[wellylug] Is SUSE a desktop distro? (AARRGGHH!)

[Wood Brent]

--- Jamie Baddeley <wellylug at vpc.co.nz> wrote:
> 
> It seems to me that this mainly is not about the inadequacies of the
> [blah] distro , but more about Nvidia's ability to get with the future
> of computing.

Nope, at least not as I see it. If someone produces a car that requirs a
special fuel blend, and markets it as a great Everyman's vehicle, is it the
petrol suppliers fault that the available fuel at gas stations doesn't work in
it? All the fuel companies & other vehicle manufacturers seem able to work
together.

It is not Nvidia that doesn't work with Linux(es), at least not that I'm aware.


I've found Nvidia hardware & Linux support better than most. If Linux distros
except for one work fine with some hardware & Linux drivers and just the one
doesn't, then I'd suggest it isn't the hardware/driver at fault. 

Are there horror stories about Nvidia hardware/drivers on other distros?

I've had no problem with a few Debian & Red Hat based distros & LiveCD's,
haven't tried Slackware & others. Generally it has worked very well, hence my
reaction to <blah> when it didn't.

I'm not such a blind Linux supporter as to blame everything else for any
problems. I'm also quite happy to work with a SUSE user to see how much of the
problem is either my Linux inadequacies or the actual CD I used. If it gets
resolved & SUSE turns out fine I'll let you all know.


Note that I'm not entirely rapt with the way Nvidia supports Linux, but they do
at least support it pretty well, and have explained their reasons for doing it
the way they do. It is not unreasonable from their perspective, but I'd still
like to see a priority shift so their business becomes a bit more open as far
as Linux drivers go.

Graphics/AGP support in kernel 2.8 (2.7) may require a change in Nvidia's
approach to get the best out of the hardware under Linux, and ATi may be ahead
in this area right now, but some messages I swapped with one of the kernel dvpt
team on this topic suggested that with 2.4 & 2.6 kernels, it wasn't a huge
issue, yet. 

He did prefer ATi for their more open Linux driver model, but agreed that at
present it didn't make that much difference for users.


Brent