binary blobs

apparently, GNU have said that Linux is a breach of the terms of the GNU General Public License, by far the most popular license for open source software. The reason is that Linux includes 'binary blobs': drivers and whatnot for hardware, namely video cards, that the source code isn't freely available to view, study, modify and redistribute of, as the GPL states it should be. But the companies that provide these closed source drivers are NOT willing to release the source code (read: don't give a sh!t about linux). This causes a dillemma: either we have closed source drivers and breach the true open source spirit, or we stick to open source software, at a price (e.g no hardware video acceleration). It's a choice that us Linux users have to make.

My screen came, except...

Yeah, the 19" Samsung Syncmaster 920NW widescreen came yesterday, but until it gets replaced by a GeForce FX5200 128MB (which should be coming very soon), the nVidia Vanta 16MB in my linux box is going to have a hard time driving it! That's right, my graphics card is using all the same drivers etc. as before, it's just that it doesn't like screens as big as mine. It works fine, just the graphics is a bit slow.