Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29

> Finally, the X server has been pretty pathetic about video driver
selection; in Windows there are often fallbacks so that if one driver
can't be loaded something else is, so that you at least get SOME display.
X? zip. nothing. Just a console. nVidia's fault? hardly.

The console /is/ the fallback, in that case. It's the ultimate "safe
mode".

Meanwhile, I agree with Seyman, no need to blame nVidia for the kernel
policy, when they could simply release decent specs and let the community
handle it at far less trouble than they are going to (despite nVidia) with
the nouveau driver.

FWIW, I did run the nVidia driver when I first got serious about switching
to Linux, because while I had done enough pre-buy (pre-switch) research to
know nVidia had Linux drivers and that they worked with TwinView, but I
had unfortunately NOT groked the difference (again, while doing pre-switch
research still on MS Windows) between unfreedomware Linux drivers and
freedomware Linux drivers.

It didn't take me long to figure it out tho once I switched, tho, as those
separate recompiles (I was building my own kernel before I had even chosen
my Linux mail client) got old VERY quickly, and that was the last
proprietaryware needing card I ever bought (and will ever buy, if I have
anything to say about it). I very quickly decided I did NOT dump a decade
of experience on proprietaryware just to continue to be subject to the
mastery of unfreedomware on Linux, as well. If I were to subject myself
to that, what was the point of dumping all that experience to start over
again? Not much. That one taste of freedom was all it took.

Duncan (I'll close with the quote I use as a sig on the mailing lists,
that I referred to above with that "subject to the mastery of
unfreedomware" bit.)

"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman