[Nottingham] Connect 3D Radeon 7000 AGP and Five Button Mouse info

[Michael Quaintance]

>
>
>>Personally, operating systems and file formats, those are the two things
>>I feel are evil to be closed, anything else by default, has to be on a
>>level playing field and only the best product wins.
>
>Exactly, and a graphics driver is part of the operating system. Yes, and
>several people would consider open source to win hands down for their own
>definition of best.
>  
>

Okay, I'm sorry to butt in here but you've touched on an issue I care 
deeply about.

The following is extracted from http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#37 
and is therefore written from an OpenBSD perspective.

> For an operating system to get anywhere in "the market" it must have 
> good device support.
>
> ...[T]he problem was solved by writing drivers for documented devices 
> first. If the free software user communities use those drivers 
> preferentially, it is a market loss for the secretive vendors. Another 
> approach that has worked is to publish email addresses and phone 
> numbers for the marketing department managers in these companies. 
> These email campaigns have worked almost every time.
> ...
> Send a message that open support for hardware matters. A vendor in 
> Redmond largely continues their practices because they get the chipset 
> documentation years before everyone else does. What really upsets us 
> the most is that some Linux vendors are signing Non-Disclosure 
> Agreements with vendors, or contracts that let them distribute 
> firmwares. Meanwhile both Linux and FSF head developers are not asking 
> their communities to help us in our efforts to free development 
> information for all, but are even going further and telling their 
> development communities to not work with us at pressuring vendors.

Now people may disagree with this and I respect that. I have a hard time 
balancing what is clearly good about the GPL with what are in my opinion 
its biggest weaknesses. That said, this conflict comes from the central 
premise of how do you protect 'forever' against a business changing its 
mind? I like open-source drivers. More so than the kernel. But then I am 
a device driver and bootstrap engineer for my day job!

Again sorry to butt in as this is quite off-topic and I personally don't 
care about 3d or games. Most of my boxen are headless anyway. If you 
can't do it on the console... is it really worth doing at all?

That said, I may be asking a question shortly about a problem where the 
console really isn't enough. I need pictures.

-Penfold