On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 22:02 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > that an upgrade path for nVidia users could be provided without much
> > extra effort.
>
> The nVidia thing comes up every release. Eventually I'm sure nVidia
> will update their driver and then the upgrade path for users
> choosing to use that driver will be an option. Waiting a few more weeks
> for that to happen is not the end of the world.

... and if people would spend as much time helping out with nouveau[1]
as they've spent complaining on this thread, we'd be that much closer to
a real, sustainable solution to fully supporting nVidia's hardware as
opposed to having this discussion every release. Seriously. The
nouveau guys are making *real* progress. Even just trying out nouveau
and providing feedback is helpful to them. Also, they have a list of
things which need testing[2] as well as a list of cards which they could
use some dump information from[3].

Jeremy

[1] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org
[2] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/TestersWanted
[3] http://people.freedesktop.org/~jpakkane/ren/

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I have been reading this thread all evening and quite frankly it makes
me sick to my stomach. I consider Fedora developers and users to be
the cream of the crop of the Linux community. Unfortunately this
thread has not shown that to be the case. I am horrified for any one
who happens upon this thread via the mailing list archive as an
example of what the Fedora community is about. I would like to make
the following points in regard to this issue.

1. As a Fedora user who uses Fedora as a desktop machine and requires
the bits that the proprietary binary Nvidia driver provides I am not a
second class user. Individuals who have the ability to run OSS video
drivers are not any better or worse then I am they just have different
needs and requirements.

2. Demanding that a Red Hat employee who may or may not be paid to
work on Fedora is not doing his job is distasteful. I have been
involved in quite a few OSS projects over the years and OSS is about
freedom. The freedom to work on what you find interesting or feel
there is a need for. If an individual is not happy with how things are
going the individual is free to make the changes they feel are
important or help facilitate that change. OSS development is largely
powered by volunteers.

3. The root issue is that Fedora shipped a prerelease version of Xorg
that many are unhappy with. They are mainly unhappy with this fact
because it shortens the time they can use Fedora 9 due to their
hardware issues. This decision affected a portion of the user base. I
hope that the thought and consideration went in to such a decision as
this kind of Fedora backlash was expected. As geeks we always want the
latest and greatest and Fedora 9 symbolizes that. This again does not
make them second class users.

4. Not everyone is as up to date on what is and is not supported as we
are. We must remember the little guy. The user who is just starting
out with Linux or is still a novice. The user who runs the upgrade and
expects everything to work as it did in Fedora 8. Fedora is a great
distribution but we all know how FUD can overtake a great thing.

5. Expecting Fedora to cater to proprietary video card drivers is
unrealistic. However it is not unrealistic to keep the user in mind
when making such design decisions. More individuals were positively
affected by the decision to include a prerelease version of Xorg then
not. In the future I would recommend getting out in front of issues
such as this as to prepare the user base. A subpoint under the Xorg
portion of the Release Notes stating that version xx.yy of Nvidia
drivers and version xx.yy of ATI drivers would not work with Fedora 9
I feel would have helped tremendously.

Personally, this issue has made me want to get more involved in Fedora
development. This is OSS and it is what we make of it.

Thanks for reading,

Erich

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On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 22:30 -0500, Erich Zigler wrote:
> I have been reading this thread all evening and quite frankly it makes
> me sick to my stomach. I consider Fedora developers and users to be
> the cream of the crop of the Linux community. Unfortunately this
> thread has not shown that to be the case. I am horrified for any one
> who happens upon this thread via the mailing list archive as an
> example of what the Fedora community is about. I would like to make
> the following points in regard to this issue.
>
> 1. As a Fedora user who uses Fedora as a desktop machine and requires
> the bits that the proprietary binary Nvidia driver provides I am not a
> second class user. Individuals who have the ability to run OSS video
> drivers are not any better or worse then I am they just have different
> needs and requirements.
>
> 2. Demanding that a Red Hat employee who may or may not be paid to
> work on Fedora is not doing his job is distasteful. I have been
> involved in quite a few OSS projects over the years and OSS is about
> freedom. The freedom to work on what you find interesting or feel
> there is a need for. If an individual is not happy with how things are
> going the individual is free to make the changes they feel are
> important or help facilitate that change. OSS development is largely
> powered by volunteers.
>
> 3. The root issue is that Fedora shipped a prerelease version of Xorg
> that many are unhappy with. They are mainly unhappy with this fact
> because it shortens the time they can use Fedora 9 due to their
> hardware issues. This decision affected a portion of the user base. I
> hope that the thought and consideration went in to such a decision as
> this kind of Fedora backlash was expected. As geeks we always want the
> latest and greatest and Fedora 9 symbolizes that. This again does not
> make them second class users.
>
> 4. Not everyone is as up to date on what is and is not supported as we
> are. We must remember the little guy. The user who is just starting
> out with Linux or is still a novice. The user who runs the upgrade and
> expects everything to work as it did in Fedora 8. Fedora is a great
> distribution but we all know how FUD can overtake a great thing.
>
> 5. Expecting Fedora to cater to proprietary video card drivers is
> unrealistic. However it is not unrealistic to keep the user in mind
> when making such design decisions. More individuals were positively
> affected by the decision to include a prerelease version of Xorg then
> not. In the future I would recommend getting out in front of issues
> such as this as to prepare the user base. A subpoint under the Xorg
> portion of the Release Notes stating that version xx.yy of Nvidia
> drivers and version xx.yy of ATI drivers would not work with Fedora 9
> I feel would have helped tremendously.

