[MPlayer-users] Re: [expert] NVidia will be bannished

[Carsten Menke]

Nick Kurshev wrote:

>[Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
>Hello, Terry!
>
>On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 12:26:39 -0500 (EST) you wrote:
>
>>[Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
>>I don't agree with you at all here. I find the nVidia "closed source"
>>driver to be much more stable than the DRi driver for my ATi Rage Pro.
>>Also, the nVidia driver provides capabilities that DRI can't do right now.
>>
The current Nvidia Driver simply rockz :-). Well I see also OpenSource 
it's be kinda hype
right now, OpenSource is philosophy, OpenSource is lifestyle, OpenSource 
is politics.
I would rather tend to have both OpenSource and closed Source, otherwise 
Companies will
not see that's worth to develop something for Linux or *BSD because 
everything has to be
OpenSource. And someone that that ATI is *donating* documentation to the 
community,
well I doubt, that someone could buy a bread from documentation which is 
glady donated by
a hardware company which has increasing sales, because yet another 
platform is supported.

   
 >Don't crucify nVidia. They are the only company I know of that develops
 >their own Linux driver for their hardware. Everyone else outsources it or

>>relies on the community to develop for them. nVidia provides a
>>high-quality driver that works well and is updates in a regular fashion.
>>Some companies (**cough cough** Promise **cough cough**) provide a binary
>>only driver that is horrible and can't be used outside of the kernel it
>>was compiled for. nVidia had the forsight to allow us to compile the
>>linking code between the kernel and the binary driver, allowing us to use
>>their driver with newer kernels without waiting for an update from them.
>>
Yes, I also think so, other compies rely on the work of others, but sell 
the product on their own, and
gaining the sales money on their own.

>>
>Please look at mplayer-CVS:main/drivers/radeon - who waits for updates?
>
Hmmm, ok not waiting for a graphic card update (using Nvidia) but what 
for example,
with the scanner driver for the hp4200 ? Since July 2000 no update still 
only 8bpp.

>
>>Also, nVidia has every reason to keep their drivers closed-source. ATi's
>>biggest problem with drivers is that they have to develop different
>>drivers for every one of their graphics chipset families (Rage II, Rage
>>Pro, Rage 128, Radeon). Since ATi can't keep all of their drivers current,
>>they drop support for cards as they get older. nVidia doesn't have this
>>
>No - ATI don't want develop opensource drivers and donates some opensource developers
>with documentation instead. Indeed you are wrong since Rage128 driver will work with radeon
>and vice versa - indeed there is only one barrier: mach64 - rage128.
>But sorry - every company sometime perform full revision of internal structure
>of their products. (same as 286 and 386 intel's cpus).
>[snip]
>
>>The only nit I have to pick with nVidia is that they haven't provided a
>>LinuxPPC driver yet. I understand that's it's prolly not as easy as their
>>Intel driver, but now that Apple is only selling nVidia hardware, they
>>really need to buck up and give us a LinuxPPC driver.
>>