On 02/06/06, Fergus Wilde
On Thursday 01 June 2006 14:24, Bruce Marshall wrote:
On Thursday 01 June 2006 09:07, Kevanf1 wrote:
Does it have to be a reverse engineered Nvidia driver? It's a genuine question, I'm not trying to be arsy here. I really don't know enough on this subject so please forgive me if I ask (what to others would be) a blatantly obvious question. We have plenty of other drivers doing the same job as proprietary software that has not been reverse engineered...or do we?
Well, a graphics card or any other piece of hardware can be a pretty complex thing.... registers to load, instruction sets, etc. How does one find out all that information without doing some reverse engineering....? If the vendor doesn't want to part with that information.... a graphics card is just a piece of junk.
Don't buy from that vendor then. Buy from someone a bit more co-operative, write to the original company telling them you're not buying their kit and why.
This is exactly what I do :-) I made the mistake of purchasing a Canon LiDE 50 scanner a couple of years ago. At that time I was 100% Microsoft (I had dallied with Linux for years but never had a fully productive system). Had I been using Linux properly at the time I would not have purchased this particular scanner and I have written and told Canon this. I have repeatedly badgered them into providing Linux drivers for all their products. However, it needs everyone to do this. Nowadays I always do my research into hardware. If it does not run under Linux I don't buy it and I let the manufacturer know that they have lost a sale. Again, I hope I am not a lone voice shouting into the wind. Now, do I have this straight? We can have drivers that load into Linux (userspace) but are quite separate from the kernel? If this is the case then I'm all for it. For one thing not related to the legal aspects it keeps the kernel smaller surely? -- ============================================== I am only human, please forgive me if I make a mistake it is not deliberate. ============================================== PLEASE DON'T drink and drive it's not clever, it's just stupid. Kevan Farmer Linux user #373362 Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com