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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!goliath.apana.org.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!qns3.qns.com!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!news.dfn.de!uni-muenster.de!news From: gutschk@uni-muenster.de (Markus Gutschke) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Sometimes you need X server source (Was: Why to not buy Matrox Millennium) Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Date: 31 Mar 1996 11:20:33 GMT Organization: Markus Gutschke, Schlage 5a, 48268 Greven-Gimbte, Germany Lines: 54 Message-ID: <GUTSCHK.96Mar31132033corpus@uni-muenster.de> References: <4j21ph$crr@slappy.cs.utexas.edu> <4j36ev$prl@news.Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE> <4ja099$r8k@ceylon.gte.com> <4ja28c$9da@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <4jb67e$eil@solaris.cc.vt.edu> <ROELL.96Mar28184328@blah.xinside.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pppe235.uni-muenster.de Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.41) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII In-reply-to: roell@xinside.com's message of 28 Mar 1996 17:43:28 GMT Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.apps:13834 comp.os.linux.development.system:20257 comp.os.linux.x:27971 comp.os.linux.hardware:34775 comp.os.linux.setup:47893 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:358 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2861 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2639 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:16246 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <ROELL.96Mar28184328@blah.xinside.com> roell@xinside.com (Thomas Roell) writes: > What you say here is kind of childish. The problem is that people take > the cost of hardware for granted and complain just about > software. They spend huge amounts of money for their graphics card, > just to get half of the possible performance because they have to run > XF86. If one is smart instead buy a decently fast graphics card that > is optimally supported by Accelertaed-X and you will save money and > get a faster overally solution. I'm just starting to get frustrated > that even reasonable bright people seem to have a mental barrier to > realize this. I believe, there is a popular misconception about the benefits of free (in the sense of GNU) software. It appears that many people prefer free software, because it is free of charge. This is actually just a side-effect; I have no problem with paying for software, if it is reasonably priced (which IMHO is the case for Accelerated-X), but I prefer getting software, that comes with the source code. What happened, if Accelerated-X was the only X server for Linux (which is fortunately not the case) and suddenly X Inside went out of business? If the source code for a program is freely available (which is usually not possible for a commercial product), there is no problem with the supporting company folding up --- eventually somebody else will pick up the source code and continue development. Furthermore, if bug fixes need to be applied to the code, it is often easier to have a look into the source code, fix the bug and submit a patch, rather than submit a bug-report and hope that it will eventually be fixed. In no ways do I intend to belittle the work that X Inside has accomplished. I am no customer of theirs, but from what I hear tell, Accelarated-X is an excellent product with good support. I can see, that this is the perfect product for quite a lot of customers, but because of the reasons given in the above paragraph, I prefer to use free software, even if this might entail a performance penalty (actually, my S3 based card is quite fast when driven by XFree86). Basically this is a political decision and I believe that their is a need for both free and commercial products; it depends on the specific needs of the customer. Markus -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAgUBMV5qfxqJqDLErwMxAQEwAwQAt/yEC3ZjmwNH37kkdJrp9/SMRp7G9EKE /fUv335Ei1jMzqMuVQ4wCnbTZO0UxLGC/hGvEjatUV3mepkFk5lyQNcVW5mCCepu aT07HfSIOpPz/+6bMFAEKFWRizAFDLCvS1dT/2dmeiwF3V0IGA3e1/J9K2mc5ZTV ZZ/K4eKqQN8= =HtUg -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----