Marketing fail? I don't think so...
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Sander_Marechal May 12, 2009 4:14 PM EDT |
From the article:Quoting:When we begin to understand what we usually referred to as a single operating system called "Linux" as in fact a market of various different operating system and software components which can be combined to make different operating systems in their own right, then we may begin to understand the flaws in trying to market this market of products as a single product. ... Suffice it to say: Marketing FAIL. Uh, no. Products are marketed like that all the time, precisely because a single brand (distro) cannot effectively market themselves individually. Example: Chicken. There are plenty of commercials on Dutch TV promoting chicken. Not just KFC, or a specific brand, or a chain of poulterers or something. Just generic "chicken. Same for fish. Same for cheese. Closer to home, the banks here have joined up to promote safe browsing habits and computer security products (generic, no brands). To stick with the cars analogy from the article. Imagine the early days of the car. The total market is still small. Most people still use horse and carriage. In this market you do not only need to promote your brand of car (parts) but also sell people on cars as a concept. In this kind of market it makes sense to promote cars in a generic, brand-less campaign (alongside brand-specific campaigns of course). Comparing today's car market with the Linux market is a false analogy. You can't grow the car market as a whole by promoting cars. People who want a car and can afford a car all have cars. All you can do is sell them new, different cars. Not so for the Linux market. We can gain tremendous market share by stealing it from other OSes. |
| jdixon May 12, 2009 4:25 PM EDT |
> Closer to home, the banks here have joined up to promote safe browsing habits and computer security products (generic, no brands). Did they ever mention the option of not using Windows? Yeah, I know, but I can dream can't I? > We can gain tremendous market share by stealing it from other OSes. I'd prefer to call it "assuming our rightful position amongst the OSes". :) |
| hkwint May 12, 2009 5:39 PM EDT |
Quoting:Did they ever mention the option of not using Windows? In fact they don't mention a particular OS at all; see for yourself: http://www.3xkloppen.nl/doe-de-test/ Only in the longer explanation they say "your OS (for example Windows)" So implicitly they mention it. Quoting:Example: Chicken. There are plenty of commercials on Dutch TV promoting chicken. Fun part here is that the funding comes both from the EC (our own tax money) and taxes that 'chicken' companies pay. You might almost wonder why they do promote chicken but not penguins. |
| Libervis May 12, 2009 6:27 PM EDT |
Sander, those are fair points, but I think you're making an assumption which might not be true - that what is usually referred to as Linux is actually all that new and unique with respect to the market as a whole. Sure there is more security, but they can get that on OS X as well. Sure there are less restrictions and they can buy code modifications, but people who actually care about that seem to be a small sub market. As for it being free as in cost, that's simple price competition, and in case of "Linux" it's not quite working as well as one would expect elsewhere. You're basically comparing Windows and Mac OS X with "horse carriages" and Linux with cars, but I wouldn't even make such a distinction. There are operating systems, created in different ways and offered under different terms, but their differences aren't that fundamental to justify the kind of contrast you try to portray. And nobody would argue that use of operating systems at all needs generic marketing. And then there is the case of Ubuntu which I think is a case in point. A lot of people nowadays speak of Ubuntu in place of Linux because it is the Ubuntu experience specifically which they've been introduced to, not a generic "Linux experience". |
| Sander_Marechal May 12, 2009 7:45 PM EDT |
Libervis: Linux is different. Just like OSX and Windows are also different. If it were not different then there would be no barriers to switching. It's easy for a user to change from a Ford Focus to a Suzuki Swift. It's hard to switch an OSX user to Windows or Linux. I'm not saying that OSX and Windows are horse carriages. I am saying that the analogy breaks down. It's impossible to say that generic Linux marketing doesn't work. It has never been tried. All that has been tested is our mount-to-mount v.s. their big budget marketing and big budget won. Your Ubuntu example points that out nicely. Canonical knows how to market and they get the converts. The Ubuntu pie grows. A small distro can never achieve that on their own, but they can band together with other distros and do generic Linux marketing and grow the pie for everyone. |
