Could tthere be an update iso distribution

[Mike A. Harris]

Klaasjan Brand wrote:
> )
> 
> On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 14:30 +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> 
>>but that's not different from before where nvidia had to put a small
>>workaround in. This time it's the same, ok it's maybe not entirely their
>>fault this time but still. I suspect they have that small workaround
>>there in days if not a week or two.
>>
>>And besides... what will happen if the nvidia driver just stops working
>>entirely without workaround in the future? At least this time it is
>>easy.
> 
> 
> Maybe at last someone will reverse engineer the nvidia hardware and
> build an open source driver? :)
> 
> Could be an interesting experiment though...

That's already happened.  The open source BeOS nvidia driver has
3D support for current generation Nvidia hardware, or at least
a generation old hardware if I recall correctly.  A sufficiently
motivated individual could use the BeOS code as an example, and
port it to the DRI infrastructure and X.

That would most likely be a terribly complicated project for someone
who is not experienced with X server internals, Mesa/OpenGL internals,
kernel internals, and DRI internals, but most of that is all publically
documented, or at least learnable from studying source code.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the existing DRI/Mesa/X developers
have been interested in attempting to do this, and it doesn't appear
BeOS developers are interested in undertaking the effort either.

This leaves a very interesting project to a significantly self motivated
developer or group of developers seeking open source fame.

Consider that a challenge (to anyone) I guess.




-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.