The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 7:24 UTC (Tue) by xav (subscriber, #18536)
In reply to: The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge) by einstein
Parent article: The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

As far as reliability, the nvidia drivers are as good or better than any drivers I've ever used on linux - the box simply does not crash, ever. The open source ATI drivers though, can easily lock up a box if you happen to run the wrong screensaver, or try to play the wrong 3D FPS....

I don't really care whether my video driver is GPL'd but I do care that my OS of choice is supported.

Then use a widely supported non-GPL OS.

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The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 7:40 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Well, I have the opposite experience : one machine under Mandrake 10 with a Radeon 9200, GPL driver, which works flawlessly, and another with a Quattro, NVIDIA driver, which regularly locks with the screensaver (which is now disabled). And, in my opinion, Mandrake is not better engineered than Fedora.

I've installed and worked with hundreds of linux systems, and quite a few of those were workstations - so I've used various video cards and drivers with slackware, redhat, fedora, mandrake and suse. Over that time I've seen serious problems with 3D video and ATI cards all along, but none with nvidia in the past couple years. The early nvidia drivers had some agp issues, but that seems to be a thing of the past.

Then use a widely supported non-GPL OS.

Why do you want to dictate what OS I can run? My OS of choice just happens to be GPL'd. What do you want to do, prevent companies like nvidia from selling video cards to linux users? Sorry, I like fast 3D video with my linux, thank you very much!

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 14:58 UTC (Tue) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link]

> Sorry, I like fast 3D video with my linux, thank you very much!

Then you should probably consider lobbying your card vendor for a GPL driver. That way, people will be able to send in patches if they find bugs or improvements to be made or port features to other drivers. Plus your card will actually work if you put in a Mac (or an Alpha or anything other than a ix86) and you won't need to update for every kernel upgrade your distribution issues.

Read Jon's brilliant essay on non-free drivers for more on this subject.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 18:24 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Then you should probably consider lobbying your card vendor for a GPL driver.

I'm happy with nvidia's drivers, they couldn't be better. The whole reason my vendor is my vendor, is that their product is far and away the best available for linux-x86. Wouldn't it be ironic if I rewarded the company who has worked hardest to win my business by giving them grief?

I agree, it sucks that they have not addressed the non-x86 linux market, but that's the main reason I'm on x86 and not ppc or sparc or other non-x86 platform. I know that if I move to ppc as a linux platform, I can say goodbye to decent video performance, so I don't go there. My hope is that IBM, since they are pushing ppc, will talk to the folks at nvidia and ati about getting some decent video support for linux/ppc.