From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Apr 11 14:44:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from vimfuego.saarinen.org (saarinen.org [203.79.82.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 083EC37B422 for ; Wed, 11 Apr 2001 14:44:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from juha@saarinen.org) Received: from dendennis.saarinen.org ([192.168.1.2] helo=dendennis) by vimfuego.saarinen.org with smtp (Exim 3.22 #1 (Red Hack)) id 14nSPq-0003gP-01; Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:44:42 +1200 From: "Juha Saarinen" To: "Kal Torak" , "The Hermit Hacker" Cc: "Jonathan Belson" , "FreeBSD-stable" Subject: RE: nVidia Cards /w FreeBSD (3D Acceleration) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:44:20 +1200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <3AD48782.2CEAE87B@quake.com.au> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG :: If there is enough interest from us they should be willing to :: make ports to :: FreeBSD.. I mean they support BeOS, how many people even use :: that, let alone :: have nVidia cards? Surly we could match them in numbers! Check the Utah-GLX and other mailing lists on this issue. It might be possible to get Nvidia to port the binary kernel driver for Linux to FreeBSD (provided that it's possible to use such drivers under FreeBSD, I don't know), but they ain't gonna release the full specs. If I understand it right, Nvidia's reasoning for this is that if they give out the full specs to Open Source developers without an NDA, the clone makers would copy their the specs in an instant and they might as well shut up shop and go home. Before you lambast Nvidia for wanting to keep its IP under wraps, it appears that none of the other video card makers (ATI, Matrox) have handed over their "crown jewels" to Open Source developers. Nvidia is at least providing an optimised driver for its cards -- Matrox and ATI haven't, but they seem to be supporting Red Hat's Precision Insight offshoot, which is providing the DRI for XFree86. -- Juha To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message