Xorg 1.5 missed the train?

[Jason Tang]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Jason Tang <jtang at magma.ca> wrote:
>   
>> 2/3, 1/3...  1/4...   whatever.  I'm sure you understand my point that there
>> are a large number or eager F9 users in pain out there.
>>     
>
> What exactly do you want at this point? I'm prepared to get in front
> of a camera, and do a video with a sincere apology to nvidia driver
> users that we have chosen to provide better support for video hardware
> with open drivers...than for closed source video drivers.
> But nothing I can do is going to fix the problem in a way that you
> want. We've never claimed to support nvidia drivers. If they
> work..they work. If they don't they don't. We can't fix them...we
> don't support them.  I'm not going to mince words about it.
>
>   
>> Granted, I don't follow the dev group all that closely, so hopefully you can
>> forgive me for thinking that what we seem to have is a circle of groups
>> blaming one another for their own collective failure to deliver.
>>     
>
> Xorg has an open transparent process... we have an open transparent
> process. We can't do anything more than be open and transparent.  If
> Nvidia wants to have a discussion with Xorg concerning development and
> release cycle I'm sure that would be a fascinating thing to read.
>
>   
>> Of course, I can and will wait for the drivers I need to work before
>> upgrading my primary system.  Perhaps most of us 'users' would have been
>> content with a heads-up about the nvidia breakage, and maybe a rough
>> timeline of when to expect a fix.
>>     
>
> We've known about the nvidia breakage for months now...since the
> beginning of the F9 development phase really, when the snapshots of
> the new xserver were put in rawhide..back when few of the open video
> drivers worked. There was more than enough time for any contributor
> who cared about the NVidia issue to submit something to the release
> notes process specifically about the known NVidia problems.
> We have an open community driven process for the release notes.  If
> there is something specific you or any NVidia driver user wants added
> perhaps you should look into participating in that Beat writing
> process or talk to the Beat Writer for Xorg.
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/ReleaseNotes/Beats
> Obviously we can't point to 3rd party drivers...even if they did work.
>
> But how can we tell you when Nvidia will fix things? Nvidia's
> development process is opaque, they don't tell people when to expect
> driver updates. We cannot impact when and what NVidia chooses to do
> what they do, nor can we force to be more forth coming as to their
> timelines.
>
>   
>> That way there would not have been so many struggling now.
>>     
>
> Honestly I don't see how.  There is absolutely nothing we can do to
> impact how Nvidia will respond when X needs to make an ABI change.
> All we could do is put a big notice in our release notes that Fedora
> does not support 3rd party proprietary hardware drivers..full stop.
> Our release notes reference a long manifesto(which I didn't write even
> though it's length would suggest I did) which amounts to such a
> statement.  In the future I'll insist on a bolder statement explictly
> stating that we do not support 3rd party drivers.  If the work..great.
> If they don't...they don't..take it up with the driver developers.
>
> -jef
>
>   
Actually, for a long time, nvidia provided better support than ATI.  And 
for a long time Intel wasn't really much of a contender at all.  IIRC, 
ATI only went the open-source route recently.

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to discuss the issue.  I've been a 
RH/Fedora user since RH5 and only want the most out of my distro of 
choice.  Sometimes I ask A LOT.   Lots of good posts to consider.