I upgraded my Dapper and imagine my surprise...

[Lee Revell]

On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 17:00 -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> 
> > Dude, it's not a religious argument, it's a technical one.  Sure, most
> > users won't notice the difference, until they encounter a bug in the
> > kernel and are told it can't be debugged with a proprietary driver
> 
> They're almost _never_ going to find such a thing.  I've been using Linux
> for 7 or 8 years now, and have never once encountered a bug in the kernel
> that I worried about.

Either you are very lucky, or choose your hardware very carefully.
There's lots of hardware out there that isn't so well supported.
Hardware changes faster all the time so it's increasingly important to
be able to debug these problems.

>   
> 
> > loaded.  Then they're back in Windows land, at the mercy of Microsoft
> > (or Nvidia) to someday fix their problem.
> 
> Or if they _do_ encounter a kernel bug, they're at the mercy of the Linux
> developers to someday fix their problem.  It just isn't something people
> have to worry about.  Sure, we'd like nvidia to release a full spec so that
> developers could write good free drivers, but when you keep threatening
> doom and gloom if people use the binary-only driver, that's a religious
> argument.

It's a lot easier to get the Linux kernel developers to fix a problem
than to get a vendor to fix it.  Just look at all the suspend-related
display corruption problems on this list with the nvidia driver, that
people have been reporting for ages, and haven't been fixed.

You're right, for now it's not too bad because most people only run one
proprietary driver (nvidia).  But if vendors start to get the idea that
people are OK with proprietary drivers, next year you'll need one for
your soundcard AND network adapter and wireless and everything else.
What happens when your wireless card needs a driver for $FOO kernel
version and your sound card for $BAR version - you're f**ked that's
what, Linux has become windows, and you are right back in BSOD land.

Sorry if I come across as preachy, it's just important for users to
understand that if they want to be able to continue to run Linux in the
future, it's important to buy hardware that does not require a binary
driver (if they have a choice of course).

Lee