On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 10:52:38AM +0200, Ez-Aton wrote: > On Saturday 03 January 2004 10:09, Shlomi Fish wrote: > > Hetz: thanks for the info. As for the version of the driver, it may be > > stable for you, but I'm not sure it would be stable for me. So I'll ask > > at the forums, IRC channel, etc. > > > > The rest of the crowd: the Nvidia card came prepackaged with the computer, > > and I can't talk my father into replacing without a good enough reason. > > (he uses Windows there most of the time). So, switching to ATI is not an > > option. > > > > The reason I believe the current situation with Nvidia cards is > > sub-optimal is because: > > > > 1. I need to explictly download and build it whenever I upgrade the kernel > > (and possibly X as well). Mandrake does not ship it with their distro so > > they won't taint their distribution with a proprietary binary-only driver. > > Yep. They try to make it user-friendly as much as possible. Closed, and yet, > easy to install. You just run the installer, and it compiles what needs to be > compiled for you.
As shlomi wrote in the post: it is not user friendly. They don't play well with the standard methods in linux distros. > > > > 2. It cannot be made part of the kernel because of its nature, so > > upgrading a kernel is always a two step process. > > Upgrading a kernel is always more then two steps, anyhow. Besides checking > that everything works. Upgrading NVidia's driver does not require > re-configuration of X. Two-step process. right: 1. rpm -ivh new_kernel_package 2. reboot Only after the reboot X might not work. > > > > > 3. It causes some problems. Like this one, or one on my previous computer > > where the X server completely freezed occasionally while the computer was > > working. Why should it? A Linux machine should work flawlessly > > Usually the reason has to do with hardware competablility, and hardware > inter-communication. Usually it's about the AGP. > A tip (which solved a similar problem for me) - Add /etc/modules.conf: > options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1 > It might solve the problem. It will avoid using NVidia's AGP driver, and use > the kernel's AGP. Why do they use their own AGP code? What inpact does this have on performance? > > > > > 4. It "taints" the kernel and possibly make isolating problems a two-part > > process (removing the driver and then testing the untainted kernel). > > > > So, Nvidia Corp. has done a nice gesture to the i386 Linux users, but > > hasn't done enough. Linux "compatibility" is not enough. You still have to > > play by the rules of open-source. > > Some do, some don't. Under the condition, they try to be as accessible as > possible for the huge veriaty of distributions. Not many closed-source > vendors are, or even bother trying... But it's not good enough. Maybe there's nothing better, but this is certainly sub-optimal. BTW: I have an nvidia adapter in my computer. I decided I won't bother with nvidia's drivers, and simply use the built-in ones. Hurts perormance, but increases stability and reduces the level of pain. -- Tzafrir Cohen +---------------------------+ http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +---------------------------+ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
