[NTLUG:Discuss] CPU History

[Chris Cox]

David wrote:
> I admit up front I have a rather absolutist, puritan attitude about
> this point.  If I can't do "X" in the GPL/Free Software world, then I'm
> just not interested in doing "X" at all.

If it is a simple matter of doing "X", then Nvidia is an ideal
choice since it has both free open drivers and full-on vendor
supplied drivers.

The fact that more an more vendors are supporting Linux is
a testimony to its success.  If the only support was strictly
in the "community", then I'd say that Linux was still a
hobbiest OS.

With that said, there is nothing wrong with not wanting to
use boards (which btw, the hardware WAS NOT designed and built
by the community... in case you missed that) without free
open drivers.  Good news is that Nvidia has free open drivers.

In fact, I believe the nv (free) driver supports the
Rotate option, and I don't believe the commercial drivers
support that.  So, sometimes free can have features that
non-free drivers don't have.

Another pro-point to free drivers, is that often times they
can get around "software restrictions".  That is, a commercial
vendor may have two boards and the only difference is a
advisory locking "bit" which causes the driver to behave
differently. The free drivers does not have to honor the bit
(naturally causing some grief to the vendor... who doesn't
care too much since most of their customers only run
Windoze... but still the vendor will keep a watch to make
sure it doesn't get out of hand, lest they be forced to
support Linux with a closed source driver that honors
the "bit").

In the case of Nvidia, they chose to not expose enough
information to allow folks to access the "advanced" features
of their chipset.... thus preserving the "value" of their
commercial drivers. However, unlike what most people would
think... Nvidia chooses give away the driver (though closed
source).  Nvidia is clearly VERY concerned that their
competition would discover their "cheats" (it has to be
something dirty and/or potentially damaging, Nvidia isn't
a warehouse of absolutely unique tech knowledge after all).
What Nvidia doesn't understand is that "joe" user doesn't
care at all about Nvidia vs. Radeon, "joe", just buys what
works the "fastest"... or just buys what is the "cheapest".

Linux users are a bit different... we just want to buy
something that WORKS.  Clearly having a vendor who supports
Linux helps in the "just WORKS in Linux" department.

The free drivers... for fun.  The commercially supported
drivers... when it has to work.  Occasionally, there are
feature differences that blur the lines of when you choose
one or the other (apart from making the choice based
on a purely ideological basis).

My two cents,
Chris