PS. This nVidia game is ridiculous of course, but the world lives by
it, silly world. This quote from the Con Kolivas kernel (which I use:
2.6.16-ck4) list:
( here: http://bhhdoa.org.au/pipermail/ck/2006-April/005782.html )
On 4/3/06, Imran Jamadar <imranjamadar@gmail.com> wrote:
May be we all should bug Nvidia, and go to their forums and file a
bug report and stuff,
they need to be poked, as Nvidia is very lazy on Linux especially
in relation to SLI code.
This isn't exactly true; like a lot of tech companies they have NDAs &
licenses with other tech companies that then prevent them from
disclosing certain useful information. Unfortunately for graphics
cards there's a *lot* of cross-licensed proprietary information
particularly where hardware accelleration of both 2D & 3D data is
concerned.
This is why Microsoft are moving Windows towards total graphical
domination. It has nothing to do with making the interface easier &
more intuitive (if it were, they'd dump that piece of garbage and
license MacOS X ;) or utilising the current capabilities of graphics
hardware. It has everything to do with the fact that closed source
drivers hide (or "satisfy", depending on your viewpoint) the legal
implications of releasing drivers at all. Since almost all their
competitors in the OS space rely on open source drivers, they
instantly have a serious, zero-cost advantage over the competition.
Companies like nVidia are doing what they can to work within the legal
parameters they're forced into to provide drivers for non-Microsoft
platforms (so the inevitable obscelecence takes longer), but when you
see that in the past 10 years we've lost:
a) DEC Alpha
b) SPARC
c) MIPS
d) PowerPC
e) whatever the hell HPUX ran on - come on, its dead
(for MIPS & PowerPC I'm specifically referring to SGI and Apple as the
largest noticable vendors of these platforms for general
workstation/server use) and that Sun are (or were) considering dumping
UltraSPARC for amd64, the majority of computer systems on the planet
now, in just a decade, have switched from being unable to run Windows
to able to run Windows with absolutely zero technical effort from
Microsoft. This places them in the realm where driver development
will focus on desktop systems, and Microsoft's illegally-obtained
monopoly in this arena means those drivers will be for Windows.
Scary, huh?