On 2024-08-30 23:31, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 8/30/24 8:12 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On the other hand, I have an old computer with an old NVidia card which has been dropped support by NVidia, meaning the proprietary driver will not work at all, and Nouveau works "more or less".
They will work -- it just takes putting them together. Now your point is perfectly valid - unless somebody patches and builds the package for the old nvidia card -- they do not work. But, my point is that nvidia still supplies the binary blob to enable those cards to work. You can simply download it.
By contrast, AMD does NOT provide any way to make the older cards work with fglrx -- period. No here's the old driver, you make it work -- no nothing.
Yes, but AMD changed policy. It no longer happens. Now the driver is open sourced and comes with the distribution without downloading any external driver. There are proprietary drivers, but I do not need them. 3D games work. On the other hand, my old nvidia card no longer works with the proprietary nvidia driver. One day it stopped being supported. And without the proprietary driver, things like games do not work.
It is funny to look back at these issues and marvel at how much time has gone by. The fglrx issue was probably somewhere around 2005-2007 just as compiz was hitting mainstream. To think that nearly two-decades have gone by, my kids that enjoyed the Tux Potatohead game are now all grown and out of the house.
Time really does fly...
-- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.5 x86_64 at Telcontar)