| Libervis May 12, 2009 8:14 PM EDT |
I didn't mean they're not different at all and I can agree it may be easier to switch to a new car than to a new OS. I just think the difference isn't as dramatic as the difference between horse carriages and cars that you need to consider it a whole new category. Besides, if it really is that different that's kinda getting close to just proving my point, only from a different direction. If Linux truly is that game changing then it's no longer an OS. It's something else, just like cars are something quite different from horse carriages. It's a whole new category. And couldn't perhaps that something else be the ecosystem or framework or market that I've called it where an OS became merely a subset? I agree big budget marketing is missing, but one possible reason for that could be that those who may be interested in advertising Linux are having trouble picking just *which one* to advertise. How *does* a company advertise Linux exactly? What *exactly* is it to be selling? All of the Linux distros at once? I don't see how that can work. You can advertise Ubuntu, Fedora or SuSE and in that case you are advertising something substantial. Even for your generic marketing idea to work, you gotta focus on something specific. So what do you mean by "Linux" exactly? A kernel? If it's the idea of unrestrictive software licensing, a more precise thing to advertise would be GNU. If it's the bazaar style of development we already have "Open Source" for that.. See what I mean? |
| jdixon May 12, 2009 8:19 PM EDT |
> How *does* a company advertise Linux exactly? What *exactly* is it to be selling? Well, they can start by using the term. Dell could be putting a Tux logo on their Ubuntu machines and proudly proclaiming *Linux* on their pages. But no, they won't do that, it might upset their main OS provider. |
| Sander_Marechal May 13, 2009 2:25 AM EDT |
Quoting:It's a whole new category. It's a platform. And that's quite an old term and pretty well known. For a Linux distro to grown ther market share they can do two thing. Either they switch people from another distro to their distro (get a bigger slice of the same pie), or they can grow the size of the Linux platform as a whole (make the whole pie bigger, thereby growing their slice). The former is only possible with brand-specific advertising. The latter can be achieved by generic advertising or by the large brands individually. Small brands have no hope of successfully doing the latter on their own. Quoting:What *exactly* is it to be selling? All of the Linux distros at once? You sell the features of the platform, not the features of the individual distros. It's really not that complicated because there are plenty of great features that the Linux platform as a whole has. It's just that nobody has ever ponied up the money to do it. |
| Libervis May 13, 2009 8:04 AM EDT |
@jdixon: Shouldn't offering Ubuntu be upsetting their main OS provider too? It's the most popular Linux based OS after all. IMHO, MS should be more worried about THAT then Dell advertising "Linux" which, despite all of the good willed attempts of you guys here to explain how it actually can represent something cohesive, in practice never does (that is, it always requires us to explain to people what it is). They call it Ubuntu, and I say better for them. @Sander: I have no problem with smaller distros banding together, but that's a strategy that's up to them to take up on their own accord. What you seem to suggest seems somewhat backwards.. advertising all distros as a platform by a generic brand regardless of whom among the distro providers want to be in that particular band or not. Basically, we're just slapping the brand on them whether they like it or not, because.. I guess, we're the mighty "community". ;) As for the features of a platform.. I don't know, I am still not sold because you're still not selling me a specific product or a specific service. It's too vague. Which features? You could count all of the things that make all of the distros in existence somehow special, plus all of the things that make all of the software ever distributed in distros good too.. then you'd have all of the features of this "platform", and it'd be a practically useless heftily long list which contains a bunch of stuff that really aren't selling points cause other OS already provides them. Or you could, which is what you probably mean, advertise only the features which are common to all distros, but then you actually have too little to offer because it comes down to unrestrictive licensing and whatever you can muster as superior to OS X and Windows in the basic kernel, GNU and Xorg. You can't quite advertise KDE and GNOME because not all distros use either. And how superior exactly the kernel, GNU tools and Xorg really are to alternatives is even arguable, especially given that the end user doesn't care so much about these back end things and cares much more about the final experience, which you simply can't sell as a "platform" based on these common features. You can best hope to sell Linux as a platform based on common features only to developers, but I'm mainly talking about desktop users. |
