Dieter wrote:
As far as all this stuff goes with what to support or not to, I say
who cares? If it's a FPGA it can be reprogrammed right? That means
that if I want 3d and Ray doesn't then let us both write our own
firmware.
For the FPGA that might be true. For the ASIC however...
OTOH, the argument that one should wait to see what the
market/developer community makes of the FPGA board
before trying to lock down what is needed is valid.
It's true that you can do this with the emulator, but that's
no fun, because the emulator is slow. It's just pretend. But
an FPGA which will actually result in acceleration when you
improve the "firmware" (or whatever is the right word for
what you download into an FPGA) is likely to motivate some
interest.
Of course, I must confess that I'm not in that developer
community, but it seems very plausible to me based on my
experiences with application programming. It's no fun to
be all clever unless you get to watch it go "wizzz" when you're
done.
I have little intrest in this project as just a graphics card. I love
the drivers from NVIDIA and have no complaints. Their free, so in my
mind who cares if they are open or not.
Yeah, I've heard this argument, but...
I lately upgraded the kernel image on my Debian machine. I
rarely re-compile my kernel or kernel modules, and although I
have learned how to do it, it's not really my cup of tea. I like
computers and I like to mess around with them, but there are
other things I like better (writing, graphic arts, scientific and
engineering applications, etc). So I don't really like to have some
random piece of software that is mission-critical that constantly
needs to be nursemaided (e.g. for which I must recompile my
kernel).
The last time I install the nVidia drivers, I did so by downloading
the make-kpkg package from Debian and compiling the modules.
It took me, probably, three days (I'm sure I could do it in a couple
of hours if I did this sort of thing all the time, but I don't, and I
don't want to!).
This time, though, I didn't want to risk the downtime. So I'm using
the "nv" driver, which means my spiffy nVidia 3D-accelerated
video gaming card is a *framebuffer* for all intents and purposes.
Lame. Blender won't even run (some complaint about "no GLX
interface" -- I assume this means I don't have the Mesa emulator
installed, but who cares? Even if it did theoretically work, it would
be so slow as to be useless).
So now it's just broken, and my $50-$100 investment in nVidia is
just sunk. Blah, that's no fun. And I only bought an nVidia because
I heard that they had "good Linux/OpenGL support".
Open source drivers means that X.org (and hence, Debian) can
do all of that work for me, and I can be a lazy users, type:
apt-get install kernel-image-2.8.99
and then click on "Planet Penguin Racer" and slide some slopes
without having to break a sweat (and yes, there are some "work"
things I need 3D for, too).
For this luxury, I would pay 4X what that nVidia card cost me.
It may be that I'm an extremist in either my open source zealotry
or my laziness, but I'm not so sure: if you can get both sloth
and idealism on your side, you've probably got a sellable product,
IMHO!
If the Nvidia drivers do what you need, that is nice for you.
They do have problems, however. Problems that result in lost data.
I will not be buying any Nvidia graphics cards due to the driver problems.
Me? Right now, I'm seriously considering replacing this cursed
thing with an ATI 9200, if I can still get them. I have that installed
on a couple of other machines, and it has worked beautifully.
The drivers are open-source and included in Debian.
However -- I have much Fear Uncertainty and Doubt about ATI
continuing to deliver for the open source community. They have not
been so forthcoming with data on their later products, or so I
am told. This concerns me. It suggests corporatist treachery
(well, actually suggests cowardice in the face of patent insanity,
but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, of course).
Seriously, though, it makes me want to find someone with a more
serious commitment to serving my market segment.
If the OGC were available of course, that would be a serious
contender, even though it would cost more. Because I would
feel that I was investing in my future systems by adopting the
new system now (of course, it's unlikely that I will wait that
long -- but I will be building other computers in the future).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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