Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Martin Spott
Curtis L. Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I do look out for drivers _before_ I buy a card for my or my customers'
 PeeCee (currently I don't even own a PC  ;-)
 
 Is it sgi machines that you run on?

It became sort of a hobby to collect used Unix workstations. I have an
Octane with MXI graphics and TRAM as workplace at home, but this
machine (only 195 MHz) turned out not being able to keep up with recent
development. Its CPU is simply too slow and can't cope with all the
trees and buildings.
I still wonder why this brings the machine to its knees because there
are a lot of applications out there, displaying fancy stuff on such a
machine at reasonable frame rates. Maybe these applications'
characteristics are not comparable to flight simulation and the
software probaböy is specifically optimized for SGI's graphics subsystem.

I also have a HP Visualize C240 (donation from a customer) but this one
also has only 200 MHz CPU cycle. I have an RS6k with 200 MHz (per CPU,
eight of them) which won't serve, the SPARC has only 90 MHz (maximum,
depending on what CPU set I put into it). The old Motorola based
machines will be _waaay_ too slow.

I have e workplace at a customer's location with a PC where I plugged
my own graphics card which serves as temporary FlightGear testbed,

Martin.
-- 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Martin Spott
Curtis L. Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Martin Spott writes:
 Not many, but on the other hand you won't have much trouble with the
 BIOS when you think about a standalone FlightGear CD. Dealing with a
 bunch of different kernel modules for autodetecting different vendors'
 cards might prove to end in a huge mess. This _is_ very pragmatic
 thinking,

 I don't think this big mess is the fault of vendors with binary
 drivers.

Especially the mess with NVidia's drivers is the manufacturer's fault.
ATI at least _tries_ to conform with the standards proposed by the DRI.
With ATI you can copy the DRI driver module and the kernel module
(after tweaking the build script) to the appropriate places.
With NVidia (at least the last time I looked at their drivers) you have
to:

a) Unload the kernel's GART module during the autodetection and load
   NVidia's special kernel module,
b) replace the OpenGL libraries,
c) run a special X Server.

_This_ is what I'd call a huge mess. I don't like ATI's approach either
but these guys show that things could have been done at least in a
significant better way.
Yes, there was no 3D standard for Linux when 3D boards for PeeCees
became affordable. But NVidia's driver effort was very late as well.
They _would_ have had the chance to stick to DRI standards but they
simply don't have any interest into doing anything different from
their own way.

Cheers,
Martin.
-- 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Curtis L. Olson
Hi Martin,

Martin Spott writes:
 Especially the mess with NVidia's drivers is the manufacturer's fault.
 ATI at least _tries_ to conform with the standards proposed by the DRI.
 With ATI you can copy the DRI driver module and the kernel module
 (after tweaking the build script) to the appropriate places.
 With NVidia (at least the last time I looked at their drivers) you have
 to:

I will address these points, since they are mostly false and/or
misleading.

 a) Unload the kernel's GART module during the autodetection and load
NVidia's special kernel module,

Nvidia's kernel module does have an AGP driver, but it is smart enough
to not activate this portion of the driver if the linux GART module is
already there.  As far as I know it has always been this way.
Depending on your system, one or the other may work better for you
though, so the nvidia readme encourages try the other one if you
have problems with the first.  And nvidia does provide full source for
their own kernel module.

 b) replace the OpenGL libraries,

Yes this is allowed.  Unfortunately XFree86/Mesa don't (or at least
didn't) put the opengl libs where the linux standard said they should,
nvidia did.  That causes a huge mess if you have multiple opengl libs
on your system and you aren't sure which one's your app is picking up.
Like I say, this was a big mess before nvidia got involved.
Especially consider that prior to that, the only way to do opengl in a
window on linux was with a voodoo3 card.  To get this running, you
pretty much had to grab XFree86 cvs tree and build it yourself.  This
was 100x harder to get running than the approach nvidia used.

 c) run a special X Server.

Nvidia gives you a new driver (nvidia vs. nv) for your X server, but
you have never needed a special X server.

 _This_ is what I'd call a huge mess.

