Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:27:13 +1100 | From | Nick Piggin <> | Subject | Re: Announce: ndiswrapper |
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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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