Graphic card that works?

[Zhihao Yuan]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 7:53 PM, Michal Varga <varga.michal at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 19:21 -0500, Zhihao Yuan wrote:
>> So you agree with that Nvidia drivers are not stable.
>
> No, I don't agree. Software has bugs. What a shocker. More news at
> eleven.
>
>
>> I agree with it
>> because my roommate has 2 boxes running Nvidia cards and their
>> official binary drivers. He suffered from the unstable video and the
>> incomplete Xcomposite supports a lot.
>
> There is no "unstable video" with Nvidia drivers. There is completely
> horribly totally locking video (along with the rest of the computer),
> IF:
>
> 1. you run VDPAU acceleration -->
> 2. you run it through metacity compositor (as far as I know, KDE
> compositor doesn't produce this effect, but I'm not a KDE user and I
> have no idea what they use, and how much and when does it apply). Some
> other compositors might trigger the same bug, I don't know. Metacity
> definitely does.
>
> This is a known issue. Software has bugs. If you hate it that much at
> this somewhat late hour, you're always free to write a better one, I
> guess.
>
> Or, as a workaround, you can turn off the (almost close to pointless)
> compositor until that specific issue gets solved. I did the latter and
> never lost my sleep because of it.
>

So this time, you not just agree with that Nvidia drivers are not
stable, you agree with that you can do nothing with the driver,
because you have no source code. You can only cut of your compositer,
and wait Nvidia's mercy updates. They may fix this in next version, or
may not. You already surrendered.

>
>> > There is only one graphics card manufacturer that actually PRODUCES
>> > drivers for FreeBSD. That is Nvidia.
>>
>> Yes, and no. Nvidia provides closed source drivers only, and never
>> helps open source drivers.
>
> Doesn't matter. Nvidia doesn't produce OPEN HARDWARE and I don't care
> for OPEN SOFTWARE from them for as long as they provide perfectly
> working drivers for my OS. This is situation I'm ok with for as long as
> all my Nvidia hardware works.

So you just turned compositer off when you meet problems. "I don't see
it, so there is nothing.". Yea.

>
> Guess what. All my Nvidia hardware works, so far. And that "so far"
> stands for like "the last decade".
>

My roommate what to tell you:
1. His mplayer can not resume after pause (WTH?); he needs to seek
somewhere else and seek back;
2. In a previous version of Nvidia driver, system crashes whenever you
fullscreen something. How benevolent Nvidia is! They fixed it in v270.

>
>>  As what you have agreed with: when their
>> drivers are not stable, or even their drivers introduce security
>> problems, you can do nothing. You have no choice but be at their
>> mercy.
>
> Sorry, this has nothing to do with working or non working Nvidia
> drivers. I'm not into politics. And I'm at nobody's mercy, as I'm
> already perfectly capable of voting with my money. I buy Nvidia products
> because of their superb driver support under FreeBSD and because they
> work. When they stop, I might move to S3 ViRGE. I have my choices and I
> opted for the best currently available, I see no problem with that.
>

You can have choice, but without extensive statistics, you can not
prove "Nvidia produce good drivers" to anybody, especially to our
FreeBSD users.

>
>> But AMD/ATI supports the development of the open source drivers.
>
> Please.
>
>>  Now
>> xf86-video-ati driver supports full 2D acceleration, xrander,
>> anti-tears, KMS, basic 3D acceleration...
>
> Oh god please. Tell me you're trolling or that you've never actually ran
> anything under xf86-video-ati. You can't be serious.

Of course I use it. My production system runs ATI Mobility X1600. I
watch smoothy anti-tears 1080p video, play Urbanterror, enjoy
compositer, switch screen mode with xrander when I go out for
presentation. How about you?

>
>
>> what Nvidia has? Unstable vdpau?
>
> VDPAU is perfectly stable, thank you. Tens of thousands of people
> (hundreds? stats anyone?) are using it daily. I'm using it daily, and
> pretty heavily to that.

You mean... mplayer locks for 2 mins after played 5 videos can be
called "perfectly stable"?

>
>
>> And also, when we meet problems, we can check ATI documents and
>> modify the source code.
>
> (This is... Ok, I'm not saying anything again as I simply can't believe
> you're serious...)

I'm serious. The reason that I'm maintaining ports for FreeBSD is that
I found a problem in xf86-video-ati port and I feel sorry that I did
not respond to the call of testing before the port got committed.

>
>
>> Just compare the quality of xf86-video-ati and
>> xf86-video-nouveau, and you will know which cards are better choice.
>
> I don't care for nouveau. Except for like three people in this world
> (and all three of them on Linux where nouveau actually works), nobody
> does. The talk was about Nvidia drivers and there is one kind of Nvidia
> drivers - the ones produced by Nvidia.

Ubuntu uses nouveau by default. BSDs communities are porting KMS. Want
some more instances?

>
>
>> No. They are not supporting FreeBSD. They are weakening and destroying
>> the philosophy of FreeBSD and Open Source communities with their
>> unstable, buggy, and insecure favors.
>
> Hallelujah. Have a nice day.
>
> m.
>
>
> --
> Michal Varga,
> Stonehenge (Gmail account)
>
>
>



-- 
Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
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