Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 30 Dec 2003 18:46:44 -0600 (CST) | From | Derek Foreman <> | Subject | Re: best AMD motherboard for Linux |
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On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Tomas Szepe wrote:
> On Dec-30 2003, Tue, 12:32 -0600 > Derek Foreman <manmower@signalmarketing.com> wrote: > > > > > > planning to get GeForce FX graphics card, if it makes a difference. > > > > > > > > Ask here before if you are planning to change your video card. > > > > > > nVidia translates to "trouble" around here. Selected Radeon cards, > > > on the other hand, work perfectly with opensource drivers and should > > > perform comparably. > > > > I'm not sure how you're defining "comparably". If you mean they get > > similar numbers from glxgears, that's possible. But the feature sets are > > not at all comparable. Nvidia's linux driver actually exposes the > > features available on modern graphics hardware. > > > > If you're going to advise against the use of their products in a public > > forum, I suggest you be a lot more specific. > > The person asking for advice was very articulate in what their primary > concerns in choosing hardware were, and my suggestion was made with those > in mind.
His primary requirement was that it (the motherboard) work well with linux. He stated that he was capable of installing drivers if he had to, but it would be even better if it wasn't required.
Open source drivers, or whether nvidia fits your idea of a "linux supporting company" were not on the stated list of requirements.
In fact, the message wasn't even asking for an opinion on the graphics card.
> Yes, I'm convinced that a binary only driver is not an adequate > solution in "supporting linux."
Paying people to write the driver, write documentation for the driver, and provide technical support for the driver does not meet your requirements for "supporting linux"... Your requirements seem steep indeed.
There are a lot of drivers in the linux source tree itself that are just as closed to you and I as the nvidia ones. Lots of companies only give out their documentation under NDA to "appropriate open source developers" (I thought one of the great things about opensource was that everyone was an "appropriate developer"). So while we can look at the source code, we don't have enough information about it to provide adequate peer review or to fix bugs in it ourselves.
We still have to contact whoever has the complete documentation, and we still have to wait for them to make a fix available.
> And by the way, you are not being specific in naming the "features > available on modern graphics hardware," either.
Vertex programs, fragment programs, vertex buffer objects, to name a few things. These are also available in the closed source ATI drivers.
Run glxinfo and look at the gl version strings and the supported extensions. I'll send you the output of mine off-list if you'd like to do a comparison.
If you really do have specific complaints about nvidia's drivers, it would be polite to email them first - they do reply to their linux-bugs email address.
Just claiming "nvidia translates into trouble" is really nothing more than FUD. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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