So very true, in windows games tend to lock up mysteriously and that hardly ever happens in linux.

The chances a major proprietary game producers will make games for free I don’t really see happening for a long time. There’s too much money to be made, I’d rather they’d make games cheaper with less DRM and provide free content after release (where appropriate).

Instead I think it’d be better to create free games from scratch. The modding community in most games are a good example of free content. And there is a lot of that for most games.

I do dislike bonus/expansion packs that are provided for cash, i.e.: oblivion, dawn of war, BF2.

As far as gaming goes, that’s a tough one to get into. Most computer games (both PC and console) are 100% proprietary. This is not really okay with me. Yeah, I play console games just like many others, but the fact that these systems are proprietary is really not okay with me. We really need to find a player who is willing to make Free Software games.

Let’s just make sure that we’re valuing freedom, not just beating up on politically unpopular companies.

ATI, nVidia, Broadcom, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and all the rest would be welcomed with open arms (and make a killing) if they were willing to respect freedom.

I’m also pretty sure that if ATI released free software drivers they could even get a photo of Richard Stallman and Peter Brown adding ATI to the FSF-approved hardware database.

I’d rather have all my drivers be open source, but they’re not. Until I can enjoy fully functional open source drivers, I’ll take the working proprietary ones over the handicapped ones any day.

I love open source software and what it stands for, but I also believe that there is a place for non-free software as well. We just need to find the right balance. I personally think that software for functionality (drivers, browsers, office suites) should be open source. Entertainment software, however, should have the choice of shipping their product as open or closed source.

The gaming market is huge, and is probably the biggest reason younger people are anti-Linux. I use my machines for work and the occasional game here and there, and from my experience, most games that work on both Linux and Windows actually run better under Linux. As Linux takes more of the desktop market-share, we’ll be seeing a bigger push for Linux gaming, and it will need to accept closed source software.

What about Joost? Should it be released as completely open source? No way. They’re delivering copyrighted content and paying for it by showing ads. If the project was open source, we could easily make an ad-free client. Then they lose that revenue, can’t pay the licensing fees, lose all their content, and then the whole project flops.

Also, please stop saying that companies like ATI and nVidia are “against my freedom”. I don’t have to use their drivers if I don’t want to. If they made it impossible to use anything but their proprietary drivers, then yes, they would be taking away my freedom. I really do wish they’d GPL their driver code though. Oh well, I guess that freedom thing works both ways.

I dunno, perhaps a free driver like nouveau would be better but it’ll take time to mature. In fact I’ve been following those regular newsletters somewhat.

What I’m saying is that regardless of those efforts at the moment I have no option but to install these drivers. Hopefully as Ubuntu continues to grow and with the new Dell deal pressure could be applied to the big driver companies. I hope they’d listen, but at the moment I’m not very optimistic.

nv is NOT a free driver. It is obfuscated code that is deliberately crippled to be 2d-only can only be maintained by nVidia employees who have access to the specs. Nouveau is the free driver, and it doesn’t even BASE off of nv. It bases off of a reverse engineered nVidia Haiku/BeOS driver.

LT: binary drivers have an avalanche of licensing, security (nVidia driver root hole; one driver portarys Linux’s security as a “myth”), suspend/hibernate problems (ATI hadn’t fixed this FOR A YEAR!!!!), and CANNOT be fixed except by the underfunded-and-usually-staffed-by-1-employee ATI or nVidia driver development houses. Do you really want an overworked employee to have his hidden, sloppy, code running as root on your system? Would you run a web browser as root yourself?

Free drivers don’t have those issues. I’ve never had an issue hibernating with my ATI 7200 (supported when ATI let out drivers specs and hired Tungsten Graphics) or my ATI Mobility, supported by r300 hackers. They worked OUT OF THE BOX, period.

So of course I want to install the nvidia drivers after all I didn’t spent a lot of money on my graphics card to not get 3d acceleration.

If Ubuntu provides them for me all the better.

I get quite annoyed at those people that feel like Ubuntu shouldn’t, to me they can take their 100% open and free campaign elsewhere.[/rant]

Now people will probably think I’m anti open source and free software, but in contrary I rather enjoy it and contribute here and there.

Gosh this comment went completely nowhere, oh well shared my view