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Re: Kernel 2.6.5 and Nvidia driver



On Wednesday 07 April 2004 15:07, Freivald, Joseph A, GVSOL wrote:
> How is the ATI xfree driver any better than the NV xfree driver?

At least for some cards (everything up to 7500 definitely, and I *think* 8500 
and 9x00 series cards as well) have hardware 3D support in the radeon.o 
driver, while nv.o doesn't.  nv.o also doesn't support XV (you'll need this 
if you want to watch movies/tv in full screen, even on more recent systems) 
on some of the older cards, while it is supported on all radeons that I've 
tried.

Depends on your needs....

> I'm not trying to start a flame war on how Companies should choose to or
> not to support open source projects
It really saddens me that linux users are so quick to bitch about nVidia and 
now ATi providing binary-only drivers and how they should opensource their 
drivers and blah blah blah.

What no one realise is that they probably would provide at least the specs if 
you could.  But they can't because both use tchnologies in their cards that 
are licenced from other companies and they are not allowed to disclose that 
information.  That is why ATi started with the binary drivers.  Their history 
of linux support should make it crystal clear that they are frienly to the 
opensource community - they really don't deserve the negative publicity 
they're getting for it.  Neither does nVidia.  They've been providing working 
linux drivers for ages, and have steadily improved their drivers to the point 
where it's mostly a no-nonsens procedure to install them.

Both could have done like many other companies and simply not bothered at all.  
Now think how bad that would be....

-- 
Kind regards
Hans du Plooy
Newington Consulting Services
hansdp at newingtoncs dot co dot za



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