not really win hardware, winhardware like winmodems and stuff tend to rely on thee CPU to do alot of the work.. you "might" be able to label them winhardware if they provided no linux drivers at all... at least they have offered us something, that is more then a huge number of other manufacturers who have nothing to do with linux at all. Pick on the extremes before you pick on those who have at least shown some desire to help the linux hoards.. my understanding is that the Geoforce was the first one to move alot of that processing over to the graphics chip away from the CPU... not the definitation of winhardware as I understand it. I don't think its fair to label the whole lot of them winhardware, they are young as a company yet, compared to their competitors, and they have done more then the majority (of graphics chipset providers) to offer at least some help to us... if we complain about the binary drivers too much, you may find that they will remove the drivers altogether and decide that the linux crowd are too hard to please so why bother trying ? We should try to convince then "nicely" these are guys with ego's, if you attack them like I have seen alot lately, they will likely just drop linux altogether... Think about it, Microsoft bought into corel, and corel dropped linux like a hot rock... MS paid heaps to Nvidia and yet they still do provide linux drivers, (something I bet will piss off M$ no end.) They are obviously making something of an effort... You attract more flies with honey as the saying goes.. if everyone wrote to them and thanked them for the binary drivers and asked NICELY if perhaps they would consider coming up with src drivers or some new method of interfacing the binary drivers with all libs and X versions,,, they might do something about it,, IF they get enough requests... Remember they are not short of a dollar now and they won't be for ages because of TNT, TNT2 geoforce, GeoforceII and III and Xbox (love it or hate it..) They don't HAVE to provide linux drivers at all, in fact, it very likely costs them more money then they would recoup for doing it... (linux on desktop MIGHT account for 2 percent of desktop users and why would anyone put a Geoforce on a server?) and since they make chipsets not cards, the card manufactures are not going to buy significantly more just because some linux users reqested it... drivers like the Detonators are very likely quiet complex... so they probably invested 10-50,000 dollars in programmer time just to get the binaries they have on their site... I am not saying that it's the optimal situation, I am just saying that its important to not come accross as a bunch of zealots,,, it does not work and gives linux a bad name.. (ever watched a Mac verses PC pissing contest? the Mac users are such zealots that they come across to the majority of people as idiots...(regardless if what they claim is true.) If I come to your business, called you evil assholes and told you you HAD to change the way you did business, you'd very likely tell me to piss off (or something stronger)... I doubt very much that my complaints would be taken seriously. Most of these people view linux as an unknown, never before have they been expected to provide the src code for their drivers... They problem here is that windows has it all over linux (in this one area, and its also their worst point) the windows detonators are binaries too. but because of windows was created by one company, and there are maybe 5 kernel versions in use today,, win95, 98, NT, 2000, XP,, its no hassle for them to make a binary driver for each one... You can't entirely blame them for being abit cautious about just handing out the code that probably cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop... (I mean all the detonator drivers linux and windows...) If you look at it logically and from both sides of view, you might get a better result... If we are linux zealots, we call ourselves heros of the cause, if they act as zealots as well, nothing will ever improve... a thousand religous wars have proven that fact... Also, it might be worth keeping in mind, that ATI probably has already pulled apart all the versions of the Geoforce and know what it does from a hardware perspective.... (an electrom microscope could probably tell them quiet alot) so by giving them the driver source, they have just handed them the other half of the picture, ATI or others could then just change a few things around to escape the patents and release the product themselves... I am not saying that would or is or has happened. just that its possible.. Just be reasonable when you think about them. we need to convince them, we have no chance at all to force them... rgds Frank -----Original Message----- From: Tom Brinkman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, 9 September 2001 7:02 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] new linux drivers for nvidia cards Version: 1.0-1512 On Saturday 08 September 2001 04:59 pm, Franki escribió: > keep in mind that that relationship has provided us (or will) with > the Nforce motherboard chipset, > which if the reports are true, will kill anything else around... > Vaporware. You read or listen to too much Wintel hype. Check out K266a > If they want to keep the linux crowd happy, they at the very least > need to provide binary drivers for every kernel/lib/X version > possible... and keep it updated... No! they need to do none of that, all that's needed is the specs and source, much like 3DFX did before Win-nVidia sucked 'em up. > They are not a software manufacturer primiarly, they are hardware, > and good hardware at that... Good Win-hardware -- Tom Brinkman Galveston Bay
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