I will continue to assert that what nvidia was trying to plug into was
already a huge mess in terms of supporting hardware accelerated opengl
within XFree86.  This is a hard problem and many smart people were
struggling with it.  They came up with a reasonable solution, DRI, but
it just wasn't ready to go when nvidia was ready to go.

You at least have to credit nvidia for going out on a bit of a limb at
the time to even support linux.  This was *huge* for people who had
been struggling along with voodoo1,2,3 cards and were living with very
frustrating bugs in Mesa or in mesa's interface to the voodoo cards.

Suddenly along came nvidia and we were able to get fast and correct
rendering for the first time ever under linux.  This was huge!  I
personally am very greatful to nvidia for this.  They made linux a
viable 3d platform.

 I don't like ATI's approach either but these guys show that things
 could have been done at least in a significant better way.  Yes,
 there was no 3D standard for Linux when 3D boards for PeeCees became
 affordable. But NVidia's driver effort was very late as well.  They
 _would_ have had the chance to stick to DRI standards but they
 simply don't have any interest into doing anything different from
 their own way.

nvidia's effort was a *lot* earlier than ATI's.  Yes there was some
disappointment that they didn't follow the DRI standards, but I think
you can make a plausible argument that the DRI standard was not fully
fleshed out when nvidia started developing their linux drivers.

I still don't see how any of this rises to the level of causing
someone to boycott their company.

And as you say, you are running hp, sgi, and ibm machines.  I can't
imagine every byte of code on those machines is fully open source.  If
you are actually running all open source operating systems and drivers
on all these machines, then you are definitely not doing any opengl on
those machines.

Again, I see absolutely no problem with running the vendor's os, or
linux or whatever you want on those machines, but I find it a bit odd
that you are arguing so strongly for others to not run any proprietary
code or drivers, when clearly you must be doing this yourself.

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program   FlightGear Project
Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota  http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Curtis L. Olson
Martin writes:
 It became sort of a hobby to collect used Unix workstations. I have
 an Octane with MXI graphics and TRAM as workplace at home, but this
 machine (only 195 MHz) turned out not being able to keep up with
 recent development. Its CPU is simply too slow and can't cope with
 all the trees and buildings.  I still wonder why this brings the
 machine to its knees because there are a lot of applications out
 there, displaying fancy stuff on such a machine at reasonable frame
 rates. Maybe these applications' characteristics are not comparable
 to flight simulation and the software probab=F6y is specifically
 optimized for SGI's graphics subsyste= m.

 I also have a HP Visualize C240 (donation from a customer) but this
 one also has only 200 MHz CPU cycle. I have an RS6k with 200 MHz
 (per CPU, eight of them) which won't serve, the SPARC has only 90
 MHz (maximum, depending on what CPU set I put into it). The old
 Motorola based machines will be _waaay_ too slow.

Hi Martin,

So should I assume that you are running fully open-source operating
systems, and fully open-source drivers on all your own hardware?

:-)

 I have e workplace at a customer's location with a PC where I
 plugged my own graphics card which serves as temporary FlightGear
 testbed,

I would love to hear which card/drivers you are using at your
customer's location.  Are there any rendering bugs?  Any odd xserver
crashes?  What kind of performance are you getting compared to nvidia.

If you have found a rock solid, high performance, correctly rendering
open-source solution, I'm sure a lot of people would love to hear the
specific details.

For my day job I manage a research driving sim.  We run linux on all
our visual channels and are using nvidia hardware/drivers.  For this
system we can't tolerate driver crashes or rendering errors.  This
system isn't for play or hobby or expermentation, it is for doing
real, paid research so it needs to work all the time.  (To be fair,
there are many other reasons why it doesn't work all the time, but
none of them are video/3d/driver related.)

If there is a 3d card with open-source drivers that could perform as
well as nvidia in a do-or-die environment, I'd like to hear about it,
because to date, I have yet to see anything else that compares.

Regards,

CUrt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program   FlightGear Project
Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota  http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Andy Ross
Martin Spott wrote:
 a) Unload the kernel's GART module during the autodetection and load
NVidia's special kernel module,
 b) replace the OpenGL libraries,
 c) run a special X Server.