| jdixon May 13, 2009 9:29 AM EDT |
> Shouldn't offering Ubuntu be upsetting their main OS provider too? It's the most popular Linux based OS after all. Oh, I'm sure it does. But Ubuntu is a brand owned by a corporation. A corporation can be fought, bribed, or even bought out. That make it far less of a threat to Microsoft than the generic Linux brand. |
| Libervis May 13, 2009 9:36 AM EDT |
Or perhaps with the generic Linux brand there's *nothing* to fight to begin with. :P Yes it's a corporation. And if it fails another company can take its place. Being a company supporting a Linux based OS doesn't somehow preclude it from benefiting from the advantages of Linux licensing... (tho I wanna chuckle every time I use the word "licensing" .. long story..) |
| jdixon May 13, 2009 9:44 AM EDT |
> Or perhaps with the generic Linux brand there's *nothing* to fight to begin with. :P Then why is Microsoft so afraid of it? |
| Libervis May 13, 2009 9:53 AM EDT |
Is it? If it who says it's not actually afraid of dieing a death of hundred paper cuts, each being a single distro? Xandros, Linpus, Ubuntu Netbook Edition (and Easy Peasy) on netbooks. Android on smartphones.. SLED and RHEL on enterprise desktops and servers. Yeah.. if they're afraid, I think that would be closer to precisely identifying what it's afraid of.. closer than just saying "Linux did it!". :) Not to mention thinking in terms of specific projects makes us more likely to identify what works and what doesn't. When we just slap a Linux label around we just see it as an amalgam.. we see a forest, miss the trees that do all the foresting. :) |
| jdixon May 13, 2009 10:13 AM EDT |
> When we just slap a Linux label around we just see it as an amalgam.. we see a forest, miss the trees that do all the foresting. :) But when you're advertising a vacation spot, you don't usually concentrate on the individual trees, you advertise the forest. :) There are multliple ways of looking at things, and sometimes more than one of them are valid. |
| Libervis May 13, 2009 10:35 AM EDT |
There are multiple ways of looking at things, true, I'm just saying this particular view seems more effective to me and makes more logical sense. Though in the end all I'm doing is defending a point until someone proves it baseless. However you wanna do your advocacy is up to you or however a Linux marketing firm (Linux Foundation? FSF? LOL?) or a particular distro.. I mean Linux based OS, want to do their marketing, is up to them. I'm just giving them ideas. :) For some reason I think corporates would take this up far easier than the Linux crowd. :D Maybe I should talk to marketing departments of some big firms. :P |
| jdixon May 13, 2009 10:52 AM EDT |
> Maybe I should talk to marketing departments of some big firms. :P Can't hurt. The worst they can do is say no. |
| keithcu May 14, 2009 4:25 PM EDT |
Libervis, > Is it? If it who says it's not actually afraid of dieing a death of hundred paper cuts, each being a single distro? As a former Microsoft employee, I can tell you they are not afraid of death by 100 radically different distros. Because they know it would never happen. Even people in the Linux community complain about the inefficiency of separate package formats! Don't start thinking that a tower of babel is a good thing! |
| gus3 May 14, 2009 5:16 PM EDT |
So why does every attempt at a unified package management system fall flat on its figurative face? |
| TxtEdMacs May 14, 2009 6:21 PM EDT |
gus, Damn you! Who told you this was a fact based thread. Strongly held opinions are paramount. So get a life and sin a little. YBT |
| Libervis May 14, 2009 7:04 PM EDT |
Wtf.. If anyone here is thinking I'm *defending* unification reread what I said.... I DON'T wanna build a tower of babel, just the opposite. Let each distro be considered an OS in its own right and if some of them wanna band together in an alliance on their own terms then great. As a result whatever consolidation is perceived would actually reflect some reality. Calling everything, consolidated or not, unified or disparate, chaotic or orderly, a single thing defined as an OS is like calling a whole forest of forests a single tree. Not quite reflecting reality and as usual when working with theories that are incompatible with reality you pretty much end up failing at what you're trying to do. You can't cut metal with a plastic kitchen knife, even if you call the knife a KnifeThatCutsEverything(TM). |
| caitlyn May 14, 2009 7:48 PM EDT |
Inara: I supported unification.
