NVIDIA's Oldest Legacy Driver Will Not Gain New Support

[locovaca]

Actually, cars have gone BACKWARDS over the years. OLD cars were WAY better than the junk that the (especially US) car makers shove down our throats these days.

Just look at cars in CUBA. OLD OLD OLD American cars from < 1960... and yet SO MANY of them are still holding together. Why? Because they had a SOLID FRAME! They were built to last and last they did. The reason why you don't see as high a proportion of old cars elsewhere is that you have a wasteful economy and all the new bells and whistles tricking people into a DOWNGRADE and slowly reducing the quality and CRUSHING all the stuff that was ***ACTUALLY GOOD***.

If you're going to be in a car and run down by an 18 wheeler, what would you prefer to be in... a 1955 Chevrolet? Or a 2010 Chevrolet? The '55 will take the hit, roll over into the ditch a few times, and hold together. The 2010 will get crushed like tinfoil and you'll be dead.

Anyone remember the GM EV1? That was an honest to god electric car that GM was FORCED to make by the state of california. As soon as they stopped forcing it, GM rounded them all up and crushed them. Every last one. Now they are talking about releasing a new "electric" car -- the so-called "volt", which is nothing more than a CRAPPY plug-in hybrid.

Not to go completely OT here, but things such as Oil, Iron, Steel, and other materials that they put into the boats of the 50s-70s are much higher in price than they were then. Additionally, regulations to increase emission efficiency requires more money per car be allocated to reducing emissions and thus reducing the amount allocated to the rest of the car. Hence, plastics, aluminium and thin steel, and composites are making up the rest of the car.

[jbrown96]

Would you care to give some examples there at all?

I bought a 790GX motherboard in early June. I installed Fedora 13; FGLRX doesn't work, and I can't use Kwin compositing with the opensource driver.

[mirv]

I bought a 790GX motherboard in early June. I installed Fedora 13; FGLRX doesn't work, and I can't use Kwin compositing with the opensource driver.

Well I've not used Fedora 13, but doesn't it use xserver-1.8? A version not supported yet by the fglrx drivers? Although you can hack the version string of xserver to make it work. But if you insist upon using unsupported stuff, well that's your fault: not AMD's.

[jbrown96]

Well I've not used Fedora 13, but doesn't it use xserver-1.8? A version not supported yet by the fglrx drivers? Although you can hack the version string of xserver to make it work. But if you insist upon using unsupported stuff, well that's your fault: not AMD's.

But that's the difference. ATI stuff does not work "out of the box" consistently with several distros, namely Fedora. If there's one thing that ATI does worse than Nvidia, it is a consistent, large lag in supporting kernels and X-servers. To completely dismiss that as "using unsupported stuff," is disingenuous.

[energyman]

I always see the guaranteed quote of "just go buy a new video card", but what if my broke ass is just trying to get my engineering degree on the laptop I currently own? Oh yeah that's right it is a bitch put a new video card in these things, so how the hell can I just "go out and buy a new one?" Do you really think people would continue to develop for these old crusty cards like my rv515 if there wasn't a need? How does having a cutting edge video card sustain the "IT" industry? That is pure genius. Clearly being IT support for some BS accounting software in some no name firm requires you to be running SLI or CrossFire.... As much as I'd like to get rid of my 10 year old video card.... I can't unless you are willing to mail me a check to buy my ass a new work computer. If you aren't then please don't go running around making douchery just because not everyone fits your same situation.

yeah, and send a cheque to my employer too, so they can replace the old s3 based cards in the desktops - which are only used for some MS Office and firefox surfing.

Oh wait, those desktops don't need modern graphics.. so... why waste money?

[mirv]

But that's the difference. ATI stuff does not work "out of the box" consistently with several distros, namely Fedora. If there's one thing that ATI does worse than Nvidia, it is a consistent, large lag in supporting kernels and X-servers. To completely dismiss that as "using unsupported stuff," is disingenuous.

Even nvidia label their drivers as beta for a long time - and you don't get out of the box support with them, in any form - you have to download their drivers extra (this is a small nit-pick, but perhaps an important one to some).
AMD does support kernels and x-servers for their list of supported distros - their released drivers are not beta, and their development model is different. But if you want to go down the path of supporting kernel and x-server versions, then use the open source drivers (which AMD do actively help develop). I'll also point out that nvidia only recently updated legacy drivers to run on x-server 1.8, so they're not as quick with everything.
By the way, if you're willing to give as vague an error as "it doesn't work", then it's perfectly reasonable for me to dismiss everything because you're "using unsupported stuff".

[PsynoKhi0]

ATI stuff does not work "out of the box" consistently with several distros, namely Fedora.

I was under the impression that Fedora was actually consistently ahead of the game when it came to the OSS drivers... Must be that we have a different definition for "out of the box"

[jmcharron]

My point is simple: If your video card is more than 10 years old, get rid of it already!

Your are just like driving a 1982 honda and bragging about how good it is. If car people are like you, there will be no more car industry. We all be satisfied with 1980's cars and just keep maintain and drive them!

If fashion industry people are like you, there will be no fashion industry because cloths from 50 years ago can also keep you warm! What's the purpose?

I guess you are not that old, try to look forward not backward, your life quality will sure be better.

I enjoy driving my 89 K5 Blazer thank you very much and I love shopping at vintage stores.
The difference between a 20 y/o truck and a 10 y/o gnu is that my truck goes threw the all the same mud holes that other people in their brand new '10 F250s can do. My old geforce 6800 can't jump threw the same hoops as my gts465 or even my old 8800gts can do for gaming.

Needless to say I agree with you, that if you run that old of hardware you have other issues... Just don't compare cars to computers. If cars changed and evolved as fast as computer hardware we would be hovering around by now.

[droidhacker]

But that's the difference. ATI stuff does not work "out of the box" consistently with several distros, namely Fedora. If there's one thing that ATI does worse than Nvidia, it is a consistent, large lag in supporting kernels and X-servers. To completely dismiss that as "using unsupported stuff," is disingenuous.

You clearly have NO IDEA what "out of the box" means.

It means that you put your distro's install disk in, press "next" until it is installed, and it "works".

Out of the box does NOT involve taking extra steps to install and debug proprietary blobs. If you have to press ONE SINGLE BUTTON beyond installing the disto, then you are beyond the box.

And yes, AMD chips ***DO*** work ***VERY CONSISTENTLY*** out of the box with Fedora. There is ZERO lag for kernel/xserver support since they DO NOT release a new version or update of/to Fedora without updating the radeon driver to match its package set. In fact, RedHat, which basically CONTROLS Fedora is one of the two primary developers for AMD drivers. The other being AMD itself. In other words, the AMD support tends to hit Fedore BEFORE it hits anywhere else, and yes, it ***JUST WORKS***. No blobs required.

[V!NCENT]

What is your point?

nVidia does not push the industry forward. Why am I making this point? Somebody said that nVidia did and I disagreed.

And about cars... Holy shit they change more than PC's do:
1. Move from fossil fuels to eletricity.
2. Cripple zones.
3. Seatbelts.
4. Tracktion control
5. ABS
6. Stability control
7. Airconditioning
8. GPS navigation
9. Airbags
10. Parking sencors
11. Cage stability (computer calculates movement of the car and countermoves the interior to compensate
12. Cruise control
13. And the lot...