OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list]

[Richard June]

[snip]

> > 	(ii) There isn't any 3-d card with open source driver support that's
> > within an order of magntitue of current nvidia and ATI cards in
> > performance
>
> And the vast majority of users won't be using any of that added capacity
> and shouldn't be encouraged to use binary drivers when they have no need
> to do so.
Uhm, WOW! that's a completely retarded statement.
*normal* users as defined by what? nearly everybody I know of that uses Linux 
on the desktop plays games. and surprisingly, many commercial games available 
for linux(and quite a few Open Source games) make excellent use of that added 
capacity. so those binary only drivers make a huge difference.

> > 	(iii) I like doing stream programming with the GPU
>
> So you're not exactly a typical user then are you?
>
> > In a lot of ways,  propreitary hardware/software combos from vendors
> > like Apple and Sun are starting to look good to me.  Linux has a lot of
> > quality problems because much of the hardware it supports is junk and it
> > has bad drivers even for good hardware:  for instance,  Apache disables
> > the sendfile() system call on Linux because some network cards supported
> > by Linux are total crap and can corrupt data when using sendfile() on an
> > NFS-mounted file.
>
> Well Apple has just announced they're going to be moving to Intel CPU's so
> not sure you want to move in their direction just yet.   Anyway, do
> whatever you want, if you don't believe in open source and it's not ready
> to service your needs yet, there's no harm in you going and doing
> something else.
Apple moving to an intel chip doesn't mean it won't be proprietary hardware. 
Jobs already said that Mac OS will only run on apple hardware, just like it 
does now.

> >  What's terrible is that there isn't any reliable way to know what's junk
> > and what isn't.  I'll ask around online and it's like calling your
> > average software vendor for support:  "Yeah,  there's a driver for that
> > card, it's supported,  it's fine."  A year later I finally find out other
> > people are having horrible performance and crashes too -- cold comfort.
>
> Yes there is a reliable way, every RHEL system i've ever installed has
> gone completely without a hardware problem.  RedHat is _great_ about
> helping you find the correct hardware to meet your needs.
>
> > Yeah sure,  but there are risks everywhere.  You can get hit by a bus
> > crossing the street.  Tainted kernel or not,  I've never seen a Linux 2.4
> > system running non-scientific workloads on an SMP machines that didn't
> > have strange concurrency problems.   There are lots of open source
> > drivers that suck -- I'd rather trade a propreitary driver that actually
> > works for an open source driver that crashes my machine.
>
> Go nuts, but i'd rather have a working open source driver.
yeah, that's great, but that wasn't one of the choices he thinks he has. If 
somebody came out with a 3d card that did pretty well, and GPLed the drivers 
so that we had reasonable performance with it, lots of people would buy it. 
like he said though, if I have a choice between proprietary drivers that work 
and GPL one's that don't. I pick the ones that work.

> > It might not be fair that good graphic cards are propreitary and that you
> > can't make free drivers for 802.11g but the real choice is between being
> > pure and being relevant:  you ought to be glad that I'm choosing to run
> > Linux with modern graphics cards and modern wireless networking rather
> > than choosing to foresake Linux so I can support modern hardware.
>
> Linux is running on some of the most modern hardware around.   Having a
> bunch of people hacking in binary crap to Linux does nothing to move it
> forward in any important way.
Uhm, yes and no. More users means more and better support. which means the 
likelihood of some company figuring out that they stand to turn a tidy profit 
by GPLing their software goes up. if it works out of the box, it becomes 
preferred. But it also demonstrates that we're wililng to accept binary only.

> > In some areas that's true.  Name a specific graphics card I should be
> > using,  and show me some evidence that it can make it more than two hours
> > without a crash and I might believe you.
>
> Sounds like you wouldn't be happy with the open source card I'm using to
> write this email now, however it sure suits my purposes and it hasn't
> crashed on me ever.
Nope. I play games on my box. I use an ATi 9200SE, hardly state of the art, 
but the OSS drivers still don't work very well.

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