NVIDIA Plotting Open-Source Strategy?

[Thetargos]

IIRC Microsoft changed their OEMLA to allow OEMs set their own policies regarding Vista returns, what's more, is that I believe this was retroactive to those OEMs still selling machines with XP on them. So at the end of the day, all you can do is hope the OEM will refund you the cost of the OS, or enter the vicious cycle from hell of trying to reject the license to the OEM, who then would tell you "Well, return the machine as well", as the machine itself is also the freaking install media, so this in essence ties the machine to the software in such an evil way that you either take the machine with its OS or no machine at all.

[Kano]

You could first boot instead from HD from CD and install linux

[Svartalf]

You can always give back a copy of Vista to retailer and ask for refund. They can't refuse you because they are distributors of Vista and must obey Vista license which says that you can disagree with license and have your money back.

Actually, there was licensing stuff with the HP laptop saying this was NOT the case- you either get to accept the license on Vista or you don't get a warranty and you can't return it no matter what- you either took the laptop as-is, voided the warranty, or returned the WHOLE machine. Now, whether they can make that stick or not remains to be seen, but...

How they played it was that the damn thing boots with it, doesn't have media TO return (the initial install is in a partition, etc...) so in order to use the machine, you either had to boot the machine and agree to the licensing, or know enough about laptop DVD drives, pop the drive open with a paperclip and boot a Linux install image out of the gate and burn the whole partition table down and start over. Since this was a refurb, I REALLY didn't give a flip about anything past the 30 day return from Fry's ("Warranty? Heh... Let's void that SOB!" is my SOP on that sort of thing usually...).

[Mithrandir]

There IS no solid OpenGL capable laptop on the market offered storefront, and to the large extent, mail order, that DOESN'T have Vista install on it. Honest.

You can always give back a copy of Vista to retailer and ask for refund. They can't refuse you because they are distributors of Vista and must obey Vista license which says that you can disagree with license and have your money back.

[Svartalf]

/me points at Emperor Linux and System76 laptops

/runs

Let me rephrase my remarks a bit...

Not at the price points I paid, my friend- I was on a tight budget trying to juggle starting a new contract (that fell through), a divorce, and all while I had a dwindling $6k pool of finances to do it all in while keeping ahold of everything else. I spent more than I really could have justified even when I spent $1100 on the $1800 normal price refurb. System 76 is just now having machines in the low-end of the class of machine at the price point I paid- but they don't have any 17" units. I bought a 17" unit because I needed the screen real estate to do development with. And, Emperor Linux has something in the class of machine I'm using- but the price point of their Rhino versioned Dell machine that's only slightly better than the machine I got is $3000.

When I got the laptop, only Emperor Linux offered anything in the class I needed, I needed it right THEN (as opposed to waiting a bit for it to ship- I bought my machine brick and mortar at Fry's), and I didn't have a lot of money to buy anything with.

Now, it's a different story and if I were buying another unit, I'd be considering one of Emperor Linux' offerings instead.

[lxndr]

Always better to cooperate then to sit on our islands and reinvent fire... Hope they (both ATi/AMD and nVidia/Intel) come up with a corporate vision that includes opensource, they never made money letting us download their drivers, only more linux-addicts jumping on their videocards I guess

[Thetargos]

/me points at Emperor Linux and System76 laptops

/runs

[Svartalf]

have you ever considered not being their pawn and actually not supporting direct terrorism against users of free software? YOU are personally supporting direct terrorism against users of free software when you give them money, and that is the sad truth. Why didnt you just buy from someone else?!

Heh... Ever thought of getting off your high horse? Your rhetoric is the very thing that turns EVERYONE else off from doing FOSS stuff. (I believe I have already pointed this out to you in other threads...)

In most cases, there ISN'T anyone else.

For example...

There IS no solid OpenGL capable laptop on the market offered storefront, and to the large extent, mail order, that DOESN'T have Vista install on it. Honest.

I'm hopeful that will change, but not even Dell offers an Ubuntu laptop in the class of the HP that I ended up buying as a refurb back about a year ago. And I needed the machine to carry forward things that favor FOSS.

[Moustacha]

Michael (the OSS prophet) has come out with news stories before which have turned out to be true. I believe. To make life easier I would hope they spared man power or helped nouveau along, but then pride might get in the way =\

[Redeeman]

I agree completely with - well with every point made here. Thetargos made a good point about market share. I'd like to add though that I've always thought those numbers were a bit skewed; more so as time progresses. As an example when I bought my laptop, despite going with Dell and Ubuntu being an option on some models, I had to purchase Vista because I wanted a 15 inch display. +1 for Microsoft and/or -1 for Linux market share despite my not using Windows at all.

If the majority of machines were offered with Linux (or better the option to buy either or both) I think the numbers would be much more telling.

have you ever considered not being their pawn and actually not supporting direct terrorism against users of free software? YOU are personally supporting direct terrorism against users of free software when you give them money, and that is the sad truth. Why didnt you just buy from someone else?!