Adam Bolte
On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 07:50:00PM +1000, Ben Sturmfels wrote:
I see they've already raised $8M in pre-sales though, so perhaps there are other free software organisations that would benefit more from a donation right now. I'm thinking instead of buying a video card from Think Penguin [3].
[3] https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/geforce-9500gt-1gb-pci-express-20-vid...
I just noticed... it's an Nvidia card you are talking about. This gives me mixed feelings. Sure supporting free software drivers and stores that find such hardware is great, but supporting Nvidia? <shudder>
I'm assuming it's still the case that Intel drivers are 100% free software for at least some of their newer cards, although obviously the performance won't be the same.
AMD makes cards that have excellent free software drivers, and (unlike Nvidia) they release the specs... however most modern AMD cards rely on non-free firmware - firmware that isn't built into the device's ROM, but instead needs to be loaded by the driver during initialisation.
Even so, it seems to me that AMD is doing far better at helping the free software driver communities than Nvidia ever has. I have a Radeon HD 5870 (which I purchased with Bitcoin) with 6 LCDs hooked up to it at work, running the free software drivers. The performance is great. I can play OpenArea with max detail at 7680x1024, 60fps (I use v-sync or it would likely be much higher). There are some FoV issues in doing that I haven't completely resolved, but it's quite impressive to see.
Note: It appears that newer Nvidia cards also require proprietary firmware, until free software drivers are reverse-engineered. http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/InstallDRM#Firmware
I would like to put more pressure on AMD to release the code for their firmware though, or at least see as much effort put forward to develop free firmware for AMD cards as we have seen from the Nvidia reverse-engineering guys.
Thanks for pointing this out. Yes, it's certainly an imperfect choice. Buying one of these Nvidia cards support Think Penguin, a new vendor who sells hardware compatible with fully-free software. On the other hand, it results in some profits for Nvidia, who are extremely unfriendly to free software. Choosing an AMD card means I'm giving some profits to AMD, who offer dramatically better support for free software. On the other hand though, I'd be required to use proprietary firmware. In terms of my personal freedom today, the Nvidia card would be the best choice. For encouraging free software-compatible hardware in the longer term though, I don't know that there's a clear answer. Ben