Mal: Well, somebody had to. Linux as Browncoats. I sort of like it except... the Browncoats lost. |
| jdixon May 14, 2009 8:12 PM EDT |
> I can tell you they are not afraid of death by 100 radically different distros. Which only goes to show that they don't really understand Linux. Those 100 different distros have far more in common that they do differences. |
| caitlyn May 14, 2009 8:23 PM EDT |
I agree with jdixon. Linux is Linux is Linux. The differences in distro amount to packaging systems, package lists, and GUI tools. The kernel is the same. In most cases so are the core libraries. Under the hood it's all Linux. |
| gus3 May 14, 2009 8:28 PM EDT |
I was responding to keithcu's "tower of babel" comment. For myself, I don't care if Linux systems ever get a unified package management system, or not. Heck, Slackware has Patrick's official pkgtools, but also slackpkg (official), slapt-get (3rd party), and slacktrack (slackware-extras). I suppose that's like a North Carolinian, a Texan, a hillbilly, and an Aussie, all speaking various dialects of English. |
| gus3 May 14, 2009 8:33 PM EDT |
@caitlyn: What do you think of Debian's support for the FreeBSD and Hurd kernels? (their policy of support, not necessarily the implementation and progress, which for Hurd has been awful) |
| caitlyn May 14, 2009 8:44 PM EDT |
@gus: It's interesting, I suppose. I never gave it much thought. Once you use a different kernel it's no longer Linux, of course. |
| hkwint May 14, 2009 8:57 PM EDT |
Quoting:So why does every attempt at a unified package management system fall flat on its figurative face? The answer here is really simple: Network effects leading to lazy users & devels who are locked-in to a certain platform. Recently I have used Autopackage (provided by Dutch tax service?!), worked like a charm**. In the past I have been using Klik, worked like a charm too, and for the part that didn't, it seems it will be fixed in Klik2. Nonetheless, most people don't know it, never used it, and don't start maintaining packages for it. Apart from that, switching from one CLI-package manager to another is a PITA. Once I used pkg_add, when starting with Gentoo I had to learn package management again all over. Then I had to learn rpm for LPI-cert, indeed; started again. Then I did some stuff with Debian, indeed, had to start all over. Conclusion here is I had to learn 4 implementations of the same idea four times! I had that time, but everytime I started learning with dislike. Learning how to make apt/ebuild/rpm takes even far more time. Look in the Microsoft Evangelism document; it says: "Once developers know one platform, they won't learn another". That lead to their conclusion that their platforms (Silverlight etc.) are more important than Windows! With the advance of GUI-package managers, initiatives like PackageKit (freedesktop.org), Klik(2), Autopackage and package-managers with different front/backends this might become a thing of the past; at least I hope. Quoting:> How *does* a company advertise Linux exactly? What *exactly* is it to be selling? Like they always did: They advertise their cool device without mentioning Linux. That's because for most devices, OS is not that interesting to the consumer, and when it is, companies selling Linux-devices still want to distinguish from other companies. They can't do so by mentioning it runs Linux. They can do their marketing by tailoring Linux to their needs, and then showing their cool gadgets. This is exactly the way LiMo works. Their whole philosophy is the consumer should buy LiMo gadgeds because the gadgets are cool and are mady by for example Samsung; the consumer is not going to buy it because it runs Linux or LiMo. Because advertising LiMo is the opposite of the marketing strategy, (almost) nobody heard of LiMo. 30+ devices run LiMo. Only 2 or 3 run Android. Feel the difference? It's the way Google sells Android, they don't sell Android Linux. And then in turn Vodafone doesn't even mention Android; they just say "Phone with all Google Apps". Because the consumer doesn't care about Android, LiMo or WinMobile. They want to use anything that resembles Google Maps, send photo's to other devices, share contacts etc. They don't care what it runs, as long as it works. Same thing for TiVo: Do they mention Linux? Same thing with Philips / Digital HardDisk recorders: Do they mention Linux? In fact, even most geeks don't know the latter runs Linux. Neither do I; though my parents own one. The only way to find out is by reading the manual; if the device runs Linux then Philips provides a phone number you can call to ask for source code (GPL2, huh!) Nobody ever called BTW. And does Apple promote their iPhone by mentioning what OS it runs? No, they don't. The only 'small' (compared to mobiles) market where OS matters is on the desk/laptop. The only reason consumers are aware is because Windows advertises itself everywhere it can (even Symbian phones doesn't give a big 'Symbian login screen' AFAIK), and OEMs advertise their products with Windows. That's why people know Windows sucks, and lots of times they don't blame their computer, but they blame Microsoft. I'd say the desktop market is an exception to all TiVo / Android talk above where OS doesn't