Re: NVIDIA driver *taints* kernel???

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To: fedora-list@redhat.com
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:55:17 -0700

On Thu, 2005-20-01 at 18:51 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Guy Fraser writes:
>
> > On Tue, 2005-18-01 at 21:37 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> >>
> >> There are many graphics cards with reliable, open source, native x.org
> >> drivers. I suggest that you pick one, and support the vendors that support
> >> open source.
> >>
> > Again you are so wrong.
>
> What's wrong with supporting vendors that support open source?

Nothing, unfortunately the reasons for closed source binaries has
to do with components on the board that due to third party patent
licencing does not allow disclosure of the source.

Most card vendors don't provide the source to the developers, but
rather the developers have reverse engineered the drivers. If you
can tell me which modern card vendors actively provide open
source drivers for there most current high end cards, then I will
look at buying one of those cards. If you say ATI, I will barf.

The last ATI AIW card that allowed video capture was the Rage 128.
ATI claims that the Gatos project supports there hardware, but
just try to get an AIW Radeon to work. The proprietary licence
the have with the chipset used for capture does not allow them
to provide source code. Rather than provide binary drivers they
provide nothing.

>
> > Go to :
> >
> > http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html
> >
> > As you can see, these are the supported platforms :
>
> I don't see any open source drivers there, so why do you say that they
> support open source?

Who cares if its closed source, you said it would not work at all.

>
> > Linux AMD64
> > Latest Version: 1.0-6629
> > Archive
>
> Well, these closed source drivers may be there today. Will they be there
> tomorrow? When a new kernel comes out, is there any chance that NVidia
> might change their mind, decide not to invest any more resources into
> support AMD64, and stop providing bug fixes and updates?
>
> I know I won't have that problem with an open source driver.

Horse pucks.

Open source does not mean "will not break", it more or less means
that when it does break a group of committed individuals will do
there best to get it to work when they can. A number of times
there have been changes in XFree86 and/or the kernel that have
broken open source video drivers. They may not have affected you
but they did affect other people.

The last time the nVidia closed source drivers broke in FC it
was due to RH making preemptive changes to the stack size of the
kernel. Within a week or so nVidia had updated there binary
driver to work with RH kernels.

A number of years ago there was talk of using SDL or something like
it to allow manufacturers to provide platform compatible binary
drivers for video, audio and possibly other devices as well. These
drivers would work with any machine regardless of what OS they
were running. Using that system would allow manufacturers to
only need to create on driver for all i32 systems and still be able
to protect there intellectual property rights and those of there
chipset suppliers. You can thank certain influential persons and
lobby groups for the demise of that endeavour.

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