[sclug] sclug Digest, Vol 61, Issue 14

[Neil Haughton]

>
>
>> So unless you have a bang up to date Nvidia card, upgrading to 8.10 will
>> apparently break 3D acceleration. How annoying is that?
>>
>
> 1) This is one of the perils of buying hardware that is only supported (or
> only /fully/ supported) by non-Free drivers.


Er, in my case the hardware came first - and isn't one of the punted about
'strengths' of Linux that it supports 'legacy' hardware very well?


>
>
> 2) The Nouveau driver has some support for 3D and XVideo/Motion
> Compensation
> acceleration, which should be an improvement on the 2D-only nv driver.
>
> 3) This might be a short-term thing until nVidia release new legacy drivers
> which work with the version of X.Org that Ubuntu have included in 8.10 (and
> presumably other distros will start including RSN).


Shouldn't Canonical make their OS work with existing drivers, rather than
insist that others keep up with them? I mean, the damn thing works perfectly
well with 7.10 and 8.04, so why should they deliberately break it with 8.10
- and then implicitly blame nvidia for not keeping up with them? And whilst
we are on the subject, why *should *nvidia rewrite drivers for older
hardware simply because Canonical have broken things?  I think that what
annoys me most is that  if M$ did this (and they do from time to time)  the
ponytails would be up in arms sticking their tongues out from the rooftops,
whereas because it is *Canonical *we are all supposed have a warm gooey
feeling about it.

Personally I think this whole 'proprietary is evil' thing is childish. Does
anyone refuse to buy a Toyota (say) because they won't give you a copy of
the manufacturing drawings?  (The answer is no, by the way :-) ). Nvidia
produce a driver (yay!), it works (yay!) but you can't see inside it (OMG!)
so we mustn't use it!  FGS who cares if you can't see inside it?

And now I'm going to calm down over lunch,  whilst I look for an alternative
successor to Ubuntu 7.10

Neil