matter. So the only reason to start generic Linux-marketing would be for the desktop. I'm sorry I wasted the amount of space above to reach that simple conclusion. Well, as long as consumers don't have a choice when OS for their desktop is concerned, there's no value in marketing Linux in first place. It's not a lack of marketing that causes Linux to fail, it are secret contracts* that forbid Dell etc. to even _do_ Linux marketing that stops Linux at this point. The free market fails, not Linux marketing. So guess where Canonical/RedHat/Novell has to spend their efforts! However, nobody apart from Microsoft is selling PC-OS'es to consumers (something I suddenly realized yesterday in bed, why did I never realize this before?), so no company is going to complain if Microsoft is screwing the free market for consumer-PC-OSes. (Sorry for the monstrous term of consumer-PC-OSes, but just consumer-OSes would not take Apple into account). *Those are assumed to exist, but not proven. Otherwise they wouldn't be secret. Doh! **Almost, if I wouldn't be using an exotic unmaintained window manager which doesn't know what app to start for certain types of documents (it only had to start Firefox, but didn't!), it would probably have worked. |
| gus3 May 14, 2009 9:41 PM EDT |
hans, you have the beginnings of an LXer article there, if you'd just expand your ideas a little. /me ducks and runs... But seriously, those are very good points. Hopefully, I can remember them for the next Ohio Linux Fest. |
| Libervis May 14, 2009 10:29 PM EDT |
hkwint, If it's known that MS bribes vendors like Dell into selling Linux, one simplistic method of winning over that is to simply offer Dell more than MS does. Who would do that? Well.. I don't know, but aside from Linux Foundation I don't see anyone except companies who have their own Linux based OSs, like RedHat, Novell and especially Canonical, which already had some success with Dell. I'm not entirely sure that what MS does with Dell is wrong. I guess it's wrong only if Dell isn't forthcoming about the fact that they're being paid to advertise and sell Windows and instead lie and try to pretend that they're selling windows only because there's more demand for windows. Someone committing fraud isn't a failure of the free market, but an anti-free market activity any more than it is a failure of peace and non-violence that someone shoots someone. Anyway.. what you say still seems to favor the point of advertising each distro as an OS and experience in itself than generic markeing. At least then we don't pretend to be talking about a single thing where we in fact see multiple nor confuse newcomers when we ask them "which distro", newcomers which expected a single DVD or a download link to a "Linux OS". If there is no single download link or a DVD of Linux OS, don't advertise it as such. Offer the distro as an OS instead. I don't know how much simpler can I get with that point. I don't know how can anything else be called better marketing or anything other than instilling confusion. In the end though, I think it doesn't stand a chance on the desktop. MS is making a little too many improvements lately, taking too many good reviews and having some sensible consistent marketing that actually knows what it sells. And I don't even have to mention Apple. |
| jdixon May 14, 2009 11:13 PM EDT |
> In the end though, I think it doesn't stand a chance on the desktop. I disagree, but that's to be expected. On the Microsoft end, their improvements are miniscule, the reviews are the typical pro Microsoft drivel that is always put out, and their marketing (while good) is still reeling from the disaster which was and is Vista. The only reason Windows 7 is considered significantly better than Vista is the improvement in processor power since Vista came out. It's essentially Vista SP 2. The netbook and low power/quiet/green computing trend is not going to go away, it's going to increase. It's a wave Microsoft cannot ride, but Linux can. |
| Libervis May 14, 2009 11:25 PM EDT |
Well, let's hope so. |
| jezuch May 15, 2009 2:13 AM EDT |
There are several countries that have a motto along the lines of: "Unity in diversity" Linux is like that. Don't kill that, for $DEITY's sake! |
| hkwint May 15, 2009 4:54 AM EDT |
Quoting:I'm not entirely sure that what MS does with Dell is wrong. Depends, I was hinting at a possible agreement between Dell and MS that forbids Dell to sell as much Linux as they'd like - a bit like Intel did with Mediamarkt and others 'OEMs' vs. AMD. Quoting:Someone committing fraud isn't a failure of the free marketIt is if nobody objects I guess. Quoting:what you say still seems to favor the point of advertising each distro as an OS and experience in itself than generic markeing. These are observations I made, what's happening right now in the market. So I'd say the ones selling Linux - devices - at this moment, favour advertising the distro, if they advertise their OS at all. Quoting:Offer the distro as an OS instead.You're not alone: http://symphonyos.com/cms/?page_id=2 is the one I can think of right now; though not popular.nor well maintained. Quoting:On the Microsoft end, their improvements are miniscule I disagree, but that's to be expected. I have to admit I didn't use it (those Win7 iso's may be laden with 3d party-malware), but apart from that the list at Wikipedia looked decent. Seems they have caught up with Linux (distro's?) a bit. But where Linux has all those features available, but not out of the box in a uniform / integrated way, Windows 7 will I guess. However, in the light of the number of the employees and money Microsoft has available, improvements are indeed miniscule, and one would wonder why they still didn't succeed at delivering a secure OS. ED: Staring at Fedora 11 release Featurelist, indeed the improvements in Win7 are miniscule. |
