Hello Steve
  Sorry for this inconvenient way of responding but I am presently stuck on
webmail and if there is a way to reply-as-quoted-text within the letter
body I don't know of it.  So I'll just try to keep it inline with your
reply.

  IMHO offerring instances of how a manufacturer writes drivers for
non-mainstream systems, especially if said drivers can be easily ported to
OS2 is hardly off-topic, especially when responding to a post questioning
just that.  As far as being incorrect regarding ATi drivers, I am glad to
hear they are getting involved. I'll get out of order here and aswer the
last comment here instead since it applies here as well.  nVidia's drivers,
while distributed as a recommended binary install, can also be run with a
switch to extract source.  Unfortunately due to their involvement with so
many other companies, as they explain it, it is next to impossible to make
them Open Source, but they can be compiled.  While it may now be a bit of a
stretch it is surely not impossible, assuming the proprietary stuff
wouldn't be affected, to port such a driver or even reverse engineer it,
given the demand since the nVidia driver is not exactly binary only.
Considering some *nix applications can be compiled 

in OS/2 given sufficient requisite runtimes, compiler, etc (I haven't
belonged to the Unix-OS2 forum for a long time so I am not up on thier
progress) I don't see how this can be totally ruled out.  If that is
ignorance on my part, fine, but I never expected to see SBLive drivers and
they are here as just one example.  The biggest issue here is demand, which
I doubt is growing, unfortunately.  So unlikely may be the best word since
nobody should enjoy having to try to prove a negative.

  As fior OS/2 being more like NT, that seems to depend on who you believe.
 Some IBM-based sites claim that MS suddenly changed from "MS OS/2 v3
NT" to "MS Windows NT v3" claiming a man headhunted from
Digital IIRC provided the "leap" and point out he was under a
strict non-disclosure agreement and further claim that the main difference
is Billy removing the pre-emptive barrier between software and hardware,
thus the birth of the BSOD.  They also note similarities even to this day
between the HPFS and NTFS.

  These things may or may not be true but it is a safe bet that
considerable gain was had at IBM's expense creating the vast difference
between NT and Dos-based 16bit (at best) Windows.  However since OS/2 was
dreamt up as an OpSys that could be employed on all categories of computers
from desktop to mainframe (back when there were 2 more catgories between)
and began as a networking system, unlike DOS, and since many mainframes ran
IBM versions of Unix (even JFS came from AIX, iirc) it is a reasonable
assumption that IBM built on what they already had as mature code.  A
Russian hacker site calls OS/2 "a better Unix than Linux" and
though I don't agree with that it sure seems like the folks at
"Unix-OS2" are some serious heavyweights and remain convinced
that the two can be fairly easily combined.  Interestingly enough they were
using Slackware, a BSD derived Linux distro, as a template or at least were
back when I attended.  

  The point is then that while there is indeed considerable likeness to NT,
I happen to agree with IBM's decision that Billy's desire to compromise
such a basic and important fundamental issue was a deal breaker since it
removed an extremely important safeguard and stability factor making NT and
it's derivatives STILL unable to handle truly mission-critical application.
 So while I may wear some clothes that look like Lance Armstrong's and wear
my hair like that I am by no means ready for the Tour de France.

Sincerely
Jimmy


> On Tue, 06 Sep 2005 03:40:27 +0000, rallee2{at}comcast.net wrote:
> 
> >nVidia is on the "dozenth" version of Linux drivers for
video while ATi, AFAIK, 
> >has yet to produce even v1.
> 
> Off-topic, but incorrect.  Nvidia's binary drivers for Linux are more highly 
> regarded than ATI's, but ATI has had them available for a while now.  Prior to 
> that (up to the Radeon 8500), they contributed the source code to projects such 
> as 
> XFree86 and DRI to make drivers available.
> 
> >many Linux fans are also OS/2 fans and realize their common
posix/unix roots.
> 
> OS/2 is still a lot closer to Windows NT than Unix.
> 
> > I am not a driver programmer but I understand it is fairly easy
to port from 
> > Linux to OS/2 and that is how, for example, we got SBLive support
> 
> Completely irrelevant when it comes to binary only drivers.
> 
> 
> -----------
> "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly,
> while bad people will find a way around the laws."
>      - Plato (427-347 B.C.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 


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