From: ellis@nova.gmi.edu (Stew Ellis) Subject: Re: Why not include patches for Diamond Stealth in kernel? Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 16:37:28 GMT
badger@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
>It seems that many people are continually asking about how to get the Diamond
>Stealth to work with XS3. As an owner of a Diamond Stealth I am happily using
>my Stealth in 800x600x256 (and 1024x768x256 if I wished) by using the patches
>to setup.S that have been posted several times. All the patches do is put
>the video board into a VESA mode before Linux enters 386 protected mode, and
>when the BIOS is still available. Rather than having people continually ask
>for the patches, why not include them in the kernel and have them included
>if people answer the appropriate question in the config, as CD-ROM drives,
>bus mice, etc. are handeled now. And definately remove the outdated statement
>in the FAQ that says Diamond cards aren't supported.
I am against this. I believe it is alright for Diamond owners to exchange
information that helps bail each other out of having made a bad decision,
perhaps before they heard about the problems with XFree86. I think to
include the patches in the Linux or 386bsd kernel's or as part of the
official configuration options would serve to encourage the ill-conceived
proprietary behavior of Diamond and reduce the incentive of people to
protest to Diamond and its dealers.
It is kind of incongruous to think about running a free OS on proprietary
hardware, no matter how cheap that hardware is. The growth of free UNIXes
depends on the growth of free programming interfaces such as NFS, RPC,
POSIX, the graphics chips (including accelerators) with published APIs, free
X (Xlib, Xt, Xaw, Xview, OLIT). For the same reason I completely fail to
understand the (not-too-frequent, thank god) question about getting Motif
running under Linux or 386bsd.
As the reading material about the GNU project frequently asserts, remember
free is not the same as inexpensive or cheap.
If people want to encourage proprietary efforts and ultimately higher prices
then patronize proprietary UNIX and X vendors, but do not constantly clutter
up Usenet News with your requests to compromise the integrity of the great
efforts of people like Linus, the binary distribution developers, the
hundreds of people developing and porting packages of free source, and
particularly the Xfree team.
Another related issue is that we should not patronize vendors or
manufacturers who show no understanding of the world beyond DOS and WINDOZE.
Note I am not against all proprietary software and hardware, but I think we
should not compromise the free part and efforts. Sun and other commercial
UNIX vendors have found that free APIs have been good for business. Diamond
just needs to be taught that DOS VESA is not the only public API that
matters in the Intel hardware market.