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

[Sam Varshavchik]

Brian Wood writes:

> 
> RedHat certainly didn't help the situation by shipping a kernel that  
> would refuse to load the most widely-used driver module in the world,  
> and when they "fixed" that "mistake", they still have a system that  

It's wasn't their mistake.  This was something that went into Linus's 
kernel.  Red Hat merely shipped what came down the pike.

And, once the issue was identified, there was not really any reason to 
scramble and push the fix out right away, instead of waiting until there 
were other reasons to push out a newer kernel that backed out that change. 
It's not like this was breaking something in Fedora.

> requires you to jump through hoops to get an nVidia driver installed.  
> THEY certainly won't tell you how to do it, and they have made sure  
> that the default paths are such that nVidia's installer will not  
> work, and that the required headers are not installed by default.
> 
> This is *not* the way to encourage people to use free software.

nVidia is not free software.

And, certainly, I do not see any reason why Red Hat would want to encourage 
people to use Nvidia's warez.  In fact, their X.org maintainer has stated 
that he was wasting a lot of time because of people who run nvidia's 
installer, screw up x.org's default configuration, and begin filing bugs 
against x.org without even bothering to mention what they've done.

> Unfortunately we have the choice of FSF-unfriendly vendor A, or FSF- 
> even-more-unfriendly vendor B, and they both know it.

Correct.  And although our collective voices do not comprise any noticable 
market share, continuing to use Nvidia's and ATI's non-free software will do 
nothing to improve the state of things.  Neither Nvidia, nor ATI, have any 
reason to do anything about it as long as most people are pacified by what 
they're doing now.  If everyone stopped using Nvidia's and ATI's binary 
drivers today, I don't know what difference it would make.  But I do know 
one thing: continuing to use the binary drivers guarantees that nothing will 
change.

So, those who use Nvidia's or ATI's binary drivers have absolutely no 
standing to complain about it.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20060415/a65ddda0/attachment.pgp