Martin, just stop this flaming; b is true.  a and c are not, and
have never been.

NVidia's drivers install themselves, they're actually significantly
easier to install than a new DRI release is (yes, I've done both many
times).  And they have a release cycle of 3-4 months or so, instead of
the 1 year you have to wait between X releases.

Yes, they're proprietary software.  But the installation quality is
actually quite good.  If you don't like proprietary software, then
just say so and leave it at that.  Don't invent problems and fan the
flames.

Andy


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Martin Spott
Curtis L. Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 a) Unload the kernel's GART module during the autodetection and load
NVidia's special kernel module,

 Nvidia's kernel module does have an AGP driver, but it is smart enough
 to not activate this portion of the driver if the linux GART module is
 already there.

As my memory serves this was not the case with early GeForce drivers
and I'm glad to hear that things changed in the meantime.

 Depending on your system, one or the other may work better for you
 though, so the nvidia readme encourages try the other one if you
 have problems with the first.  And nvidia does provide full source for
 their own kernel module.

There might be some misunderstanding here - I assume you mean the GART
part of their kernel module. They still link the 'nv-kernel.o' binary
object into their module.

 b) replace the OpenGL libraries,

 Yes this is allowed.  Unfortunately XFree86/Mesa don't (or at least
 didn't) put the opengl libs where the linux standard said they should,
 nvidia did.

I'd expect libGL in /usr/lib/ where every other Unix puts it. To my
knowledge XFree86 doesn't behave different by default - you can choose
a different location on compile time by putting a 'host.def' with:

#define NothingOutsideProjectRoot YES



 [...]  That causes a huge mess if you have multiple opengl libs
 on your system [...]

I'd try to avoid having multiple sets of the same libraries and I can
confirm that this calls for trouble by default. I've been maintaining
my own Linux 'distribution' with the compiler for nearly 10 years now
and I must admit that I spent lots of time experiencing that you get
really bad results if you compile and install a set of libraries
without proper removing the remains of the previous version  :-)

 c) run a special X Server.

 Nvidia gives you a new driver (nvidia vs. nv) for your X server, but
 you have never needed a special X server.

Good to know,

Martin.
-- 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-22 Thread Jon Stockill
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, Martin Spott wrote:

 a) Unload the kernel's GART module during the autodetection and load
NVidia's special kernel module,

Nope - it'll use kernel GART, or its own internal one.

 b) replace the OpenGL libraries,

The installer does this automatically

 c) run a special X Server.

Nope - it just installs a new xfree driver, and changes the config to
reference that (as nvidia instead of the old one as nv)

You download 1 script, and run it. That's all.

-- 
Jon Stockill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Martin Spott
Melchior FRANZ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 [...] But I don't feel like making a fgfs CD. The problems with
 licenses of different proprietary graphic cards aren't such a great
 motivation.

I tend to include OpenSource drivers only, no proprietary stuff. There
are enough cards with OpenSource drivers available that are usuable for
FlightGear - the usual DRI,

Martin.
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[Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Melchior FRANZ
* Martin Spott -- Sunday 21 December 2003 00:07:
 I tend to include OpenSource drivers only, no proprietary stuff. 

I understand, but then the whole effort is pretty useless. There are
too many nVidia card users, and no open source 3D drivers for them.

m.

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Jon Stockill
On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Melchior FRANZ wrote:

 * Martin Spott -- Sunday 21 December 2003 00:07:
  I tend to include OpenSource drivers only, no proprietary stuff.

 I understand, but then the whole effort is pretty useless. There are
 too many nVidia card users, and no open source 3D drivers for them.

And the open source drivers don't support some of the newer ATI cards.

So you're left with something which performs rather unspectacularly, or
not at all.

If we *could* include the drivers then we would have something very
useful, but without them I agree - it's rather useless.

-- 
Jon Stockill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Martin Spott
Melchior FRANZ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 * Martin Spott -- Sunday 21 December 2003 00:07:
 I tend to include OpenSource drivers only, no proprietary stuff. 

 I understand, but then the whole effort is pretty useless. There are
 too many nVidia card users, and no open source 3D drivers for them.

