Funny how a company goes from initially supporting OSS (weren't their development drivers at least compilable?) to stating it's against policy to open the source to their drivers.
Even funnier when afore-mentioned company just received a large advance from M$ for developing the new GPU's for the X-Box.
Let's face it. Linux, and the general culture of copyleft is under siege. RIAA, mp3.com, DeCSS, the list goes on and on. The line must be drawn here. The GPL is the one weapon we have against those who would like nothing more than to see Linux wither and die.
A weapon isn't a weapon if your enemies doubt your will to use it.
Sue NVidia. Demonstrate that violating the GPL has very real consequences. Even if we got $0.01 in damages, or got them to open the source to the driver, our point would be made:
I downloaded on win98 and loved it! It'll probably replace IE5 for me (IE5 does *strange* things on my box, like periodically forgetting my history). I then downloaded the linux version, hoping performance would be similar. My hopes were in vain. 1) Speed was about 60% of the win98 build. 2) Rendering was *UGLY*. The dynamic html floating netscape was horribly pixelated, and normal text was fairly pixelated as well. Perhaps this is just an issue with my fonts, but netscape 4.72 renders text just fine. And the UI just blows. Granted, the skins feature will solve this (i've seen at least one great skin), but the default skin shouldn't be so bad that it *MUST* be changed. Sigh. It's almost enough to drive a guy to lynx.
AdmiralBurrito, if you think you're annoyed about the lack of Linux GL (LinGL?) on your #9, imagine my aggravation about the lack of support on my TNT card. I bought it *specifically* because it was a beginning OpenGL programmer's dream come true (in it's heyday...). It had:
1) a good price 2) a stencil buffer 3) excellent OpenGL support (on --cough-- windoze) 4) decent memory
Imagine my frustration when I found Mesa wouldn't accelerate it. Granted, things have improved over the past few months, but I *still* haven't heard whether nVidia's new LinGL push with SGI and VALinux will only support GeForce cards, or whether it will include the TNT/TNT2 cards as well. Ah well. Once I see a LinGL system functioning on a GeForce based system, I'll probably go into debt on a new rig anyway;)
Sheesh. I need to get some of whatever this guy is smoking. True, wireless handhelds will become commonplace, but they will *compliment* pc use, not *replace* it. Even if you tossed me a dream 2Ghz PDA/whatever, if there's a 5ghz pc out there, you'll probably see me banging away at the pc;) Digit.
Once I can run 3d accelerated games on linux using my TNT card, I'll *never* boot win32 again. Then again, having my SoundBlaster Live supported with EAX would be nice too;) So, here's to DRI, Precision Insight, SGI, nVidia, and all the rest working to get us quality OpenGL on Linux. And kudos to the sound card companies for increased support of Linux. Life will be good in about a year meethinks.
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Even funnier when afore-mentioned company just received a large advance from M$ for developing the new GPU's for the X-Box.
Let's face it. Linux, and the general culture of copyleft is under siege. RIAA, mp3.com, DeCSS, the list goes on and on. The line must be drawn here. The GPL is the one weapon we have against those who would like nothing more than to see Linux wither and die.
A weapon isn't a weapon if your enemies doubt your will to use it.
Sue NVidia. Demonstrate that violating the GPL has very real consequences. Even if we got $0.01 in damages, or got them to open the source to the driver, our point would be made:
I downloaded on win98 and loved it! It'll probably replace IE5 for me (IE5 does *strange* things on my box, like periodically forgetting my history). I then downloaded the linux version, hoping performance would be similar. My hopes were in vain. 1) Speed was about 60% of the win98 build. 2) Rendering was *UGLY*. The dynamic html floating netscape was horribly pixelated, and normal text was fairly pixelated as well. Perhaps this is just an issue with my fonts, but netscape 4.72 renders text just fine. And the UI just blows. Granted, the skins feature will solve this (i've seen at least one great skin), but the default skin shouldn't be so bad that it *MUST* be changed. Sigh. It's almost enough to drive a guy to lynx.
I'll give 10->1 odds that their stock dips as a result of this ;)
Ummm... not sure where the stencil buffer comment is coming from... I always run in 32 bit mode ;)
About the problems with the driver... I've never run across them. Weird.
I have. No response received as yet.
AdmiralBurrito, if you think you're annoyed about the lack of Linux GL (LinGL?) on your #9, imagine my aggravation about the lack of support on my TNT card. I bought it *specifically* because it was a beginning OpenGL programmer's dream come true (in it's heyday...). It had:
;)
1) a good price
2) a stencil buffer
3) excellent OpenGL support (on --cough-- windoze)
4) decent memory
Imagine my frustration when I found Mesa wouldn't accelerate it. Granted, things have improved over the past few months, but I *still* haven't heard whether nVidia's new LinGL push with SGI and VALinux will only support GeForce cards, or whether it will include the TNT/TNT2 cards as well. Ah well. Once I see a LinGL system functioning on a GeForce based system, I'll probably go into debt on a new rig anyway
Sheesh. I need to get some of whatever this guy is smoking. True, wireless handhelds will become commonplace, but they will *compliment* pc use, not *replace* it. Even if you tossed me a dream 2Ghz PDA/whatever, if there's a 5ghz pc out there, you'll probably see me banging away at the pc ;) Digit.
Especially since they eventually tie together :)
Once I can run 3d accelerated games on linux using my TNT card, I'll *never* boot win32 again. Then again, having my SoundBlaster Live supported with EAX would be nice too ;) So, here's to DRI, Precision Insight, SGI, nVidia, and all the rest working to get us quality OpenGL on Linux. And kudos to the sound card companies for increased support of Linux. Life will be good in about a year meethinks.