ubuntu bulletproof x

Douglas McClendon dmc.fedora at filteredperception.org
Mon Sep 3 02:40:36 UTC 2007


Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 9/2/07, Douglas McClendon <dmc.fedora at filteredperception.org> wrote:
>> To me, that seems like it might be enough.  The fact that ubuntu is
>> investing so much energy in this, makes me suggest that there might be
>> something to it.
> 
> We've no idea how much "energy" Ubuntu is investing in this. We do
> know they are re-using code available in hwdata as seen in rhl/fedora.


Cmon man.  The fact that you see so much press about 'bulletproof-x' 
does give you "an idea" about how much "energy" ubuntu is investing in this.

No, it doesn't tell you $1k, or $5k, or $250k, but it does tell you 
something.


> 
>> Which sounds really stupid to me.  It sounds like a trivial thing to me,
>> to modify X so that it doesn't exclusively prefer width over height,
>> resulting in the "hilarious situation" described.
> 
>> Honestly it doesn't sound very hard at all to modify X so that it
>> understands that 1600x1200 is more preferable than 1680x1050.
> 
> Go back and read what Mr. Jackson wrote..again...specifically the
> on-going work concerning using the maximum pixel clock setting to
> discriminate modes.

Why?

Is there something in there describing how that work can automagically 
recreate the information that cannot be retrieved from a 'broken' edid 
hardware implementation, in which the data in the inf is correct?  Going 
beyond 'speculation', I did a little googling, and found these two 
posts, which seem to suggest that the situation Olivier Galibert 
described, and which I have speculated, is a real scenario-

http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2005-October/010716.html

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=83575

Again, I don't claim to be an X hacker, but it sounds like there are 
legitimate situations in which there is *NO* way for the X driver to 
autodetect the monitor specs, while *AT THE SAME TIME* it is possible to 
get useful information from inf files.

Again, I could be wrong, but I really do think your telling me to STFU 
was uncalled for.


> 
>> With that improvement, going only by my speculation, and the
>> indisputable opinions/facts provided by Mr Jackson, I suspect there is
>> room for value in the ubuntu-bulletproof-x method.
> 
> Or perhaps there's none at all, and the work being done to expose inf
> file reading is a dead-end. Until we have a specific example inf file
> situation to discuss, it's impossible to go any further in this
> discussion.  In any event I look forward to seeing Ubuntu supplied
> patches to Xorg to "fix" X so that we can all benefit from better
> hardware detection.


And perhaps, if fedora actually respected ubuntu, and kept up with their 
advances, rather than exclusively playing catch up, they wouldn't be 
having their asses handed to them.

Yes, I know redhat has learned well from microsoft, that the way to be 
successful is to let others do the expensive trailblazing, and then only 
copy the trails that led to success, rather than those that led to 
failure.  I have no problem with that attitude, I think it is 
intelligent.  But please, this is just a mailinglist where people 
routinely talk about blowing goats.  So don't tell me to STFU like the 
rest of the people on this list can't handle the signal/noise ratio.

-dmc




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