As you already said:

[...] The problems with licenses of different proprietary graphic
cards aren't such a great motivation.

I second that. Why shouldn't people use cards with OpenSource drivers
for a presentation of an OpenSource flight simulator ?
FlightGear developers are _that_ much careful when it's about including
other people's work. Why shouldn't they take the same care for their
graphics card drivers ?

Martin.
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Erik Hofman
Martin Spott wrote:

As you already said:

[...] The problems with licenses of different proprietary graphic
cards aren't such a great motivation.
I second that. Why shouldn't people use cards with OpenSource drivers
for a presentation of an OpenSource flight simulator ?
FlightGear developers are _that_ much careful when it's about including
other people's work. Why shouldn't they take the same care for their
graphics card drivers ?
Because the graphics card vendor might allow that (but I haven't checked 
if that's true).

Erik

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Curtis L. Olson
Martin Spott writes:
 Melchior FRANZ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  * Martin Spott -- Sunday 21 December 2003 00:07:
  I tend to include OpenSource drivers only, no proprietary stuff. 
 
  I understand, but then the whole effort is pretty useless. There are
  too many nVidia card users, and no open source 3D drivers for them.
 
 As you already said:
 
 [...] The problems with licenses of different proprietary graphic
 cards aren't such a great motivation.
 
 I second that. Why shouldn't people use cards with OpenSource drivers
 for a presentation of an OpenSource flight simulator ?
 FlightGear developers are _that_ much careful when it's about including
 other people's work. Why shouldn't they take the same care for their
 graphics card drivers ?

The problem is that the best quality, highest performance cards are
either made by nvidia and ATI with binary only drivers.  The
open-source drivers have flaws and are lower quality.  I don't mean
that as a criticism, it's just that the in-house nvidia/ati developers
have a huge advantage over the open-source developers in terms of
access to card info and assistance with problems.  These binary only
drivers are given away for free; I personally don't have a problem
with using them.  People have to work and feed their families too.
Open-source is great, and I'm proud to be part of one of the larger
open source projects out there.  But personally, I don't mind if
FlightGear runs on top of proprietary operating systems or drivers
such as Mac OS, sgi, windows, solaris, or a binary nvidia driver on
linux.  There needs to be a balance between idealism and pragmatism.

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program   FlightGear Project
Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota  http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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RE: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Norman Vine
Curtis L. Olson writes:

 But personally, I don't mind if
 FlightGear runs on top of proprietary operating systems or drivers
 such as Mac OS, sgi, windows, solaris, or a binary nvidia driver on
 linux.  There needs to be a balance between idealism and pragmatism.

Taking the paragmatic route a little further -- 

I wonder how many machines running FGFS are running with an
Open Source BIOS ?

Norman

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Martin Spott
Jon Stockill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 And the open source drivers don't support some of the newer ATI cards.

Sorry, why do you buy cards that are not supported by OpenSource
drivers ? You are developing OpenSource software, why don't you take
care of that. I can't accept this as a valid argument.
I do look out for drivers _before_ I buy a card for my or my customers'
PeeCee (currently I don't even own a PC  ;-)

Martin.
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Curtis L. Olson
Martin Spott writes:
 Jon Stockill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  And the open source drivers don't support some of the newer ATI cards.
 
 Sorry, why do you buy cards that are not supported by OpenSource
 drivers ? You are developing OpenSource software, why don't you take
 care of that. I can't accept this as a valid argument.
 I do look out for drivers _before_ I buy a card for my or my customers'
 PeeCee (currently I don't even own a PC  ;-)

Is it sgi machines that you run on?

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program   FlightGear Project
Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota  http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Martin Spott
Norman Vine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Taking the paragmatic route a little further -- 

 I wonder how many machines running FGFS are running with an
 Open Source BIOS ?

