Thank You nvidia.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Fritz Jul 27, 2006 6:35 PM EDT |
I would like to thank nvidia for their support of the open source community. This article is unfair and clearly written by the type of open source zealot that would stand by and let linux fail as long as it is totally free. I would discuss the article linked to, but it contains no content, just a link to a LWN article and a bad analogy. The fact of the matter is that we should be thanking nvidia for what they do provide us. It's easy for intel to provide open source drivers for it's graphics cards, intel is not a competitor in that market. Intel graphics are almost exclusively onboard, I don't know anybody who has chosen to get one because of their technology, people have them because they are there. Do you play the latest games on your intel graphics card? I didn't think so. Intel passes over the fact that nvidia does fully support a well written 2d xorg driver for their processors. There is no real business incentive for them to do this, it is a gift to the open source zealots like this author who have an intel card, but refuse to have anything proprietary on their system. The author mentions the risks that intel and ATI have in providing a fully open source driver, by doing this, it does help their competition copy them, the business lives off of innovation. Giving out this full information could very well end up hurting them financially. Of course if you give them enough money, they would give up this information. It's logical that if you give them enough money, then they don't really have to worry about losing money. Nvidia provides a fully functional, easily installable, regularly updated driver for their hardware. How about we spend our time going after all of the hardware manufacturers who provide us absolutely nothing. -> Trevor |
| grouch Jul 27, 2006 7:05 PM EDT |
nVidious can take their NON-support and their closed, secretive, buggy, crash-inducing binary driver and shove it where the sun never shines. |
| jimf Jul 27, 2006 7:23 PM EDT |
Supplying proprietary drivers to a GPL environment... Oh yeah, that deserves lots of thanks... Not! |
| tuxchick2 Jul 27, 2006 7:34 PM EDT |
Nvidia does not support Open Source. If they do, I would appreciate a link, because as far as I know they neither distribute nor support any kind of Free or Open Source projects. It is wrong to assume that a hardware vendor needs closed, secret drivers to succeed. The success of the entire x86 platform proves this. I suspect the main reason behind closed code is vendors don't dare disclose how much is legally suspect. Trade secrets is just an excuse. Nvidia's Linux support is OK. But just think how much easier it would be for them to release the specs and let FOSS devs take on the burden of maintaining drivers. Let the distribution maintainers worry about providing packages for different hardware architectures and kernel versions. Let power users compile their own drivers to meet their own needs. Transparency works in many good ways. "Innovation" is a lame Microsoftian excuse for secrecy. The FOSS world has been out-innovating the closed, proprietary world for years now. Who had the first x86 64-bit OS? Linux. Red Hat shipped 64-bit editions way back in 2002. Even today 64-bit Windows is a joke. No single company can possibly match the resources of a worldwide developer and user community. Which operating system has the most flexible installers, that give you complete control over exactly what goes on your system? Which OS has advanced virtualization and volume management? Which OS has the best assortment of desktop environments, from barebones to lush? Which platform is designed from the ground up to give power and control to end users, instead of continually trying to exploit and hurt us? Which operating system supports the most hardware platforms? Either Linux or NetBSD; that's a fun flamewar to get into for anyone who likes such things. That's real innovation. The closed, proprietary vendors whine about supporting anything other than Windows. Free Software is completely pragmatic. It works. Its success speaks for itself. To say 'well OK, it worked for awhile but now we can go back to the bad old ways' is just as silly as following a strict healthy regime to lose weight and get fit, and then when you reach your fitness goal go back to swilling beer, eating chips, and watching TV all day. This is a good article on why closed binary drivers are bad for Linux: http://lwn.net/Articles/159313/ "with a proprietary driver, a Linux system loses one of its best characteristics: independence from vendors." |
| techiem2 Jul 27, 2006 7:40 PM EDT |
Well Said. |
| wjl Jul 27, 2006 9:25 PM EDT |
Fritz> "I would discuss the article linked to, but it contains no content, just a link to a LWN article and a bad analogy." Thanks a lot, Fritz - at least I tried to explain (in a short form, for those not wanting to click through many pages, why proprietary drivers are evil by design. Seems that I wasn't clear and precise enough tho - some will obviously never get it... Anyway, thanks for your contribution. cheers, wjl |
| grouch Jul 27, 2006 9:55 PM EDT |
Hmm. I missed that part in Fritz's fawning over nVidious. wjl: I appreciate the background information you provided as well as the link. Now it's in LXer's database for anyone to locate when researching. |
