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    SubjectRe: Announce: ndiswrapper


    William Lee Irwin III wrote:

    >William Lee Irwin III wrote:
    >
    >>>I'm not convinced it is good for end users. They _think_ they're
    >>>getting something that's supported by Linux, but are instead getting
    >>>something highly problematic that ties them to specific kernel
    >>>versions and cuts off most, if not all, avenues of support available.
    >>>
    >
    >On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 03:59:46PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
    >
    >>Well what they get is hardware accelerated 3d graphics under Linux.
    >>If they didn't need 3d, they can use the open source drivers.
    >>If someone downloads and installs the drivers themselves, they should
    >>know enough to contact nvidia for support (I think nvidia have been
    >>pretty good). Others will contact their ditro support.
    >>
    >
    >"cuts off most, if not all, avenues of support available" == any and
    >all problems with the things around are untraceable. We won't touch
    >tainted bugreports and rightly so. And nvidia isn't supporting the
    >whole kernel.
    >
    >

    I guess they're tracable for nvidia. I'm not aware of how nvidia
    Linux development works. I assumed from the lack of bug reports that
    they had done something about it. I concede that bad support from
    a vendor might cause a bad perception of Linux.

    >
    >On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 03:59:46PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
    >
    >>There might be a problem where they percieve that Linux is unstable
    >>while it is actually binary drivers.
    >>
    >
    >Yes, that's one I'm very concerned about.
    >

    Bad problem.

    >
    >
    >William Lee Irwin III wrote:
    >
    >>>It's very much a second-class flavor of open source. They dare not
    >>>change the kernel version lest the binary-only trainwreck explode.
    >>>They dare not run with the whiz-bang patches going around they're
    >>>interested in lest the binary-only trainwreck explode. It may oops
    >>>in mainline, and all they can do is wait for a tech support line to
    >>>answer. Well, they're a little better than that, they have hackers
    >>>out and about, but you're still stuck waiting for a specific small
    >>>set of individuals and lose all of the "many eyes" advantages.
    >>>
    >
    >On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 03:59:46PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
    >
    >>I must say that I've been using the same nvidia drivers on my desktop
    >>system for maybe a year, and never had a crash including going through
    >>countless versions of 2.5/6. True you need to recompile the intermediate
    >>layer, but then, nobody who knows less than me will know or care about
    >>kernel versions. Their distro will upgrade kernel+drivers if needed, and
    >>presumably the distro has done some sort of testing / QA.
    >>
    >
    >They're rather sensitive to VM changes, and I've had people with
    >significantly less know-how than either of us come back after trying VM
    >patches in combination with nvidia stuff report things ranging from
    >oopsen, to reboots, to fs corruption. The insulation layers are only
    >partially effective at best. And end-users are fiddling with whiz bang
    >patches for their kernels and upgrading versions by means other than
    >distros. Heck, the distros aren't even shipping 2.6, and they're
    >running 2.6 plus patches.
    >

    I didn't mean that in an elitist way (you shouldn't be compiling
    kernels unless you are taller than the sign) - I just mean the knowledge
    required to recompile the kernel and nvidia drivers. And the people
    with that know how should generally know that the binary modules
    can be unstable. Again I concede this won't always be the case.


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