Re: Why

[Tom Allard <m1tca00@frb.gov>]

> Now what makes Windows so incapable of having these same problems? 
> I've never heard of anyone having trouble running the Win95 installer
> on a system that just had DOS because of video hardware. 

I had trouble installing Windows 95 on a machine with a Diamond Stealth II 
video card.  Turns out the driver was only available in OSR2.

The card is based on the i740 chip, and Intel was unwilling to open the
specs at the time I had the machine.  I had to install a binary-only driver
from Precision Insight.  It was available at no-charge, but could not be
distributed with Debian because it was not DFSG-free.  Intel has since
opened the spec and the card is now supported in XFree86 3.3.5.

The reason you don't hear about *as many* problems with Windows is simple.
No one in their right mind would create a card and not give MicroSoft a
driver.  Hopefully, companies will soon find that it is just as insane not
to give the driver specs to XFree86.


rgds-- TA  (tallard@frb.gov)
I don't speak for the Federal Reserve Board, it doesn't speak for me.