Re: free vs commercial
On Friday 14 January 2005 05:17, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Frank Van Damme wrote:
> > 2-3 years? I think my radeon 8500 could still play doom3, be it in a
> > very low resolution... and that's about as resource-hungry a game can
> > get these days.
>
> "be it at a very low resolution." Look, my 9800Pro was already
> running Doom in a lower resolution that I've become accustomed to and that
> is not an old card. The 9800Pro is not supported by DRI. Furthermore, the
> other game that I play quite a bit of, City of Heroes, is neigh unplayable
> in large groups with anything less than a 9800Pro or comparable. Already
> the two games mentioned are coming up on a year old so I don't think my
> original assessment that playing games 2-3 years old is not hyperbole.
Doom 3's system requirements are ridiculous. I've never played city of heroes,
what do you mean with "groups"? Multiplayer with lots of players? If yes,
that seems more memory/cpu bound to me.
> > So yes, off course dri isn't up to date with the latest and greatest
> > cards, but when they finish something it's stable, which can't be said
> > from drivers from Ati or nVidia. Given the choice, I prefer stability.
>
> Given the choice of being playable *at all* albeit unstable or stable
> and unplayable guess which I'd choose. .... Second thought, don't guess.
> I reinstalled Win2k so I could use my 9800Pro again after finding the
> GeForce3 + Cedega painful. I don't think any of us here is going to argue
> the Win2k is more stable than Debian. ;P When we upgrade my wife's
> GeForce4 *mumble* it's going to be to my 9800Pro and I'm going to move up
> to a higher nVidia since at least they have decent drivers that allow me to
> play the games *now* and not a year or two from now.
So that is your choice. I have bought my current card just a little to early
so I have used it on Windows for some time, but I don't think I will make the
mistake to give in to installing the number one crap that can make a system
unstable: video drivers, from a proprietary source. If a bleeding-edge driver
crashes, at least I can send the developpers some debugging info and they
actually listen to me. Yes, I'd rather install Windows and keep the
proprietary crap on that if I really have to.
> > And yes Ati should be more pro-active in releasing specs, which would
> > help dri a lot and take the work of coding the Linux drivers all by
> > themselves out of their hands. As should nVidia.
>
> No. What you mean to say is that ATI and nVidia should be coding the
> drivers themselves and releasing the source to allow the community to
> contribute. It seems idiotic on their part to spurn Linux support when a
> lot of younger (and some older) gamers use Linux and would love to game
> under it. Open support gains them hardware sales which is where they make
> their money. Open support costs them nothing. Makes no sense.
Even better. Releasing their current drivers as open source wouldn't cost them
a penny (except for removing support for patented technologies like S3TC).
--
Frank Van Damme
Reply to: