GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Ani Joshi wrote:

> So all the people with GeForce's in macs should have to buy ATI cards?
> That is a subpar solution, and ridiculous in my mind.

I don't disagree, but consider the fact that we're dealing with a company
that ran the source-only driver for their boards (that they released to
XFree86 some time back) through a C preprocessor to prevent people from
figuring out how their hardware works. They're very possessive about their
intellectual property, and will go out of their way (to what IMO are
ridiculous lengths) to prevent anyone else from supporting their gear,
even if they're not interested in doing so.

> That means nothing.  It doesn't mean they will not help us get things
> going on macs.  I have a few contacts at nVidia and they have helped  a
> LOT recently with the support so far, so if they didn't care at all then
> we wouldnt be as far as we are now.

Even Mark V. isn't overly optimistic about getting the necessary info out
of nVidia to the people who need it to support DVI displays with nVidia
boards on Linux (he is trying tho, and I thank him for that).

> Just because it isn't working today, doesn't mean it won't work tomorrow.
> ATI never helped before, and after R128 they decided to really help, is
> that to say we should have given up after mach64?

All a matter of if anyone is interested in expending the effort trying to
develop support for their hardware. I don't think the Linux community
should just give up when we run into something difficult to do, but in
some ways, we should try to support those who support us. nVidia is making
some efforts, but unless they can loosen their death grip on specs for
their hardware, it's very difficult to support it, and there aren't enough
hours in a day to release binary drivers for every open-source OS on every
platform.

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
dpates at dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN


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