Re: best video card regarding license issues
Steffen Evers said:
> In particular, Alan Cox has picked out the Nvidea kernel modules as
> a good example how a module "taints" the kernel and explained that
> such tainted kernels will be not debugged in the future.
>
> So, what do you know about graphic cards regarding driver's
> licenses?
the linux kernel crew doesn't want to support someone
else's code if its not available. not many people
contact the kernel team directly for such matters
anyway(at least i hope they don't ..).
you will still be able to get help from lists like
debian-user and others that have users which use
such modules(i do in 1 system). its a
use-at-your-own-risk deal though. i held
off for about a year while the nvidia drivers
were maturing, they are pretty solid now(under
2.2.19 anyways).
theres talk about putting code into modules/kernel
that can detect when a tainted kernel is running so
developers know more information. i think its a good
idea.
i wait for the day when the kernel API is stable,
same for glibc. i was at a sun conference recently
and was shocked to hear that solaris 2.x is fully
upwards/downwards binary compadible. a binary
compiled on solaris 2.5.1 ~5 years ago will still
run on solaris 9 when it comes out next year(or
whenever its set to be released). until that
time i don't expect linux to be a complete replacment
for users on the desktop. its just too much work
for companies to compile 50 different modules for
their drivers for their hardware, since most end
users don't have the knowledge/ability to compile
them from source.
im just glad that nvidia releases enough source
that it can compile on generic kernels, rather
then binary-only modules like the ones from
companies like adaptec(and others who i cant
think of off the top of my head) which in many
cases only work with 1 or 2 specific kernels.
nate
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