You have zealots who hate anything not 100% open source - these are the noisy ones complaining. You have AMD/ATI fanbois who just see this as another chance to have a swing at nvidia. And you have the mostly silent majority who are pragmatists like yourself, who will buy whatever hardware works, and install drivers if required - then move on, happily making full use of their shiny new hardware.
The issue with the binary "blob" driver is that you can't know whats in it. You can't determine if it has crashed because of a particular reason, and you also can't ship it as an OS/hardware supplier without some sort of deal with nvidia.
People are "fighting" for the right to know what is going on in their kernel (which is funny, because you can't really know what's going on in the firmware on the card, either - irrespective of driver), and the ability to ship/modify the code. 99.999% of the userbase have no interest in either matter, but like to make noise about it as if they do.
It also says "we can stop wasting time fucking with code to make the driver plug into the kernel, and concentrate on our core business of improving the hardware/driver"
If we're going to get into anecdotes, I've had: TNT, TNT2, Geforce 4 MX, Geforce 4200ti, Geforce 6600GT, Geforce 7800GT, Geforce 8800GT - and I can count the number of driver crashes I've had caused by Nvidia (under Windows) on one hand. I don't consider there to be enough 3d software that I've run under linux to count that as a worthy metric, but haven't had any problems with any of those cards on linux either - save for X11 problems when the new (at the time) cards weren't identified properly by the NV driver. My last dealing with an ATI card was to pull it out of my workstation (at work) and replace with a shitty old TSENG card to stop the blue screens....
I've been watching for stable, high performance open source 3d from ATi for years. I'm not holding my breath. Last I dealt with ATi, they couldn't even get a stable windows driver out.
Quality control (i.e., not having to deal with the inability to replicate support issues from tards compiling it on an overclocked box using some beta compiler on -o9). Next.
In case by "non-x86 linux" you in fact meant RISC rather than some other (eg FreeBSD OS) then....
what the fuck are people who want competitive 3d doing on non-x86 these days? Alpha, MIPS, PPC linux - they're all DEAD for doing any 3d on. Why support a platform with new hardware that you haven't actually been able to purchase for years? You can point at PLENTY OF OPEN SOURCE shit that doesn't work properly on Alpha, MIPS, PPC, etc either.
hello? nvidia is a publicly traded company who is in this to make money. they're not a person. I'll bet dollars to donuts that supporting this open source driver costs more money than it generates. Most of the linux users who truly care about open source 3d drivers should be on intel already anyway.
I'm sure nvidia will mourn the loss of the 0.1% of their potential customer base who are open source linux nvidia zealots that typically purchase 3d hardware in the low end of the market. Most of these if they're true zealots already run intel 3d anyway.
? seriously, most open source software on a linux box is not supported by any huge corporation to any great level of detail. the driver will still be there, it will still work in VESA mode. to get the best performance you have always had to install the binary driver. the binary driver, that nvidia have compiled most of will be far easier for them to provide proper support for, as they won't have to deal with idiots compiling it on their overclocked gentoo box with -o9 and then blaming nvidia support/hardware when it crashes and or won't compile.
if there is a market for a competitive open source friendly (hell, open source hardware) 3d video card, someone will make it. currently, it does not appear to economically viable to be both open source and competitive, in the 3d hardware world.
This simply shifts the security problem from a typical Windows box to a linux distribution - that being on read-only media will remain static in terms of its vulnerability to future exploits.
Will it be more secure? Maybe... for some period of time. Long term, they're just moving the problem of keeping an end user's PC secure to repeatedly shipping physical media.
The world's largest military in terms of spend is the US, by the way. The only country to have nuked another, is the US. The country who has the most extensive history of subverting governments and encouraging "regime change" in other countries, is the US.
Now, who are you supposed to be scared of, again?
The more likely party to start a war in this case is the US - over the supreme levels of debt they have to china, when they decide they're unable to pay it back.
