FC4 does not work, "out of the box" for me; GUI/X11 fails

[Les Mikesell]

On Sun, 2005-10-30 at 13:34, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 12:24:27PM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > > I'm well aware of the reasons...  But support for their hardware (or
> > > rather usability of it) suffers because of them.
> > 
> > If you are going to assign blame here, consider that there are
> > several parties involved in creating this problem and that
> 
> If you are refering to the kernel developers, their decision is based
> on not allowing a fixed API to stand in the way of making the OS
> better. 

Oh, so you are complaining because it is so much better?

> This is the right decision; failure to adhere to such a
> policy is one of the things that has made, for example, Microsoft
> Windows so unstable over the years.  Their initial design was flawed,
> but they could not fix it without breaking everyone.  So it stayed
> broken.  And it remains broken today...  Yay!

Yes, you should be able to get it wrong a few times.  We've
lived through that already.  How many years has Linux been
around now?  If it isn't right yet, it probably isn't ever
going to be.  Freeze the thing and give up.  And don't make
that argument about Microsoft unless you are prepared to
demonstrate how much better your video works under Linux.
MS has done plenty of things wrong, but dealing with vendor's
video drivers isn't one of them.

> > other popular OS's do not cause end-user problems by refusing
> > to include vendor-supplied binaries.  
> 
> I'm assuming that here, you mean other free OSes.

No. 

> Vendors which only
> sell their software for profit must be excluded, because they do not
> give away the source code and binaries for their OS, and therefore
> need not be concerned about paying licensing fees or signing NDAs.

You've been drinking too much of that GPL kool-aid.  Source is
not necessary for something to be free.  It would be entirely
possible to link in vendor-supplied binaries if both sides
were reasonable about it. 

> They have that luxury -- they can afford it.  Linux is free software,
> and as such does not have the same luxury.  Why can't Linux vendors
> afford to pay license fees?  If most of their users aren't paying for
> the software, how can they collect them?  It's a fundamental necessity
> of free software.

That would be a good argument if there were some reason to think
license fees would be involved.  

> [From the license agreement for NVidia's Linux drivers]
> 
> Nevermind that this clause is completely preposterous, and that NVidia
> is being retarded.  The end-user is free to download the software as
> many times as they like, agreeing to this agreement each time, and use
> it on as many systems as they have such hardware...  Nevertheless the
> terms of the EULA prohibit copying and distributing the drivers.

Even given that, it could be fully-automatic when the hardware
was detected and the internet was available.

> > Nvidia can't legally change their position no matter how much the
> > GPL crowd wants to pretend that it is their fault.
> 
> Why not?

Nvidia assembles components manufactured by others and has
to abide by the NDA's that come with them.  They can't release
source even if they wanted.
 
> > But they do make an effort to provide native drivers.
> 
> Well, we're using different definitions of "native" here.  I mean
> native in the sense of code which is included and properly integrated
> into the kernel source tree.

I think you are overestimating the value of access to the source
code.  Compare the video on the Mac and Windows even on hardware
where the Linux folks have all the specs and their own sources.
See if you can find one where you can identify what you've
gained from that source code.
 
> > > This is largely impossible.  In this case we're dealing with the
> > > kernel, so the reasons are slightly different (but very similar)
> > > than for application programs.
> > 
> > The reason here is not technical.
> 
> Yes, it is.  It is a technical decision on the part of the kernel
> developers which causes this to be (essentially) impossible for the
> vendor.  The decision is to make the kernel better, at the cost of
> stability.

If it were better we wouldn't have anything to talk about here.
We are talking about problems, remember?

> > Other OS's have managed to solve this problem.
> 
> You mean like Windows?  It's a lot better than it used to be, but I've
> seen far too many blue screens for that to hold water with me... 

I blame most of those blue screens om Microsoft's own coding
but since Windows NT SP6a it has been possible to keep a
windows box running long enough to call it stable.

> If
> you're talking about other OSes, I can't really speak to that.  I have
> little familiarity with the other free Unixes or with Mac OS X.

If you are going to make a claim about the Linux approach being
'better' you need to be able to point out some other things that
are worse. OS X would be a good one to compare since they use a lot
of nVidia video.

> Other commercial OSes may be more stable, but most of them also
> support a much smaller selection of hardware (I'm thinking commercial
> Unix here, mostly).  

The x86 version of Solaris might be interesting too.  I have
no idea what they include but they are distributing it for
free.  From what is on line, it looks like they include
3d support for nvidia under Xorg.

> > If you follow the fedora list you'd be well aware that crashes
> > happen as a result of a lot of the other drivers as well.  You can't
> > blame that all on vendor binaries.
> 
> Indeed.  But as I said, Fedora is meant to be a cutting-edge
> development platform.  The drivers are bound to be broken.

The drivers only break when the API changes, which only has
to happen when it was wrong before...

> Indeed.  Fedora is not meant to be that, and isn't.  It's important to
> remember context when having such discussions...  That's why I said in
> a different message that I don't think Fedora is necessarily the right
> choice for someone who's just breaking into Linux.  You WILL have
> problems...  it's not stable.  Get over that, or use something else.

My experience is that around X.X.20, Linux kernels stop giving
me unpleasant surprises.  The bulk of my servers are still
running 2.4.x based distributions and probably will for
a while longer.

> With the mainstream kernel,
> stability is generally a function of how many people are using a
> particular device in a particular configuration.  Popular devices are
> generally extremely stable.  NVidia graphics cards SHOULD be such a
> device, since they are quite popular, but they are not.

How popular can something be when it needs a 3rd party driver
and there is no coordination from the OS distribution to
make sure it is available before making changes that break
the previous one?

> There's also the problem of supporting someone else's binary only
> code.  That's a nightmare.

It wouldn't be a nightmare with a stable API.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com