Am Samstag, 13. Mai 2006 21:04 schrieb Mark Hellman:
You're wrong. Suse Linux never came with binary Nvidia and/or ATI drivers. You always had to dowload them. There is _no_ change here.
I am not wrong (at least in the case of NVidia). On previous versions, a user could download and automatically install the Nvidia driver just by selecting a check box in YaST Online Update.
This was always the case. You always needed kernel-source to recompile the kernel modules after an update.
Actually, if a user installed the NVidia driver using the above method (YOU), a manual recompilation of the driver was NOT necessary. Read the first paragraph of the following How-To: http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html#3
The same happened with Smartlink and AVM binary drivers. Please do your homework before posting. AVM drivers were removed, yes. But smartlink drivers are still there.
But now, you have the possibility to build a proper kmp module, which might work also after a kernel update.
The only certain things so far are: - The NVidia driver is more difficult to install in 10.1 than on 10.0.
Perhaps. But now you at least know, what you are doing. It's more Linux-like, not Windows-like :-)
- A sysadmin has much more trouble managing workstations and servers (yes, servers too) because after each kernel security update he needs to recompile binary drivers that before he didn't need to worry about. Running binary drivers from ATI or Nvidia on servers seems a bad idea for me. But I guess we do not have the same definition of server.
- Lots of users will believe their laptop's modems don't work on Linux, even though their are Smartlink based. On previous SuSE versions the Smartlink driver was automatically installed and configured. See above.
I can't see any advantage for users in this Novell decision. If somebody can find one advantage, please show me. You mentioned Smartlink. They put the driver from kernel to userspace. So it already was a succesful decision in one case.
Of course you are right, that in 10.1 there is no advantage for _users_. But the whole story is more about the work of the kernel developers, debugging closed source drivers instead of writing open source ones etc. -- Üdvözlettel -- Mit freundlichen Grüssen, Marcel Hilzinger