Suggestions on notebook

[Chris Ball]

>> On 5 Mar 2006 03:05:59, Jon Masters <jonathan at jonmasters.org> said:

   > Those were the days of co-operation. In today's world, ATI have to
   > look after the bottom line and that means X-Box, which in turn
   > means that various docs seem to be less forthcoming lately. But
   > those are the breaks of big business. Nvidia aren't any better.

Actually, I'm far more concerned about ATI than nVidia at the moment --
nVidia at least provide the (free) nv driver, but we have no kind of
free support or specifications for the latest ATI ("Avivo") chipset, 
in either 2D or 3D.  The 2D engine is of a completely new design, so
no-one's expecting to have a free driver for it ready any time soon.

nVidia have at least given us the nv driver for 2D, and are committed 
to keeping their binary driver maintained.  (For example, they are
implementing the ext_texture_from_pixmap call in their GL stack so 
that newer Xgl will work under their binary driver, and I haven't 
heard that ATI are.)

It's a hollow comfort, though; it's a dismal situation when we got so
close to running systems on entirely free software but then the only 
two video card companies that matter decided to work against us.  :(

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at mrao.cam.ac.uk>    <http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~cjb/>