On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 03:48:21PM -0500, Dan Armbrust wrote:
> > ... the support cycle of the company might not overlap with the
> > intended lifecycle of the piece of hardware and I'd rather not toss
> > out a good piece of hardware just because the OS changed it's APIs and
> > the manufacturer decided that they got my money two years ago and
> > there is no point in giving me a working driver now.
> >
> >>                                   and takes full advantage of the
> >> hardware, then an "open" driver that sucks.
> >
> > The open driver will become better over time.  There is no guarantee
> > for the closed driver.
> 
> So you will buy hardware which you can't use now, (such as onboard
> h264 decoding) because of a poor driver, with the hope that the driver
> will be written by someone... someday... (which there is no guarantee)
> over hardware which does work today - and you could use forever, as
> long as you don't update your other software to an incompatible
> version....
> 
> I don't follow the logic.

Because it's not my logic.  I will buy hardware that works now even if
it's not 100% stable or easy to configure or it needs a driver fetched
from somebody's git tree and not coming on a silver disk or from an
apt repository somewhere.  I will not buy a video card that will not
display anything on a screen, but if _I don't need_ h264 decoding right
now, and the hardware supports it, and I can buy the hardware and
install it in my existing system, and there is some hope on an open
driver, I'll give the $50 to this guy over that other guy.

> If intel had a linux driver that actually worked properly, and
> utilized all the hardware they are selling, that would be great.  But
> to date, they don't.  And they use the "its open" excuse to pretend
> that its not their fault the driver still sucks, when the reality is
> that they just don't put the necessary resources into it.

The Intel driver uses less power than either AMD or Nvidia on my
laptops and that's one of the most important attributes for me.  I
don't decode x264 full-screen, as the screens are 1200x800 and
1024x768.  It works for me, for three years now.

> Meanwhile, NVidia at least is putting their own resources into writing
> a _good_ driver for linux.

Intel actually employs a number of graphics engineers: Keith Packard,
Eric Anholt, Carl Worth that are constantly working on X.org and
various Intel drivers.  Their work advances the state of the art for
Intel, AMD and Nvidia (the nouveau driver) hardware.

>                             Would it be nice if it were open?  Sure.
> But I'm not going to reward Intel with a hardware purchase simply
> because they throw out some specifications and say there you go, you
> can write a driver if you like....

Whatever works for you.

Cheers,
florin

-- 
Bruce Schneier expects the Spanish Inquisition.
      http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/163
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