Nah, that's fine. Of course, that still leaves me with the option of either Composite or DRI, never both together, as I have on my, now 5 year old computer with an equally elderly graphics card.
I was just adding that bit in for kicks. Justin On 7/1/05, Rafael Dantas de Castro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 7/1/05, Justin Hart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > To counter this argument, I would point out that I don't normally > > purchase used 3D acceleration hardware, and that by the time these > > cards are "old" they will also be "obsolete," meaning that you will > > have sunk a good amount of money into hardware that didn't work > > properly for you until it was outdated. > > > > nVidia's drivers, on the other hand, have worked with brand new > > hardware since I owned a Riva TNT (1998). They continue to work. > > Anybody with a new ATI card, however, has to choose a manner in which > > they are going to cripple X.Org. Do you want composite or DRI? > > Before, the choice wasn't even an option. Also, fglrxconfig output > > bad xorg.conf files last I checked, because I had to hand-tune mine to > > get the server working. > > Obviously we´d all like to have our systems up and running as easily > as possible, but I don´t think that "having to hand-tune" anything > should be counted as a problem by any of us here... we use Gentoo > after all, don´t we? ;-) > > > > > > Justin > > > > On 7/1/05, Jens Mayer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > * On Friday 01 July 2005 01:49, Justin Hart wrote: > > > > Buying an ATI card for a Linux box is not a good decision. Go with > > > > nVidia, at least their drivers work. I've thought of buying an nVidia > > > > card for this notebook for months because, frankly, ATI hasn't been > > > > taking care of the matter, and won't in the forseeable future. > > > > > > There's two sides to every story. It is true that nVidia's drivers are > > > ahead > > > of ATI's counterpart, especially on desktop computers. They seem to be > > > much > > > more stable and mature, even while adding new features more quickly, i.e. > > > support for Xorg's render and composite extensions. > > > > > > The situation concerning notebook-specific features is a bit like playing > > > roulette. Most people want to use suspend to disk or suspend to RAM on > > > their > > > quite expensive laptops, and it's both drivers who often fail miserably in > > > that case, whether they are from nVidia or ATI. There are known > > > workarounds > > > which might or might not get the stuff working, the chance of failure is > > > high, depending on numerous other things like the driver for your > > > framebuffered console and so on... Guess what? The open source drivers > > > usually work, but do not offer 3D acceleration in many (ATI) or all > > > (nVidia) > > > cases. > > > > > > Which brings us to another important point: Contrary to nVidia's > > > practice, ATI > > > gives the specifications of older cards to the developer community. That's > > > why there is an open source alternative for ATI's cards up to and includig > > > the Radeon 9200 with working 3D acceleration support, and that's simply > > > why > > > there is no real open source alternative for nVidia cards if you want to > > > use > > > 3D applications on your box. > > > > > > Not that important? Well, while the ATI Mobility FireGL T2 in my IBM > > > laptop is > > > not yet supported by open source drivers, it certainly will be in the > > > future. > > > I wonder who's first in offering a 3D accelerated driver really supporting > > > suspend to disk on my laptop: ATI or the guys from r300.sf.net. ;-) > > > > > > Now vice versa: The Geforce2 GTS in my desktop is quite ancient, but was > > > good > > > enough to play around with Xorg's composite and render extensions to get > > > some > > > solid eyecandy. Guess what? nVidia decided to not support those cards > > > anymore, they now just get the most important bugfixes via some (yet to > > > come) > > > "legacy drivers". Now that means a very little chance to have the new and > > > still experimental stuff getting developed in my card's drivers in the > > > future. Open source alternatives? None. See above. > > > > > > "Buying an ATI card for a Linux box is not a good decision." is too > > > general to > > > be answered with "yes" or "no". > > > > > > Regards, > > > Jens > > > > > > -- > > > Reporter: "What would you do if you found a million dollars?" > > > Yogi Berra: "If the guy was poor, I would give it back." > > > -- > > > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > Justin W. Hart > > > > -- > > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > > > > > > -- > Rafael Dantas de Castro > Engenharia de Computação 2001 - Unicamp > - Laboratório de Criptografia Aplicada > > "Se procurar bem você acaba encontrando. > Não a explicação (duvidosa) da vida, > Mas a poesia (inexplicável) da vida." > > Carlos Drummond de Andrade > > -- > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > -- Justin W. Hart -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
