Shrinking the kernel with gcc

Shrinking the kernel with gcc

Posted Jan 25, 2004 13:29 UTC (Sun) by rknop (guest, #66)
In reply to: Shrinking the kernel with gcc by bronson
Parent article: Shrinking the kernel with gcc

The problem with this is in two areas: 3d video cards and wireless cards. In both cases, it's getting hard to buy a new card that has open-source support. ATI used to be the company of choice, since you could get open source DRI drivers for its cards. However, the last one (I believe) that had open-source 3d support is the Radeon 9200.

The binary-only drivers that many companies put out for these cards do work well enough for most users. This means that the companies are seen as "supporting Linux", and even many Linux users don't think there is a point in pushing them to allow open-source drivers.

(Plus, the legal environment has changed. It's more dangerous now to reverse engineer than it used to be, *and* Linux is high-profile enough that you're probably more likely to get sued for doing it, and that suit is more likely to suceed.)

-Rob

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