RE: [MLUG] nvidia tnt2 agp, geForce IV 4200 AGP 128 MB cards under Linux?

["Woodsmall, Ryan (IATS)" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

download the source tarball for the glx driver.  untar it.  there is no
source (*.c, *.S, etc.) in there, save the header files needed to
compile against the opengl libraries.  the source to the actual
driver(s) is not available anywhere, not under any license.  nvidia
won't even talk to you about any specs other than 2d for their cards.
it's a smart move on their part, as the driver source would contain low
level card access that could give away some of their i.p.  this could
make it possible for any joe schmoe with a fab plant to copy their
chips.  not that this would happen, but it could...  again, the hooks
into the kernel api (the NVdriver.o module) have source available, but
are not necessarily open source.  the drivers that access these hooks
are completely proprietary, closed source product.

if you're concerned about being completely "open source," you should
stay away from nvidia cards.  when you install the kernel module from
the command line, it will actually give a message about "polluting the
kernel" with non-gpl code.  if you want a decent card that does 2d and
3d under linux, and you require an open source dev model, the only way
to go right now is with one of the older radeon cards.  ati's newer
cards are using a driver architecture similar to nvidia.

     ryan woodsmall
        EMAIL:PROTECTED


> I checked. You need to load two parts, the kernel module and 
> the GLX driver. 
> Both are available as source tarballs. Maybe it's not Open 
> Source (the GPL 
> way), but I'd call this open source.
> 
> Mark

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