On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 12:02, Bjorn Tore Sund wrote:
On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Bob Fischer wrote:
I already asked ATI two months ago about 64bit drivers. I was not deemed worthy to receive an answer. However, I agree with other posters of this thread: The more people ask for this drivers the better. Myself, I did the logical thing. I bought an Nvidia 5900XT instead :-) Nvidia supports Linux nicely and we can vote with our wallet...
I had the same experience as well. NVidia makes great cards, why worry about Radeon?
If I end up going for Opteron workstations I'll probably be buying 15 or so as a start. I have learned the hard way NOT to try and remote administer other people's workstations with NVIDIA cards, the driver compiling after a kernel or xfree86 upgrade is just too much of a pain.
Aack! I haven't (yet) tried to install my NVidia 3-D drivers. They at least claim to have made installation "painless" --- but I'll have to wait and see on that one. If 15 workstations are all the same, is there any way you can re-build the kernel on one of them and then rsync to the other 15? Do ANY graphics card vendors offer painless 3-D support that doesn't require you to recompile the kernel? AFAIK, if you want to use your 3-D accelerator, your only choice these days is to recompile your kernel. I don't think that any graphics vendor has supplied open drivers that can be included with a standard Linux distro. I think this is a real problem with Linux in general, due to its lack of a microkernel. Unless we all switch to the GNU HURD, I suppose we're all stuck with it for now. Someone should make a "painless" way to reconfigure and recompile the kernel. A little bit of YaST effort could make it all point-and-click, and the user wouldn't even know a "compiler" is being used. Then recompiling the kernel would no longer be "for hackers only". This YaST module would: 1. Install any RPMs needed (kernel sources, gcc, etc) 2. Run the equivalent of menuconfig --- or allow a "plug-in" to help you reconfigure the kernel. There should be a standard way to publish a "driver", i.e. kernel patch, that YaST understands and incorporates into the kernel. Only "expert" users should have to run the equivalent of menuconfig. 3. Compile the kernel and modules (while providing a "please wait..." thermometor bar) 4. Install the new kernel as an additional option in GRUB. In my experience, Radeon cards barely work without their special driver. I mean, I don't get 1280x1024 with 24-bit color. My nVidia card at least gives me that functionality out of the box. -- Bob