Re: VGA cards
Camaleón wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:54:53 +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
>> On 2009-12-14 13:28 +0100, Camaleón wrote:
>>>> Be sure to avoid Nvidia graphics cards then.
>>> Why?
>>>
>>> There is "nv" driver (2D) and soon it will be "nouveau" (2D+3D) driver
>>> available. Both are open source.
>> The nv driver is heavily obfuscated¹ and, perhaps more importantly, it
>> lacks some very basic features.
[snip]
> It seems we have not many real choices, then :-(
One of the remaining options is to complain to the dealer and/or
manufacturer for providing a product that does not fully work, since
neither the specifications are available to develop a working (free)
driver nor is a driver available that supports the card fully with a
free OS like debian. IIRC, the manufacturers have no satisfactory means
to provide security updates of their binary-only drivers or care for
security updates or other updates of the kernel that might break things.
In other words, those drivers are deficient.
IANAL and I don't know all the details, but at least in some countries
dealers are required to include the full (printed) instructions
necessary to operate any sold device. Blatantly that is not the case for
most graphics cards.
Independent of your legal status, it is worthwhile to increase the
'incentive' of manufacturers to contribute to open source drivers by
complaining loudly, also directly to them.
FWIW, I gave up on using the ati drivers for my card, because I could
not be bothered with all the bugs and with having to reinstall and
configure it on every new kernel version.
So ATI are another brand, I'd recommend to avoid. From what I read, the
overall hassle is generally far less on using Intel cards. YMMV, of
course and not all models of any manufacturer behave the same...
--
Johannes
Three nations have not officially adopted the International System
of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma,
Liberia, and the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units
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