binary drivers [LWN.net]

binary drivers

Posted Dec 17, 2004 10:06 UTC (Fri) by xav (subscriber, #18536)
In reply to: Quote of the week by mrshiny
Parent article: Quote of the week

The kernel is only tied directly to the drivers because it's made that way.

You didn't read Greg's link, did you ? The day Linux has a stable ABI for its drivers, it's dead. That would mean a proliferation of binary-only drivers for Intel architecture only, closed source without any update nor bugfix. And no possibility of having interfaces evolving. In that case, you'd better run Windows with up-to-date mainstream hardware.

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binary drivers

Posted Dec 17, 2004 13:15 UTC (Fri) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]

Of course I read the link. And as others have also pointed out around
here, even if there isn't a stable ABI, we could at least have a stable
API, which would allow me to run a new driver on my 2.6.0 kernel if I so
desired. But we can't do that, because the driver API can change with
every minor 2.6 release. At least with 2.4, once the VM problems were
sorted out, there was some stability.

As to whether or not binary drivers are bad, all I can say is that if I
couldn't get a binary nvidia driver, I probably wouldn't run Linux on my
workstation. Believe me when I say that there is no good opensource
video driver for my video card, and my needs for a high-performance video
card outweigh my needs to run open-source software. For most people, the
computer is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. I dislike
binary drivers, and how I'm reliant on Nvidia to update it, and I worry
about what I'll do in a few years if my card stops being supported. But
in the meantime, my computer works wonderfully and I can use it for what
I intended. If I had to do as another user did, that is, buy an older
video card that has half the features, half of the intended use of my
computer would disappear. I'd LOVE to use an open-source driver, but
there just isn't one that meets my needs, not for my nVidia card, not for
any other equivalent card.

binary drivers

Posted Jan 3, 2005 17:13 UTC (Mon) by atrius (guest, #26979) [Link]

It's simple. As much as I love Linux, there is no way I would have started using it on a daily basis if I had to put up with the bloody nv driver for video. If it weren't for that evil binary driver, Linux desktop usage, aside from the hard core Free software people, would have stayed zero and would likely have remained that way for the forseeable future.