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1. While I’d definitely, agree that nVidia is far superior to ATI on all counts, I’ve been surprised by ATI’s newest fglrx driver (8.455.2 at this time). It seems to work really well on my T60. 3D performance is great (WoW jumped up by 20FPS from 8.40.4), suspend/resume works, Compiz works okay and a lot of long-standing bugs have been fixed. Unfortunately, there are still a few weird things that are not working and XVideo is almost completly broken (USE=”-xv” helps). However, it’s overall a wonderful improvement compared to a couple versions ago which couldn’t even run a display over 1280×1024.
   
   Also, the open-source drivers for ATI cards are getting better by the hour it seems. Almost every card ATI has ever made is close to fully supported under some flavor of driver due to ATI’s recent specification release. Once ATI releases the 3D specs, ATI cards could have full 3D open-source drivers in a matter of weeks.
   
   If you think about it, if ATI gives up their 3D specs, there will be a very powerful open-source video card available for Linux. Makes me wonder what will happen to nVidia. I mean, look what happened to Intel when they released their drivers. Their install rate soared because Linux users would generally rather have OSS than power. Imagine if they could have both.

   Comment by BioHazard — February 21, 2008 #

2. OMG! Q’s ANTI-GPL! I.P. N00B!

   But now to be serious. nVidia is nice, I don’t give a crap they are binaries. I only have ATI because it comes with my thinkpad and ATI sucks for lack of better drivers. AMD should make those slaps on the wrist a bit more frequent for it, but hey, I don’t have Enemy Territory yet, so ATI ok for what it does currently. But that is all it is: “ok”. nVidia really is better, and worked WAY better on my custom-built tower when it ran Fedora than my T-60’s ATI running Ubuntu. And my Custom Tower is very underpowered in comparison to my T-60.

   Comment by Shadow — February 22, 2008 #

3. What drivers are you running on your T60? fglrx 8.455.2 is wicked fast and quite stable. Suspend even works! Doom3 and Quake4 never dip below 40FPS at 1024×768 HQ.
   
   You may still be on 8.40.4 which is the generally considered “stable” version. It’s even more stable, but it’s really, really slow.
   
   Comparing your laptop to your desktop isn’t really fair. Try running you desktop on battery at full bore for 2 hours. :p

   Comment by BioHazard — February 22, 2008 #

4. Heck if I know what driver it is. LOL I haven’t actually seen the driver list in a while so I have no idea where to look to find out.

   Comment by Shadow — February 22, 2008 #

5. RMS is twitching as I say this, but I just want it to work. None of this “it’s not open source so it sucks” mantra. I like the concepts of open source, but really, it’s not going to make me loose sleep. I got the 169.09-r1 nvidia drivers, and I’m set.

   Comment by QBasicer — February 23, 2008 #

6. Wondered when you’d show up again, Q. I thought for sure we scarred you off with all the activity here.

   But there are other propritary software pieces that you can easily have sleep lost over. Malfunctioning software is a great example of this, not to mention one piece of it is the carrier of a large and legal trojan horse in computers everywhere. If you think that’s inaccurate, give this post a read.

   NOTE: This is NOT geared AT or TOWARD the reader. While I say “you” in the example, it is really the perspective of whoever is purchasing the software from a completely legal malware distributer (I call it malware due to the bad practices the company can and does exercise with their software. And while it is apparently not illegal, in the truest sense, it is still malicious toward the end user, and even caused some machines to corrupt becuase of the arrogance the company had in doing what they thought they were entitled to do, and yet continues to do so even now.).

   So some company makes proprietary software, which is somewhat malicious (Having a Trojan Horse ability built right in is generally cause for worry in some.). They market it as something else, though. But even their marketing is arguably close to viral. How is marketing like a virus? Using the accompanying hype to infect your mind to condition it to thinking proprietary software is a good thing by supporting itself with with clever marketing campaigns that are varied. You’re probably thinking that its not at all like a viral program, just good marketing. This is how it is very much like a virus: Viruses can cause anti-virus programs to accept something bad as safe, and the company here is assuring you that their Proprietary Software is nothing like a piece of malware, but it is not really unlike that of a trojan horse as explained further below. But is the marketing truely Viral? Not really. Do the company give you a virus? Maybe if a rep has a cold, but otherwise, it’s more like a Trojan Horse. Do they somehow forcefully destroy your current computer setup and force you to install their software? No! Is there a resemblence slight resemblence to a virus in their marketing campaign? Somewhat. Let’s move on.

   So you mistakenly buy the software thinking it to be a good idea when it suddenly everything becomes like a worm, Embedding itself in and spreading from you to all of your computers and servers, embeded devices, and in some cases, gaming console and game collections, thus making a company that you will use rather exclusively. You take their every word that the alternatives can’t do what you want or need, or they wouldn’t have been the only option you chose to go with. Then you proceed to spread the product’s hold by word of mouth recomendations, infecting your friends and family, and their friends and family, etc. by telling them how good the product is and so on.
   (Closer still, but even now, it’s still not a true worm. But look at how close the analogy is. Worms ingrain themselves into computers, making them difficult to remove. If the user is conditioned to using one thing so that making a change is very difficult, that could be considered worm-like. Worms also spread like a virus on steroids. In this case, the products are gaining popularity and still not deemed harmful in anyway, so they are flying onto machines that you and others you know use, and imbeding themselves there, to the extent that it is unlikely they will ever be removed. That is how it is similar, yet it still isn’t a worm.)

   Finally, after a while of being around, the Trojan Horse factor comes into play here. One day, on the unsuspecting users, the product proceeds to phone home to corporate servers for special ‘update’ sessions that will occur even if you took measures at an earlier time to prevent it. You won’t even know it happened until either your PC is corrupted or until you look at activity logs. (In THAT regard, I just showed that even an entire software function to be like a Trojan Horse, if not exactly that. Explaining a bit more. A Trojan Horse sneaks in pretending to be one file or program, yet phones home to the entity that created it in secret to give access to your machine, no matter what form, even when you explicitly forbid the program/file/operating system/company to have such control, whether by turning off communication features or by other means. So if that’s not a Trojan Horse, the anti-virus companies need to update their defination and re-classify what one truely is.)

   But it being their product, it can do whatever they want it to do, and you don’t own it in any way, despite the money you paid for it. You even agreed to this madness when you opted to continue after reading the License Agreement and installed your software. In summary:

   Proprietary software: Don’t believe the hype!

   Comment by Shadow — February 23, 2008 #

7. Super-long post hits foe BioHazard for 538!
   
   Critical hit +269!
   
   BioHazard fainted.

   Comment by BioHazard — February 25, 2008 #

8. You can’t faint! You just leveled up! Congratulations, BTW. I understand SOMEONE is supposedly having a better day today than I will be. Wish I could be there to get recordings for posterity.

   Comment by Shadow — February 25, 2008 #

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