[sclug] An introduction and some questions

[Alex Butcher]

On Thu, 12 May 2005, Taiyo Rawle wrote:

> All native Linux games have worked fine so far in
> Mandriva LE2005 and Mandrake 10.1 using NVidia. Played
> demo versions of UT2K3, UT2K4, Doom3 and rune so far.
> GeForce3 Ti200 card.

I've run Quake I and II, RTCW, UT and Uplink on everything upto FC3. My
main desktop has a 64MB Radeon 7500 using the Free drivers included in the
standard kernel and Xorg.

> The only issue I've had is with the NVidia proprietary
> drivers; there was a bug in the kernel interface
> source that prevented it from compiling should you
> have to, the fix was a simple one-line edit. I think
> that's all been straightened out in the latest driver
> release  though.

That may have been, but they seem to be ignoring the problems their driver
has with certain laptops (Toshiba and Dell models are affected). Ultimately,
if you rely upon closed drivers, sooner or later, you *will* get burnt. All
it takes is for the manufacturer to lose interest in maintaining the
drivers. Consider what might happen if nVidia want to get the contract for
the graphics chipset in the 3rd XBox...

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>