Hello, I'm contacting you on behalf of the many people who inhabit the Mandrake Linux `Cooker' development list (as distinct from representing Mandrake themselves).
One of the few chipsets which Mandrake Linux and other OSS-respecting distributions cannot support `out of the box' is NVidia's nforce and similar chipsets. The audio for these chipsets is basically i810 so is now handled natively by every new Linux kernel, but the network driver is not so simple to deal with. We can re-write that with some effort, but would much rather that NVidia released the code for the ethernet driver under a BSD or GPL license, perhaps with a rider to the effect that the driver shall not be adapted for use with competing network interfaces, and/or shall only ever be used as part of an Open Source operating system, something like that. NVidia would earn `brownie points' - that intangible asset which accountants put on the balance sheet as `goodwill' - which is probably important in this time of being `second best' graphics card provider, and a 100Mb LAN interface can hardly hold anything radical or market-important by way of trade secrets at this stage in development. We would be delighted if NVidia were to similarly release code for their 3D drivers (an X licence would be most appropriate), but are not expecting a miraculous social transformation any time soon, and will be pleased with whatever advances we can get. (-: If there are any barriers to NVidia's joining the world-wide Open Source community wholeheartedly, please spell them out to us, as we may be able to do something about some or all of them. Thanking you in advance Leon Brooks -- Member, Perth Linux User Group http://plug.linux.org.au/ Committee Member, Linux Australia http://www.linux.org.au/ Committee Member, Society of Linux Professionals WA http://www.slpa.asn.au/ Owner and reseller of NVidia nForce-based computers, Mandrake Linux user
