, steve szmidt wrote:
> On Monday 27 February 2006 11:18, Eben King wrote:
>> On Mon, 27 Feb 2006, steve szmidt wrote:
>
>> The ipw2100 driver isn't integrated into the kernel, and doesn't work
>> across kernel versions. But "make ; make install" is easier than
>> "./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run" and answering a bunch of yes/no
>> questions.
>
> I'm sure you will not find very many novices agree with that.
They've apparently never wanted to start something, and be left alone until
it finishes. Besides, if we always aim for the lowest common denominator,
we end up with Windows.
> Plus doing an rpm install brings it into being easily managed with al your
> other packages.
They don't offer an rpm anymore, according to them.
>>> In my eyes there really is nothing evil about not having the source code
>>> for a driver.
>>
>> Well, it indicates that the manufacturer doesn't want anybody but them (and
>> maybe their "friends") writing a driver. Maybe there are bugs,
>> inefficiences or security holes in their code? Who knows?
>
> There could very well be all of them. Fortunately it's very easy to write a
> driver under Linux unlike it's windows counterpart. Few drivers are without
> bugs under windows.
Oh, so that makes it OK? "Look, they're bad too." Why not strive to write
the best code possible? Oh yeah, closed source is why.
> It just as much an indication of nothing like it. The competition between
> ATI and Nvidia is famous. Nvidia is enjoying a lot of advantage in OSS,
> which I'm sure they want to defend as much as is possible.
> I'd hate to have to run ms windows to run spanning windows. A binary
> driver is not going to attract my complaints, on an otherwise happy setup.
Well, it's nice that you're satisfied with (possible) mediocrity.
>> Heck, I wish I didn't have to rerun the installer every time I left
>> runlevel 5. It's probably something simple like "the driver's not loaded".
>
> Wow. Guess you did not contact Nvidia about it?
Oops. Thinko. I didn't mean "the driver's not loaded", I meant "the
module's not loaded". Used to be, if something tried for a module and
didn't find it, you'd get an error in /var/log/messages which would usually
tell you (between that and /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt) pretty
much what module was missing. Now, I can't find such errors anywhere.
I suspect the only net change the installer makes is to load the module. I
mean, xorg.conf didn't get rewritten, and the support files didn't get
removed.
It's not that big a hassle, since I don't often leave runlevel 5. Besides,
if I contacted them,
1 I'd look like a dweeb
b I'd probably get told to check some basic step (I've already done the
easy stuff, thanks) or a solution to a different problem, one which
doesn't match the symptoms I clearly explained
III they'd want some irrelevant information like "What color is your
router?"
four ... then say "sorry, we don't support grey routers"
-- -eben ebQenW1@EtaRmpTabYayU.rIr.OcoPm home.tampabay.rr.com/hactarQ: What kind of modem did Jimi Hendrix use? A: A purple Hayes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 18:56:51 EDT