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You have zealots who hate anything not 100% open source - these are the noisy ones complaining. You have AMD/ATI fanbois who just see this as another chance to have a swing at nvidia. And you have the mostly silent majority who are pragmatists like yourself, who will buy whatever hardware works, and install drivers if required - then move on, happily making full use of their shiny new hardware.
The issue with the binary "blob" driver is that you can't know whats in it. You can't determine if it has crashed because of a particular reason, and you also can't ship it as an OS/hardware supplier without some sort of deal with nvidia.
People are "fighting" for the right to know what is going on in their kernel (which is funny, because you can't really know what's going on in the firmware on the card, either - irrespective of driver), and the ability to ship/modify the code. 99.999% of the userbase have no interest in either matter, but like to make noise about it as if they do.
As have I. WHEN they have a stable reliable open source (AND windows) 3d driver I'll switch. Until then, its vaporware.
Well, they DID (allegedly) buy/steal a lot of SGI I.P.
It also says "we can stop wasting time fucking with code to make the driver plug into the kernel, and concentrate on our core business of improving the hardware/driver"
I predict a number of Mac Pro sales to that company.
If we're going to get into anecdotes, I've had: TNT, TNT2, Geforce 4 MX, Geforce 4200ti, Geforce 6600GT, Geforce 7800GT, Geforce 8800GT - and I can count the number of driver crashes I've had caused by Nvidia (under Windows) on one hand. I don't consider there to be enough 3d software that I've run under linux to count that as a worthy metric, but haven't had any problems with any of those cards on linux either - save for X11 problems when the new (at the time) cards weren't identified properly by the NV driver. My last dealing with an ATI card was to pull it out of my workstation (at work) and replace with a shitty old TSENG card to stop the blue screens....
I've been watching for stable, high performance open source 3d from ATi for years. I'm not holding my breath. Last I dealt with ATi, they couldn't even get a stable windows driver out.
If i wanted stable 2d support, why would I buy ANY 3d accelerator? Just buy intel onboard?
Compiz will run on intel. You're not in the 3d card market.
So essentially you're saying he should buy an Intel onboard GMA adapter. Which will not run the software he wants to run. Awesome.
Its a pity very few of the actual applications you would purchase a 3dfx card for work on linux then.
Do they make a functional Linux 3d card yet?
Quality control (i.e., not having to deal with the inability to replicate support issues from tards compiling it on an overclocked box using some beta compiler on -o9). Next.
If linux had a proper stable driver API then this might be possible.
Its called source code. Which contains proprietary trade-secrets/licensed algorithms that Nvidia are not entitled to divulge?
what the fuck are people who want competitive 3d doing on non-x86 these days? Alpha, MIPS, PPC linux - they're all DEAD for doing any 3d on. Why support a platform with new hardware that you haven't actually been able to purchase for years? You can point at PLENTY OF OPEN SOURCE shit that doesn't work properly on Alpha, MIPS, PPC, etc either.
Nvidia has supported FreeBSD both 32 and 64 bit for years.
hello? nvidia is a publicly traded company who is in this to make money. they're not a person. I'll bet dollars to donuts that supporting this open source driver costs more money than it generates. Most of the linux users who truly care about open source 3d drivers should be on intel already anyway.
I'm sure nvidia will mourn the loss of the 0.1% of their potential customer base who are open source linux nvidia zealots that typically purchase 3d hardware in the low end of the market. Most of these if they're true zealots already run intel 3d anyway.
if there is a market for a competitive open source friendly (hell, open source hardware) 3d video card, someone will make it. currently, it does not appear to economically viable to be both open source and competitive, in the 3d hardware world.
Until then, the binary driver will still exist.
I hate to break it to you, but the US government/military/citizens have no jurisdiction in china.
Will it be more secure? Maybe... for some period of time. Long term, they're just moving the problem of keeping an end user's PC secure to repeatedly shipping physical media.
Mod parent up. AC, but he "gets it".
Now, who are you supposed to be scared of, again?
The more likely party to start a war in this case is the US - over the supreme levels of debt they have to china, when they decide they're unable to pay it back.
Just like there is no reason for the US government to force their policy of capitalist "democracy" down everyone else's throats.