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It restricts the use of my hardware in a technical capacity.

Would you really be able to fully use your hardware if there hadn't been any company with some real resources/money behind it? Hardware was difficult 20 years ago and since then it certainly hasn't been getting easier. Some companies do actively support Linux the way the Linux community prefers it (Intel, recently AMD), others support Linux in a less FOSS compatible way (NVidia). Though it is Nvidia's freedom to do it their way. Being not your best friend doesn't automatically makes you an enemy. (Note: you didn't imply that, that's just a general statement)

So yeah, that's why I want FOSS. Want though, not enforce.

Thanks a lot for coming up for your principles, but not trying to force others do to so.

(Just going to put reply here because mobile phone)
Indeed, drivers are complicated stuff these days, and hardware borders on insane. But recent work should allow full performance with open code, or show that it's possible. But something like gallium-nine can't exist on blobs without the company's say-so, which I don't like. That's really all.

And forcing open source I disagree with. I try to use words like encourage, or want, instead of force/must, because ultimately the choice should always be up to the user, and things aren't black & white.

Actually I think people here in this thread should be congratulated. Debate and discussion, without turning sour.

On a note of past hardware, I still recall the pure speed that was r200. Ok, it had a few issues, and hardware (and software) was far less complex back then, but wow did UT fly on r200 drivers!

I still remember the happy days of the mga driver, where it was fully open source, but I think there was a binary firmware to enable multiple monitors (since at the time they were the only ones able to drive more than one screen on a single card.) These days it is fully open source, but sadly only a very few server boards actually have the Matrox video built in.

Speaking of old things and drivers. AMD is the hero of retro operating systems for sure. Since most things are open for it, operating systems like AROS and Amigas have drivers with acceleration instead of being stuck at vesa modes.

I still remember the happy days of the mga driver, where it was fully open source, but I think there was a binary firmware to enable multiple monitors (since at the time they were the only ones able to drive more than one screen on a single card.) These days it is fully open source, but sadly only a very few server boards actually have the Matrox video built in.

Ahh. I remember playing NWN on a G400 on Mandrake Linux back then :D

I still remember the happy days of the mga driver, where it was fully open source, but I think there was a binary firmware to enable multiple monitors (since at the time they were the only ones able to drive more than one screen on a single card.) These days it is fully open source, but sadly only a very few server boards actually have the Matrox video built in.

Ahh. I remember playing NWN on a G400 on Mandrake Linux back then :D

I loved my G400, and the Parhelia was great. Too bad they gave up on trying to compete on 3D speed, otherwise I would have kept buying their cards.

I still remember the happy days of the mga driver, where it was fully open source, but I think there was a binary firmware to enable multiple monitors (since at the time they were the only ones able to drive more than one screen on a single card.) These days it is fully open source, but sadly only a very few server boards actually have the Matrox video built in.

Ahh. I remember playing NWN on a G400 on Mandrake Linux back then :D

I so used to love Mandrake Linux. Was my distribution of choice for some time

I so used to love Mandrake Linux. Was my distribution of choice for some time

I used it for quite a while as well, back when it was new and shiny. I absolutely hated the rpm-based package management though. Dropped the distro for Gentoo at some point, and even if I spent most of my time compiling software, at least portage was (and is) an awesome package manager...

Dropped the distro for Gentoo at some point, and even if I spent most of my time compiling software, at least portage was (and is) an awesome package manager...

Compiling doesn't get in the way most of the time. But there is the odd occasion I need to let things run overnight (llvm needs MAKEOPTS="-j1" or it fails for me, but I suspect that's just me).

This was back when I was rocking an Athlon Thunderbird or maybe an Athlon XP with a slow HDD to boot, so compiling anything took quite a bit of time. And I'm sure Gentoo's infrastructure has been streamlined in many ways since. It's been quite a while.