Video Cards/linux

Wed Nov 15 15:41:05 MST 2006

1Poor Nathan, stuck between a 'rock' and a 'hard
place'! I hope you can work it out with the ceo's and
managers!

Oh, I run linux...except for w95 box for some ham
radio stuff! This machine doesn't have windoze on it
and it is the MAIN machine! IF I could get those pesky
ham radio programs to work...

Ed/ke7feg

--- Nathan England <nathan at paysonlinux.org> wrote:

> 
> Craig, 
> I appreciate your input and I agree with you. But
> back to reality...
> My corporation is interested in saving money from
> the licenses, but as far as 
> what the licenses entail, they request that I make
> the best decision based on 
> what the company needs. Of course I agree with the
> open license vs. 
> proprietary. But the company heads know linux isn't
> there on the desktop yet, 
> because that is what they read in their ceo mags.
> Meanwhile we all know it 
> works just fine. I don't know how many people on
> this list actually use 
> linux, let alone use it full time. I think there are
> only a couple of us that 
> are 100% linux all the time. Proves a point that
> even the linux groups still 
> use windows, so how am I to convince ceo's based on
> facts like that?
> 
> They look at it and say, ok, it does the basics that
> we want. But you know, 
> that new Vista sure is pretty! 
> 
> So I can throw AIGLX on and say, yeah, but look!
> Linux is just as pretty, and 
> even a little faster!
> Who cares about eye candy? Truth be told, they see
> it can do it and think it 
> is as advanced as Vista or even XP. They have no
> clue that it took Vista 5 
> years to get Aero right, and it's still wrong,
> meanwhile Beryl has been going 
> less than a year and it rocks!
> 
> So, while I agree with your points that open
> licensing and source is much 
> better in just about every case, corporate heads
> don't always see that, 
> especially when they don't see how to make money off
> something that is given 
> away. Nonetheless I work for a government branch, so
> we're not making money 
> off this, but still, they want to know they are
> moving forward in technology, 
> not backwards, and the mags they read don't always
> give the best light on 
> Linux because you  can't run MS Office on it.
> 
> nathan
> 
> 
> On Tuesday 14 November 2006 09:42, you wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 09:12 -0700, Nathan England
> wrote:
> > > Hello All,
> > >
> > > I'm looking for a machine with a new video card.
> I haven't had much luck
> > > with a few of the older Radeon based cards, and
> I love the nVidia cards,
> > > however, the machine I am purchasing only has an
> ATI Radeon X600SE.
> > >
> > > I'm not going to play games, and this is a Linux
> only box, however, I
> > > would like to play with AIGLX and all the new
> fancy eye candy.
> > >
> > > How do you like the performance of the newish
> ATI cards and how well do
> > > they work? The ones I've used recently just
> seemed really flaky,
> > > especially compared to the nVidia cards and my
> personal favorite the
> > > Intel i915 based cards.
> > >
> > > Any information you can offer will be greatly
> appreciated. I'm not going
> > > to impress anyone with the gaming ability of
> this machine, but the eye
> > > candy will convince upper management that Linux
> will be better suited in
> > > the future than XP... lol
> > > It's funny how the eye candy wins things out
> like this...
> >
> > ----
> > I think that it's an ugly trap to get sucked into.
> >
> > To obtain performance, you undoubtedly have to use
> the proprietary
> > binary code from those vendors instead of using
> the open source drivers.
> >
> > It seems to me that the clinching the deal between
> open source versus
> > proprietary is simply that - the source of the
> programs themselves.
> >
> > The 'eye candy' as you put it, doesn't have
> anything to do with the
> > important issues such as...
> >
> > - Software Licensing...the need to obtain and
> maintain licensing records
> > with proprietary systems with complicated End User
> License Agreements,
> > complicated licensing requirements (see
> Microsoft's License 6) versus
> > the simplicity of GPL copyleft.
> >
> > - Software sourcing...open source versus single
> point requirement. Open
> > source doesn't wait for single source to
> acknowledge problem and deliver
> > solution.
> >
> > - Data storage formats...open document formats
> versus proprietary,
> > undocumented formats (see http://oasis-open.org) -
> Even the common
> > Microsoft formats of XLS/DOC/PPT are going the way
> of the dinosaur and
> > are being replaced by a new and hopelessly overly
> impenetrable XML
> > format which not surprisingly, gives Microsoft
> more control over your
> > data. Suggest that you obtain the schema
> definitions for both Open
> > Office formats and Microsoft Office formats.
> >
> > - Future...if you research the
> installation/maintenance costs for Vista
> > and related Office applications, you will
> undoubtedly find a lot of
> > resistance to the high cost, high system demands
> for Microsoft's next
> > step.
> >
> > One of the most interesting things about Microsoft
> is their ability to
> > pivot on their own standards and simply discard
> them. I just read a
> > fairly good analysis of their new 'Zune' player in
> > tidbits...http://db.tidbits.com/issue/855 which
> discusses how their Zune
> > doesn't use their 'PlaysForSure' technology. I
> can't think of a clearer
> > statement by Microsoft saying...buy our DRM
> strategies and you will find
> > yourself abandoned as soon as we come up with our
> next great product.
> >
> > Craig
> 
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Nathan England
> PaysonLinux User Group 
> nathan at paysonlinux.org
> http://www.paysonlinux.org/
> 
> Software Development
> Website Development
> Linux Administration
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*****/////*****/////*****

Ed Culbertson/ke7feg
Remember Katrina? 
For several days, only hams could get out, 
and talk to others dependably.

No Morse Code required for Technician class licensee's. Interested? http://www.arrl.org/

Long live Knoppix, and Puppy Live Linux cd's.

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