DVI output, ATI or nVidia

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 07:08:34AM +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> Luciano Rocha wrote:
> > You're comparing apples to oranges. On one hand, you have people
> > complaining that a vendor refuses to give full documentation for a piece
> > of hardware the user bought and wants to use.
> 
> So, it is a bad thing for a hardware maker not to give away its trade
> secrets.  Right?

If only that were true... NVidia has stated plenty times that they don't
make many parts of the cards (which leads me to think they're crapware
producers) as the reason for not publishing.

Besides, the biggest trade secret might be that many things are done in
software at the main CPU instead of the GPU. Who knows... maybe you're
eating a cat while wondering what a nice rabbit stew NVidia allowed you
to use.

> > You won't have people complaining that VMware Server isn't OSS. They can
> > use qemu, bochs, xen, whatever. The drive images format is relatively
> > known, so you can use them with some of the other systems.
> 
> IMO, qemu, bochs, xen, and whatever are just not as easy to use.

plonk... any user who uses virtualization shouldn't be so technically
challenged as to think qemu is hard at all to use...

> Of course you are not locked into nVidia either.  Don't like their policy,
> don't buy their hardware.  Sounds simple enough to me.

Tell that to laptop owners who unknowingly bought it thinking it was
supported thanks to illuminated comments like yours :)

> I guess I'm not clear on what kind of unencumbered hardware documentation
> you want nVidia to supply.  Care to elaborate?  Or, maybe point to the
> equivalent documentation that Intel provides on their video hardware.

I don't know enough about GPUs to say what's enough, but if you compare
Intels behaviour with that of NVidia with such dismissal... I'd say you
know even less.

> > The Nouveau project is trying to document and implement a 3d driver, see
> > http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FAQ. But the last time I tried the
> > graphics card entered an invalid state just after entering my username
> > in gdm.
> 
> Yeah, I've heard about that...but I still can't figure out why I would use a
>  free "clone" of something else that is already free and supported by the
> OEM.  Can you help me out there?

Because your definition of support is short-sighted and lasts only so
much.

My older GeForce that I got rid of isn't any longer supported by NVidia.
I wouldn't be able to use FC7 in that computer. Fortunately I bought a
fully supported ATI card, a 7200, and today lo and behold... I even get
a fast compiz there!

What about PPC people? Are they forbidden to have a graphics card
because NVidia doesn't care about them?

*sigh* This is even denser that an idiot who defends DRM.

Rui

-- 
Frink!
Today is Pungenday, the 32nd day of Confusion in the YOLD 3173
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?
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