the best graphicscard for FreeBSD

[Michael Nottebrock]

alex bustamante wrote:

> How many manufactures release their drivers in open source? Does Matrox
> do it?

No. In fact, Matrox was one of the pioneers in the concept of binary-only 
driver stubs with open-source interfaces (Matrox calls it HAL/hallib), which 
is now a pretty common way of providing closed source drivers for open source 
operating systems.

Getting complete open-source drivers for consumer hardware in highly 
competitive markets is more or less a question of good relations between 
open-source developers (or their employers) and hardware manufacturers - the 
money Joe Users spend on hardware for their FreeBSD PCs does not influence the 
support politics of manufacturers one bit.

The ati drivers with hardware 3d acceleration support which are found in 
XFree86/Xorg (userland part) FreeBSD/Linux (kernel DRI support) show that 
complete open source support can happen, but also are nice examples how such 
support can be very quickly discontinued once the market takes a turn.

-- 
    ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi at freebsd.org
  (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
    \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org