"I guess my question is whether this is more because video card manufacturers
don't care about Free Software and thus regard DRM above freedom, or is it
more because there is not a strong Free Software gaming community to demand
Freedom?"
Both are factors, of course.
"What is a practical way to get ATI or NVidia to care about Freedom is less
than a year or so? Or is this something that will take decades? Is there a
practical way to get a high end 3D Free Software driver? Or are we pretty
much screwed until enough people care to protest? And what are the chances of
that?"
We've reached the point where the free software drivers are high-end and run
3D graphics as smoothly as their proprietary equivalents. But both AMD and
NVidea still won't open-source the blobs that the Linux maintainers stupidly
accepted into the kernel. Our community must pressure these companies to
change their positions, to prove to us that they care more about their users'
freedoms than their own petty calculations of "risk". And I am serious, we
absolutely must frame the debate in those terms. The kernel people had enough
influence that they could simply deny the nonfree modules offered by AMD and
NVidea, demanding that they be open-sourced and devoid of DRM first. But they
failed to do that, setting back our community significantly.
"Is there such a thing as an Intel Netbook or Laptop that doesn't use some
other companie's video device?"
I'm not sure what you're asking here. Virtually all motherboards sold with
integrated graphics have Intel devices, which are most laptops and desktop
computers at the low end of the price scale.
