Fedora Core 5 Idea

[Michael A. Peters]

On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 15:43 +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 03:14:24PM +0300, Ovidiu Lixandru wrote:
> > 
> > >I too think that binary drivers are a waste of developers' time.
> > 
> > Why should you care, is it FC's developers' time?
> 
> Yes, it is.
> 
> Mike Harris has to spend time explaining to users that he can't fix bugs
> in the nvidia driver because he hasn't got the source code. Kernel hackers
> have to waste their time with crashes from tainted kernels. In the long
> run, all of this adds up and it's time that could be used for better things.

The reality is a LOT of non Fedora controlled Linux websites recommend
NVidia graphics cards for use with Linux. I think that is somewhat
unfortunate, but also is reality.

I don't know of a video card with an open source driver that has the 3D
performance of NVidia, and 3D is really the only reason to run the
nvidia binary drivers anyway (I have no problems with the open source
nvidia drivers for 2D)

If you are going to game in Linux, you need either ATI or NVidia -
unless there is some card with open source 3D drivers I'm not aware of -
and I'm not sure the 3D gaming market in Linux should be ignored by
Fedora.

That being said - there's no reason to let nvidia hold back development,
if something in the boot process doesn't work with nvidia's drivers,
then have an option to disable it. Those who want nvidia can disable it.
Early login should be a boot option, like rhgb, that can be disabled. As
long as that is the case - there's no problem. If that is not the case,
then there is a serious problem with Fedora, non-working xorg.conf
should not interfere with booting a system (and that is why I don't use
rhgb presently)