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

Jeff Simpson jeffsimpson at alum.wpi.edu
Tue Apr 18 17:08:22 UTC 2006


On 4/18/06, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

Looks like this discussion is also on slashdot as of this morning:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/18/122246

 - Jeff


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