[Linux-aus] Re: Volari Linux driver suggestions

[Leon Brooks]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:33, 顏哲淵 (Jer Yuan Yan) wrote:
> I wonder is there anyone who is interesting in helping us test this
> beta driver. Currently, we only support Redhat but will soon port to
> other distribution. If you are interesting in becoming a beta tester,
> please feel free to tell me. The only requirement is that you have to
> be a Volari card owner.

In the discussion on the linux-aus mailing list after I forwarded your 
message there, the following points were raised:

  * Giving small amounts of hardware to universities can probably
    get you large amounts of testing and publicity quite cheaply.

    An example that I have in mind is the Wedge project at the
    Australian National University, Canberra http://wedge.anu.edu.au/
    which is currently using NVidia hardware to drive two analog
    video projectors at 120FPS (which they need to do to get
    60FPS-per-eyeball stereo effects) on large screens. If the XGI
    cards have the muscle for it, that would be great leading-edge
    testing and publicity for you.

  * If your drivers are 100% open source (GPLed, not freeware),
    you will automatically gain an enormous amount of support
    from the Linux community and almost certainly the supporters
    of other OSes (like FreeBSD or Solaris) will port your drivers
    for you - no effort, no wages involved for XGI to accomplish
    this.

  * If XGI is interested in doing this, we can find engineers and
    gamers using Linux from among the membership of the Australian
    Local User Groups (LUGs) who would be interested in buying
    discounted XGI cards with the expectation of being able to
    test and eventually use the Linux drivers with them.

    I don't know that XGI has enough market penetration in
    Australia yet to provide a substantial base of test users who
    already have cards, but if XBitLabs are prepared to come the
    party with some serious discounts, we could probably *make* a
    market presence for you.

The Wedge is planned to be a star feature of next year's Linux 
Conference Australia (http://lca2005.linux.org.au/), so if you spend 
some time between now and then getting them enthusiastic about your 
hardware and building a little Linux userbase in Australia, you should 
be able to multiply the publicity effects.

Cheers; Leon

-- 
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Vice President, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Committee Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/            Past Committee Member, Linux Australia