| wjl Jul 27, 2006 10:37 PM EDT |
thx grouch! :-) I'll follow with a LXer feature soon :-) |
| salparadise Jul 27, 2006 10:46 PM EDT |
Quoting:nVidious can take their NON-support and their closed, secretive, buggy, crash-inducing binary driver and shove it where the sun never shines. I'll agree with secretive, but buggy and crash-inducing it isn't. I tend to use the nvidia driver, mostly because I went to the trouble of acquiring machines with nvidia cards in because, in my experience, ATI cards are nasty and I like running round virtual environments shooting anything that moves, I find it entertaining. Show me a card that I can put in my machines that will allow me to do that AND stay within the bounds of complete openness and I'll use it. Oh that's right, you can't, because there isn't one as yet. So the choice is, not get full use from my computer or fall foul of the thought police. Great! I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment and as soon as a company either appears to meet this need or switches to an Open Source model of driver development I'll switch, but until then I'll stick with the nvidia driver. At least they've taken the trouble to develop a driver for Linux, one that is updated and improved on a regular basis, a feat which a LOT of other hardware companies have not managed/are too scared of Microsoft to do. It's a start, it's not ideal, but it's better than simply refusing to acknowledge that Linux users exist. And they do support Linux users, I know this for a fact as there was a post on one of the UK LUG lists a few months ago from a guy who was struggling with the nvidia driver on the then Beta version of Dapper. The nvidia engineer setup a machine so it was identical, found the problem and emailed back with the solution. He didn't just reply with "well if you're going to use beta level software, what do you expect?". If you haven't personally had some (recent) bad experience of nvidia refusing support, it's probably best to not throw stones. |
| wjl Jul 27, 2006 11:08 PM EDT |
sal> "I'll agree with secretive, but buggy and crash-inducing it isn't." Well my experiences differ a bit. Tho I'm no big fan of first-person shooters, but tried things like flightgear or tuxracer, all my setups I had so far (and that was pretty much everything Debian, from Woody to Sid, plus Ubuntu) started to act strange whenever I had the binary nVidia drivers installed (here also: with different versions, trying the newest ones and falling back to drivers which worked better in some cases). None of these setups were ever as stable as the one with the open source 'nv' driver. In the meantime, I'm a happy and proud father of a now 19 months old girl, and for playing purposes, I have a Dapper partition with the proprietary drivers which I boot whenever I want something 3D. Who cares if it's not as stable as Debian, as long as our working setup is still Sarge *without* all the shiny 3D stuff? So I partly agree. Yes, we can be thankful that there *is* some working 3D driver. But also yes, the situation should be improved - I want a free and open source environment, and I - like you - will switch to new hardware as soon as it is available and brings drivers which are GPL'ed. Even if there are *only* some 10 million Linux/BSD desktop users or so, 10 million graphics cards is something I would *love to* sell, so there is hope that one or the other of these companies finally will get a clue... in that regard, the AMD/ATI merger and everything else which is happening is interesting enough to watch. Thanks for your thoughts and comments, cheers, wjl |
| grouch Jul 27, 2006 11:16 PM EDT |
salparadise: >"If you haven't personally had some (recent) bad experience of nvidia refusing support, it's probably best to not throw stones." nVidious refuses to put a 3d driver into the mainline kernel. That's refusing support. A GNU/Linux system with that closed, binary driver installed instantly morphs into a system dependent upon a single vendor's whims. It is no longer your system. The difference between it and an MS system is a matter of degree, only. I will continue to throw stones until they figure out that they can sell me the hardware when they cease trying to own my computer by way of the software. |
| dinotrac Jul 28, 2006 2:37 AM EDT |
I suppose it's some kind of progress that we've moved from complaining about no drivers to complaining about proprietary drivers. |
| tuxchick2 Jul 28, 2006 7:56 AM EDT |
yes, dino, that is progress of sorts! I think the Linux Nvidia drivers are pretty good. My main workstation has an old Nvidia Riva TNT, and it performs pretty well. The Nvidia installer is dead easy these days- just run a single script. Still, it's stupid to keep a lock on a 4-year old hunk of hardware, sheesh, what "secrets" are left, except some "oops how did that get there" code. |
| dinotrac Jul 28, 2006 8:06 AM EDT |
tc - I agree. I also have an Nvidia card/driver, and am well-pleased. It's a low dollar affair --- I do much more video than gaming, but can't complain. Free is preferable, but being noticed is better than being ignored. See Adobe flash for example of latter. Not only does Linux lag behind in version, but a 64 bit edition is still MIA. |
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