[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500

[Brian Wood]

On Apr 17, 2006, at 9:46 PM, Jeff Simpson wrote:

>> The maintainer of the USB subsystem has served notice that the  
>> next major
>> kernel release will not allow non-GPLed USB driver code.  Although  
>> I do not
>> keep a very close eye on LKML, I do not recall seeing any  
>> objections from
>> Linus.
>>
>> See http://news.com.com/New+Linux+look+fuels+old+debate/ 
>> 2100-7344_3-6061491.html?tag=nl
>>
>> I have a sneaky feeling that the days of non-GPLed video card  
>> binary blobs
>> are numbered.  That's just a personal hunch of mine, and I haven't  
>> really
>> seen anything to indicate anything of this sort coming down the pike.
>
> This scares me. I don't think linux is *quite* to the point where it
> is big enough to bully the hardware manufacturers into doing what we
> want. If linux says "no more non-gpl kernel drivers", the big hardware
> manufacturers will just stop making them, they aren't going to just
> throw in the towel and say "you win, here's all our code opened for
> you". We'll be stuck making do with less-than-perfect drivers for a
> long time before we get up to the state we're already at now, and
> forget keeping up with kernel changes.

I still think that little "oops" on RedHat's part was just "testing  
the waters", and they got reamed.

Part of "free" is that I can load non-free drivers if I want to.

I gave it a real try. I wanted to run several real bona-fide open- 
source programs on my Linux system, but none of the available open- 
source video drivers would do it. I spent at least 15 - 20 hours in  
trying to get it to work, then I loaded nVidia's drivers. I do not  
feel that I have done wrong by anyone by doing this, perhaps if I had  
not even tried the free drivers, but that is not the case.

>
>> That same CNET article, on page 2, states that Intel is planning  
>> to put out
>> an "open-source"[1] driver for their graphics chipsets.  Once that  
>> happens,
>> I think there's a decent possibility of a push to drop support for  
>> non-GPLed
>> video card binary blobs.  Both Nvidia and ATI have been leeching  
>> off the
>> Linux community for a long time, and people don't like it.
>
> I'd like to see it, too. I love the idea of open source, I just don't
> think that closed-source should be as negative. They are making
> drivers, the drivers are working. If the drivers sucked, I can see why
> people would want to have open-source, but the drivers work great.
>

Well the binary drivers do have problems, but then so do the Windows  
versions of them. The real problem is trying to figure out if you  
have a hardware problem, a problem with your program or a video  
driver problem. nVidia's docs are full of helpful pointers like "if  
your system is unstable it might be an AGP problem" or "use whichever  
AGP drivers works for you (AGPGART or nVidia)". That's not what I  
would call "support". Their suggestion to disable AGP completely if  
you have stability problems seemed a bit harsh as well :-)

But it's the best we have, what else can we do? Like I said, point me  
to an open-source solution that works and I will order whatever  
hardware it takes immediately.