Yesterday, we reported on the statement several kernel developers had signed that urged hardware manufacturers to open up their Linux modules and drivers. "We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable," the statement read. Nvidia, which delivers probably the most prominent closed-source Linux driver, has reiterated its position concerning this matter.
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Member since:2006-10-11
Your argument fails.
I think that means xushi's argument does not fail. The NVidia driver is great. I specifically bought an NVidia 9600 recently because of NVidia's support of previous cards I had. I had to download a beta driver as the hardware is pretty new but guess what? Its working perfectly. No problems in two months on my 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04.
Member since:2006-01-04
Nonsense.
The drivers might work for a few games but other than that they totally suck ( http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=819 ) .. actually like their windows counterparts which cause most of the Vista crashes ( like 29% of all Vista crashes ).
Edited 2008-06-25 16:24 UTC
Member since:2005-08-29
ATI open source drivers up until recently have had to be reverse engineered. Of course the quality isn't going to be spectacular -- though considering that they're pretty decent.
Your argument fails.
Honestly, not everyone using or wanting to use Linux is a geek or should be required to know so much about all this regarding graphics drivers.. I personally don't give a rat's behind at all if it's reversed engineered or whatnot.. The only thing i absolutely care about is if the end result WORKS or not.. especially when i put a huge part of my salary into buying a good machine or latptop.
If you would like to stick to what you said or give me this "linux is not for ........" crap, then enjoy watching Linux fall behind and be the OS for the minority. Yes, take it how you like it, but you ARE the minority, because I can guarantee you the majority thinks the same.
Anyway, like i said, I speak from personal experience, to the extent that I switched to OSX and have never been more happy.. regardless open source or not, free or not.. it WORKS.
And to Soulbender, so far it runs on only x86 and x64, but runs on XP, Vista, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux to my knowledge.
Regards,
Member since:2006-01-01
I could say the same for my crossfire 3870 setup. It works perfectly fine with the fglrx drivers. Actually, it seems to work significantly better with regard to 2d performance than the various nvidia cards I've had.
Why did I choose ATI instead of nvidia after nearly 7 years of solely being an nvidia customer?
* They opened their hardware documentation.
* They are committed to improving their drivers. They are *much* better than the ones I used when they first released their fglrx driver. Just as good as the nvidia driver if not better.
* My purchase will never be dropped now. Even if fglrx drops support after a certain version as nvidia has done, the open source version will continue to have bug fixes and (hopefully!) features added since the documentation is out there and available.
Documentation on how the hardware operates is the key thing here. If nvidia did what ATI does with regard to documentation I would see no problem. They refuse claiming IP... yet Intel and ATI managed to do so no problemo.
I see nvidia becoming that giant slow to adapt corporate world. Its not just a sign of a company that doesn't care to help support their products forever with documentation, it shows a company that is unwilling to be open minded and flexible. AMD and Intel, I congratulate you on being more admirable companies in this regard. Hardware shouldn't be making money on driver implementations, they should be making money on *hardware* implementations.
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Member since:
2005-08-12
ATI open source drivers up until recently have had to be reverse engineered. Of course the quality isn't going to be spectacular -- though considering that they're pretty decent.
Your argument fails.
Edited 2008-06-25 10:25 UTC