Binary-only drivers
Binary-only drivers
Posted Dec 3, 2004 1:38 UTC (Fri) by ladislav (guest, #247)In reply to: Binary-only drivers by harisri
Parent article: Debian on AMD64
Actually, the writer of this article doesn't use the binary NVIDIA driver either. If you look at the machine specs, you will notice that the graphics card is a lot older and perhaps underpowered compared to the rest of the system. Besides, I am not a gamer, so I don't have much use for 3D acceleration and other such features and the "nv" driver in XFree86 is perfectly adequate for my needs.
That said, wouldn't you find it strange if the article pretended that binary-only applications for Linux don't exist? You might not want to use them, but there are many people who do, so it seemed rather logical to mention them, especially because of platform-specific issues. Besides, these applications give an interesting indication about the state of the AMD64 computing - for example NVIDIA makes 64-bit binary drivers, but others don't (a recent post on the Opera forums by an Opera representative seemingly rejected the platform althogether as not really interesting in terms of numbers). So just because you stubbornly refuse to install any non-free application on your system, I don't think you can reasonably expect others to do the same.
While on this subject, let me pick your brain. Let's say I'd want to replace my existing graphics card with a different one that doesn't rely on binary drivers. Which card would you recommend? Thank you for your advice.
Posted Dec 3, 2004 5:24 UTC (Fri)
by dberkholz (guest, #23346)
[Link]
Posted Dec 3, 2004 10:46 UTC (Fri)
by harisri (guest, #4662)
[Link]
As for a good 3D capable card with open source driver, any ATI Radeon up to 9200 is a good choice. I am using ATI 7000 myself, and I have been very happy with it, though I am considering a 9200 SE when the current one fails :).
For more information please refer to: http://dri.sf.net
Thank you and good luck!
PS: It is such a shame that ATI have not published the specs for Radeon 9[5678]00 cards (or newer) so that open source DRI drivers could be produced. Hopefully they soon will.
ATI FireGL 8800, or as a cheaper alternative, the Radeon 8500.Binary-only drivers
While I may agree to Binary Only on user-space, not on kernel-space. I have been reading LKML for quite many years to understand it is taboo as far Kernel developers are concerned, and I will have to agree with them.Binary-only drivers
Hari.