binary drivers
Posted Dec 17, 2004 13:15 UTC (Fri) by
mrshiny (subscriber, #4266)
In reply to:
binary drivers by xav
Parent article:
Quote of the week
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.
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