Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

Gene Heskett
2005-12-06T02:22:13Z

On Monday 05 December 2005 19:10, Dave Airlie wrote:
>> To the larger argument about supporting binary drivers,
>> all Arjan manages to prove with his post is that,
>> if handled in the worst possible way, support for
>> binary drivers would be a disaster. Who can disagree
>> with that?
>
>And do you think that given the opportunity, any company is going
>spend the extra money required to not do it in the worst possible
>way?? Companies want to spend as little as possible on drivers, and
>drop support as soon as it makes sense financially to do so, they
>aren't going to come to the correct best possible way on their own, or
>via consortia of companies ala CEL or OSDL, they require outside
>pressure to make them change their mindset from the only example they
>have which is developing Windows drivers..
>
Which is the best reason in the world to buy and use, the open source
video card now under development, and I hear its less than 3-4 months
from production status now, and at a competitive, sub $150 USD price.

If 50% of nvidia's currant linux market share were to dissappear a month
after this card becomes available for purchase by those whom one might
categorize as believers, I'd think that would send a message loud enough
to be heard.

Particularly if windows drivers are available, open sourced, and
installable on a winderz box using the normal install wizard, and
promoted as such to the joe six-packs of the world. At the right price,
that would send an even louder message to both nvidia and ati, who so
far, seems to be all hat & no cattle. While the drivers in x.orgs code
seem to be working fairly well, and absolutely stable, I'm sure there
are hardware things in this 9200SE I have here that are not being used
by x.org's code. It works well enough to play tux-racer, but not well,
keyboard response acts like the machine is being hogged by the video.

>Dave.
>-
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--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.