On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 07:17:14AM -0600, Dwayne C. Litzenberger wrote:
> > You can only do antialiasing if you do NOT use the NVIDIA drivers (the
> > commercial ones). They cannot do it yet.
> Grr.. You could if nVidia actually continued to release their driver
> sources like they said they would. I'll never buy another NV card until
> they have released GOOD driver docs for at least 2 consecutive
> generations of cards. I will never understand why companies think
> there's something secret about the way to control their hardware. I
> mean, anyone could potentially RE the stupid things, it's just a pain for
> normal users.
That's simple in their case actually, (and I understand them).
In order to provide good XFree drivers FAST, they basically ported their
Windows kernel API to Linux. That means just about every performance boost
the Windows drivers get, we will get too. And because it is kernel (i.e.
direct iX86) code, there is no need for an "emulation layer" or such - it's
somewhat like Linux aviplay, which uses Mediaplayer DLLs to play DivX, ASF
and WMV.
But that also means that the Linux drivers need a proprietary Kernel
module, which is so riddled with patents, NDAs and sub-contracts (which the
Windows developers couldn't care less about) that a source release is
simply out of the question.
So NVidia don't do it out of greed or stupidity, they do it because their
lawyers tell them so, and because it cannot be changed that easily, and
because 80% of NVidia doesn't NEED it to be changed.
--
Jens Benecke > "Dann nimm lieber gleich Pattex!"
"Na, ob das was hilft - der Hersteller ist schließlich eine
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung :-)" (-- aus dem Usenet)
http://www.hitchhikers.de/ - Die kostenlose Mitfahrzentrale für ganz Europa
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