No FOSS drivers for Dell e521 / Nvidia MCP51 High Definition Audio

[Ben Scott]

On 1/30/07, Michael ODonnell <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:
> I knew in advance that it'd have the Nvidia graphics HW but I wish
> I'd done my homework better because I might not have bought this
> unit if I'd realized how heavily Nvidia-centric it is:

  Other than the video, that's all core logic, which is a single
chipset these days.

  There aren't many companies making core logic chipsets today.
There's Intel, there's VIA, and there's NVidia.  I believe SiS dropped
out of that race.  I don't know if AMD/ATI has anything current other
than their system-on-a-chip solutions.

  Amazingly enough, Intel doesn't make a chipset which works with an
AMD CPU.  ;-)

  I have little recent experience, but I know VIA used to be pretty
low-end -- even crappy.  I wonder what's worse -- crappy hardware
that's well supported (if it is, anyone know?), or good hardware
that's poorly supported?  :-/

  Also: Please forgive me, but I can't resist pointing out that you
bought a $450 computer and got exactly what you paid for.  ;-)  There
are plenty of vendors which offer excellent Linux support.  Buy from
them, rather than Dell.  You'll get proper support and a real Linux
company gets the business.  If enough people do so, Dell will get the
message.  As long as people put up with what Dell offers now, they
won't improve.

  Which is not say that Dell is the worst company I've dealt with.
They do put some good money into Linux on the server side, and I'd
term their Linux support there as "fair" to "good", depending on what
you want.  But I'd characterize Dell's workstation Linux support as
"non-existent".

-- Ben