| caitlyn May 18, 2009 3:26 PM EDT |
Hans: Have you looked at the Fedora 12 feature list yet? Yes, it's out already :) |
| hkwint May 18, 2009 7:43 PM EDT |
Well, I just recovered from the major disappointment that was booting Fedora11 - it didn't work on my all to commonly used nVidia 6600 LE. It can have all the features of the world, but I'd like it to work. I should file a bug I assume, but I'm lazy and I didn't take the official road as well (made liveSD). |
| caitlyn May 18, 2009 8:50 PM EDT |
That's one of the nVidia cards not supported by the new drivers and new X.org. You probably won't have any better luck with Mandriva or Ubuntu. This is precisely why Vector Linux has three nVidia proprietary driver and the open source driver for users to choose from. It's the only way to support every possible nVidia chipset. I haven't figured out why Vector is the only distro to do this. |
| Libervis May 18, 2009 10:07 PM EDT |
Looks like you were shafted just as I was shafted with my ATI card. It worked perfectly on intrepid with proprietary drivers (yes, a former free software zealot uses proprietary drivers, ZOMG no way!). ;) In all honesty tho.. while I'm not in the know on the details of what exactly has gone on in Xorg to make it absolutely necessary to make the current version of Xorg incompatible with old drivers, I certainly did not like learning that my "upgrade" to Jaunty was just as much of a downgrade. At least there are somewhat functional free ATI drivers, but they're far from optimal and in KDE4 you can't even run default desktop effects without experiencing total system freezes (requiring hard reboot). Still, I realize that if full ATI drivers were free software in the first place Xorg people could have adapted it themselves and compatibility would continue. Xorg however knew this wasn't the case and for some reason broke the drivers anyway.. Suffice it to say.. Linux experience, or shall we say Ubuntu experience is quite mediocre for me nowadays, but unfortunately nothing else really offers perfection. Best one's got nowadays is dual booting, VMing, WINEing etc.. Software industry is pretty F-d up compared to what it could be. /rant :S |
| keithcu May 18, 2009 11:37 PM EDT |
You can have diversity in free software with cooperation. Look at the diverse set of articles in Wikipedia. |
| hkwint May 19, 2009 6:10 PM EDT |
Quoting:That's one of the nVidia cards not supported by the new drivers and new X.org. Oh no, please tell me I'm dreaming. Linux is 'supposed' to work on old hardware if Windows doesn't. This card is only three and a half years old! Quoting:while I'm not in the know on the details of what exactly has gone on in Xorg Neither am I, though I suppose it's DRI2. Here's the thing: Gentoo used to be cutting edge, but they only recently upgraded to Xorg 1.5 - while newer versions of Fedora & co come with Xorg 1.6 and it won't take long before they come with Xorg 1.7. Then the question would be: If Gentoo deems the software not ready for a large audience, then why do distro's which are supposed to be user friendly and just work? Partly this is because Gentoo has changed; it's not that cutting edge anymore and even doesn't provide an ebuild for Xorg 1.6 at this time, but it's a writing on the wall I guess: If you have old hardware, you'd better run Windows XP. |
| Sander_Marechal May 19, 2009 6:44 PM EDT |
Caitlyn: Can you point me to more info in the Nvidia/Xorg issue? I can't find anything about it. |
| caitlyn May 19, 2009 7:47 PM EDT |
I need to find the reference for the 66xx series again. I did find a reference to the 71xx series not working in the Mandriva Errata for 2009.1: nVidia drivers 71xx dropped nvidia71xx drivers are not longer included in Mandriva 2009.1 causing some old GPUs to no longer work with nvidia driver. This is because upstream (nVidia) didn't released any version of these legacy drivers compatible with current xserver version (link) http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_Errata#nVidia_drivers_71x... Let me do some searching and I'll get back to you. I believe I found it either in one of the distro bug trackers on in a forum post. I should have bookmarked it, but... |
| hkwint May 19, 2009 8:00 PM EDT |
Quoting:nvidia71xx drivers are not longer included in Mandriva 2009.1 causing some old GPUs to no longer work with nvidia driver. That's a major disappointment, does that mean I will have to use WinXP - but this time SP4 (7?) - again? Bummer... |
| jezuch May 20, 2009 2:03 AM EDT |
Quoting:That's a major disappointment Typical of proprietary software, don't you think? |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!