Not many, but on the other hand you won't have much trouble with the
BIOS when you think about a standalone FlightGear CD. Dealing with a
bunch of different kernel modules for autodetecting different vendors'
cards might prove to end in a huge mess. This _is_ very pragmatic
thinking,

Martin.
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Curtis L. Olson
Martin Spott writes:
 Not many, but on the other hand you won't have much trouble with the
 BIOS when you think about a standalone FlightGear CD. Dealing with a
 bunch of different kernel modules for autodetecting different vendors'
 cards might prove to end in a huge mess. This _is_ very pragmatic
 thinking,

I don't think this big mess is the fault of vendors with binary
drivers.  OpenGL support on Linux has historically been a big mess and
it's still a pain to get going on a lot of systems and especially for
new users.  Much of this is because Linux/XFree86 just didn't have
infrastructure to support it in the early days when 3d cards started
to become available for pc's.  If there had been a driver standard
when all this started, I'm sure companies like nvidia would have
adopted it.  But there wasn't (DRI was under development, but it just
wasn't there quickly enough.)  Nvidia chose to go their own route so
they could get drivers out the door.

But this discussion is getting very political and we do a *lot*
better if we concentrate on FlightGear rather than politics!

Thanks,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program   FlightGear Project
Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota  http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Alex Perry
From: Martin Spott [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Jon Stockill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  And the open source drivers don't support some of the newer ATI cards.
 Sorry, why do you buy cards that are not supported by OpenSource
 drivers ? You are developing OpenSource software, why don't you take
 care of that. I can't accept this as a valid argument.
 I do look out for drivers _before_ I buy a card for my or my customers'
 PeeCee (currently I don't even own a PC  ;-)

There is little point making a Linux based LiveCD of FGFS, if it can only be
used on specific computers that a knowledgable person has already checked.
With that constraint, we might as well either
(a) do a full manual install of Linux with the driver downloading, or
(b) use the Windows version of FGFS and set the CDROM up for AutoRun.
Remember, the idea of the LiveCD was that people could use it at home.

From the pragmatic point of view, if (b) is the right way to go,  I've got
no objections to making the script up on a Linux machine then burning a
copy of the standard AutoRun FGFS image with the new script file inserted.
I won't be able to _use_ the CDROM myself, but I can still hand it out ...

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-21 Thread Curtis L. Olson
Alex Perry writes:
 From: Martin Spott [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Jon Stockill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   And the open source drivers don't support some of the newer ATI cards.
  Sorry, why do you buy cards that are not supported by OpenSource
  drivers ? You are developing OpenSource software, why don't you take
  care of that. I can't accept this as a valid argument.
  I do look out for drivers _before_ I buy a card for my or my customers'
  PeeCee (currently I don't even own a PC  ;-)
 
 There is little point making a Linux based LiveCD of FGFS, if it can only be
 used on specific computers that a knowledgable person has already checked.
 With that constraint, we might as well either
 (a) do a full manual install of Linux with the driver downloading, or
 (b) use the Windows version of FGFS and set the CDROM up for AutoRun.
 Remember, the idea of the LiveCD was that people could use it at home.
 
 From the pragmatic point of view, if (b) is the right way to go,  I've got
 no objections to making the script up on a Linux machine then burning a
 copy of the standard AutoRun FGFS image with the new script file inserted.
 I won't be able to _use_ the CDROM myself, but I can still hand it out ...

Alex,

For what it's worth, the cd distribution I've assembled has a ready to
run copy of windows flightgear on it.  Just pop in the cd, double
click on the runfgfs.bat file and you are up and running.

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program   FlightGear Project
Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota  http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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[Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-20 Thread Melchior FRANZ
* Martin Spott -- Saturday 20 December 2003 19:36:
 I've already been investigating the Knoppix a few months ago - but for
 whatever reason I didn't find out how people are extracting the
 necessary base for sevral projects that use Knoppix.

I've successfully remastered a Knoppix CD and made my own favor
of Knoppix, added some programs, removed others, and before all:
set my own desktop theme (focus under mouse!). It wasn't really
difficult. But I don't feel like making a fgfs CD. The problems
with licenses of different proprietary graphic cards aren't such
a great motivation. And then there is my bandwidth limitation ...

m.

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[Flightgear-devel] Re: LiveCD for FGFS - suggestion

2003-12-20 Thread Melchior FRANZ
* Melchior FRANZ -- Saturday 20 December 2003 23:21:
 I've successfully remastered a Knoppix CD and made my own favor

flavor  :-]

m.

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