Peter Elliott wrote: > i was referring to the hassles of actually getting the things to run. i'd > deliberatly not made any mention to or about anything to do with closed or > opensource.
This is one big thing which is driving me away from GNU/Linux. Things don't "just work". There are too many dependency issues and all the fragmented desktops and packaging schemes certainly don't help. I used to download all my packages as source and compile them on my machine but after the problems I encountered with prctools I think I'll just take the pre-packaged versions from now on. > and the thing is that linux users do have problems with that chipset, > just as they consistently have problems with some harddrives, some ram, > & some motherboards. I think anyone using commodity PC hardware suffers from these issues regardless of OS. Maybe I've been lucky: my current PC has been excellent in this respect. > regardless the fact remains that after spending several times several > hours looking into this i am still unable to decide whether it'd be > worthwhile forking out ~$100 for a geforce4 given that i may not be any > the better off graphiclly than i am now. why? because no where out > there is there any kind of consensus on how to get the best from these > cards in an easy 1 2 3 kind of way. The last set of Linux/XF86 NVidia drivers I loaded (in August) went in easily. I just downloaded the setup file and ran it. You may still need to edit the XF86Config file but I'd done that with the previous version driver (you only need to do it once). I'm using a Geforce2 GTS. This has got to be the easiest install of anything I've ever put onto a Linux- based system. I don't care about the licensing but thats because I believe that software itself doesn't _have_ to be free (speech or beer). I do believe in open standards, interfaces and file formats so products can compete in actual features and usability while being interoperable with each other. Except where absolute security and/or auditability are required, and even open source isn't an ideal solution (but realistically it's probably the best we have). This applies more to applications rather than video drivers. Who cares what the interface between the card and the driver looks like? Who decides where the line of functionality is drawn between the hardware and the software? Do we need competition in video drivers? I don't think so. I see them as an extension of the hardware. If the driver isn't up to scratch then we buy someone else's card. I think thats a pretty good incentive to write decent drivers. The LKML FAQ says that a "tainted" driver means the kernel team aren't the people to contact with bug reports. I wonder if "tainted" is the wrong word to use... to me it implies "polluted", implying "dangerous". An online dictionary/thesaurus certainly had some pretty nasty meanings. Corrupt, spoil, contaminate, ... definitely sounds a bit strong to me. Cheers, - Dave http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
