Still no kmod for new nvidia

[Rick Stevens]

On 07/27/2010 05:58 PM, James McKenzie wrote:
> Bill Davidsen wrote:
>> And if you run Radeon chipsets which worked with FC6 and FC9, should you expect
>> that the developers would spend time on gamer features like 3D and compiz while
>> long time users run in text mode or VESA mode at best? Not everyone can throw
>> away what was a pretty decent laptop when it gets to be three years old.
>>
>>
> And WHY should AMD/ATI support old hardware?  They ain't selling anymore.
>
> ATI support is, mostly, on a paid basis and funded for current AMD/ATI
> products.
>
> The current version of the Catalyst drivers does not and should not
> support my 10 year old laptop with an ATI Rage Mobility 3 2xAGP
> adaptor.  Nor do I expect them to do so.
>
>> Lately it feels as if developers are not adding features but breaking or
>> removing support as well, as though there were some limit on the number of
>> chipsets which can work.
>>
>>
> Again, if I worked as a developer for a company that was paying my
> bills, I would do what they tell me.
>
> This is true for nVidia, AMD/ATI and Intel.  What makes them money is
> what they will support.  Ever check the difference in Windows versus
> Linux support?  Linux lags severely in several functions across the
> board.   Windows gamer users are a major source of their money and sales
> in high end video cards.  Linux users are not.
>
> Them's the facts folks.   You cannot short the developers on FOSS
> projects, you have to look at the manufacturers as well.
>
> BTW, this applies to ANY of the 'non-Windows' operating systems that
> rely on developers to create drivers for the device.

It would also be nice if the manufacturers would release better
information on the devices themselves.  Much of the time spent in FOSS
driver development is reverse engineering drivers for Windows because
of a lack of adequate information--and sometimes bits get left out or
don't work well because of it.

A few years back, Texas Instruments created a wireless NIC that a number
of PCMCIA and USB dongles used (mostly from D-Link).  We ended up with
hack very similar to nVidia kmods that'd use a binary blob from Windows
for the guts of the driver.
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