Joe Landman wrote: > Geoff Jacobs wrote: > >> No nvidia for me unless they open up driver specs. Open drivers have a >> history of being very, very stable if not as fast. Nvidia does have good >> drivers, but I have definitely seen them experience problems. > > Silicon Image SATA drivers are great examples of open drivers that have > been (in the past) terrible. The tg3 drivers have been very bad (start > sending lots of packets and watch your CSW climb and climb and climb). > Forcedeth are still terrible, and are open. The nv driver in X often > breaks on newer hardware (the laptop I type this on is a testament to > this problem). There is no magic bullet :)
I was referring specifically to graphics drivers. Sorry. I'm surprised the nv driver has problems, as it is contributed to by NVidia. > No, open-ness doesn't equate to good-ness. Open-ness equates to > portability, ability to hunt for problems on your own and correct them > if need be. I find that open-ness tends to allow better integration (less problems when switching between kernel framebuffer and X, for example). As well, I don't like the idea of having hardware orphaned because it just got EOLed and NVidia or ATI is not going to support it in future driver releases. > For the platforms I have used them on the nVidia drivers (the closed > source ones) have been *fantastic* in performance, compatibility, and so > forth. I have not (ever) had a good experience with ATI graphics > drivers ... so much so that I conciously avoid buying their products > (which is hard in the laptop space, as nVidia doesn't have as many > design wins). I don't use the ATI closed source drivers on Linux. > This said, one area we would have liked to have seen open nVidia drivers > is on our Itanium2 box. Yeah, it is a relic in the making, and no, I > don't blame nVidia for dropping support for it. It would be nice to be > able to see graphics on it though ... well ... accelerated graphics > (there is a nice Quadro FX 1100 in there now). Oh well (move that card > somewhere else). I wouldn't blame them either -- it's a reality of business. Still, it sucks from the users perspective. > Just my $0.01 (used to be $0.02, but the dollar is dropping in value). -- Geoffrey D. Jacobs _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
