Fedora Core 6 HUGE problem - Binary drivers.

Arthur Pemberton pemboa at gmail.com
Thu May 31 04:29:24 UTC 2007


On 5/30/07, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Robin Laing wrote:
>
> >> No, I'm not ignoring that part.  I'm saying that _is_ the problem.  If
> >> some other OS regularly made incompatible changes without coordinating
> >> the availability of drivers with releases they'd have been dead long ago.
> >>
> > But some other OS has support of the manufacturers for their drivers in
> > a big way.  This isn't the same so it isn't a fair comparison.  I think
> > nVidia is doing a great job in comparison to AMD/ATI.
>
> Agreed, but I can't say that I blame ATI for avoiding work that would
> not be embraced by the distributions anyway.
>
> >>> Seriously, you don't give Nvidia's devs enough credit, if
> >>> their higher ups cared, their drivers would always work.
> >>
> >> Oh, I'm amazed they have kept trying this long. They have to be
> >> insanely frustrated by something that claims to be an OS but refuses
> >> to define an interface for drivers.
> >>
> >
> > In a thread way back some time ago, this was discussed.  The issue, if I
> > remember correctly is flexibility to make changes to the API, either for
> > improvements or security.  Of course it could be made easier.
>
> Yes, it was understandable back when Linus was an inexperienced college
> student since he could claim not to know what might be needed.  It's a
> little late in the game to still be making that claim.  And it might
> still be understandable at major kernel revision number releases several
>   years apart as new technology is invented.  It doesn't make much sense
> to think that if the interface design was flawed in every version up to
> x.x.19 that the change in x.x.20 is finally going to be perfect even
> though it breaks all the existing drivers in the middle of a
> distribution life cycle.  Or, the distributions could just refuse to
> ship the wildly experimental stuff like they did when it was identified
> with an odd minor number.
>
> >>> What are you talking about? My Fedora desktop was always usable.
> >>
> >> Did you have firewire drives mid FC5?  A good 6 months of downtime
> >> might have changed your mind.  The Evolution exchange connector was
> >> broken for about the same interval after a brief glimpse of a working
> >> version.  Not sure what you've been using....  Some stuff works most
> >> of the time.
> >>
> >
> > Some of the issues are outside Fedora's control.
>
> How so, when they have shipped a working version, then push out updates
> that break it?

It seems that the fact that Fedora doesn't not distribute Nvidia's
drivers makes this entire thread moot.


>
> > I read the Evolution
> > list and see enough comments about issues not being dealt with.  This
> > can be compounded by Fedora/RH making changes to their code to meet the
> > fears of litigation and lawyers big fees.  :)
>
> So they broke it on purpose?  What about firewire?
>
> --
>    Les Mikesell
>      lesmikesell at gmail.com
>
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-- 
Fedora Core 6 and proud




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