radeon driver heading in wrong direction :-(.

Bruno Wolff III bruno at wolff.to
Sun Jan 31 20:30:36 UTC 2010


On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 16:16:06 +0000,
  Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> You mean as in nVidia drivers taking a week or so to adjust to new kernel 
> version and reach rpmfusion? Wow, that's a bummer! So you suggest we all opt 
> to use ATI drivers which don't work at all on current X for several months 
> now, basically since F12 appeared? And who knows when (or if) they will 
> actually start supporting modern X?

If one is trying to test out new kernels, it's a real bummer to have drivers
blocking that. In my case I have to deal with Digium not upstreaming their
GPL'd drivers so that they can dual license them. (This makes no sense to
me for them, as if someone is using dahdi, they are running on a GPL'd
kernel and there doesn't seem to be any need for the dual licensing
shennagins.) Typically I try rebuilding the driver myself, but sometimes
that doesn't work.

> You are saying that we should abandon closed source drivers for cards which 
> work and are well supported by nVidia, and instead use closed source drivers 
> which don't work and have lousy (if any) Linux support from ATI? Call me 
> stupid, but I don't understand your argument.

I think the current suggestion is to buy Intel or ATI hardware and use
the open source drivers in order to reward Intel and ATI for providing
specs to their hardware so that open source drivers can be written with
less effort. Not everyone is in a position to do that. If you do buy
nVidia, it would be nice to still try out Nouveau once in a while (especially
on test days for it) to help find and document problems.


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