Can't people read or something?

I just posted why 3 and 5 aren't in any way true.

Let me repeat via cut-n-paste:
1. X.org ABI for 1.5 is what we ship in F9, this hasn't changed in
months, I've ported 15 other drivers to it in this time. It will not
change before 1.5 final is released.

2. Nvidia don't release drivers for X.org releases.

3. Nvidia only bother releasing drivers when a distro has shipped the
ABI. Now we happen to be the first distro to ship most things, so we get
to be distro that nvidia have to port their drivers to. Other distros
lag releasing, however it won't help us if we lag, as Nvidia won't do
anything until one of Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, RHEL, or SLED do a
release.

I was as much responsible for shipping 1.5 pre-release in Fedora as ajax
was, and funnily these threads actually move me to break the nvidia
driver more often rather than less :-)

Dave.

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On Tue, 20 May 2008 22:30:20 -0500
"Erich Zigler" <ezigler@gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally, this issue has made me want to get more involved in Fedora
> development. This is OSS and it is what we make of it.

Excellent. Then it hasn't been a waste. We look forward to your
contributions.

josh

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On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 8:35 PM, Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com> wrote:
> I was as much responsible for shipping 1.5 pre-release in Fedora as ajax
> was, and funnily these threads actually move me to break the nvidia
> driver more often rather than less :-)

I think you are missing the point. Just because nVidia sucks, it
doesn't mean we have to make Fedora "suck". This is linux, and it
should be possible to have a system which everyone can enjoy. With
just a little bit of extra effort, a set of stable xorg rpms could
have been provided in a f9 testing repo for nVidia users to use
temporarily. We can still make a distro which is friendly to nVidia
users without slowing down progress for everyone else. I see this
mainly as a user friendliness issue more than an open source vs closed
source issue. I hope Josh is correct and we will have some nVidia
drivers to test with soon.

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On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 10:35 PM, Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com> wrote:

> Can't people read or something?

I wasn't rude to you. Why must you be rude to me?

> 1. X.org ABI for 1.5 is what we ship in F9, this hasn't changed in
> months, I've ported 15 other drivers to it in this time. It will not
> change before 1.5 final is released.
> 2. Nvidia don't release drivers for X.org releases.
> 3. Nvidia only bother releasing drivers when a distro has shipped the
> ABI. Now we happen to be the first distro to ship most things, so we get
> to be distro that nvidia have to port their drivers to. Other distros
> lag releasing, however it won't help us if we lag, as Nvidia won't do
> anything until one of Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, RHEL, or SLED do a
> release.
> I was as much responsible for shipping 1.5 pre-release in Fedora as ajax
> was, and funnily these threads actually move me to break the nvidia
> driver more often rather than less :-)

You know a lot more about this stuff then I do but I don't see any
thing you posted there to make #3 and #5 any less true. The point I
was trying to make in #3 and #5 was consideration for the user in such
decisions and noting such things as this in the Release Notes.

Thanks,

Erich

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On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 22:50 -0500, Erich Zigler wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 10:35 PM, Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > Can't people read or something?
>
> I wasn't rude to you. Why must you be rude to me?

because this thread is going on far too long and people need to get over
it , but I do apologise for that, I'm mainly replying on autopilot
while trying to do actual useful work for users.

>
> > 1. X.org ABI for 1.5 is what we ship in F9, this hasn't changed in
> > months, I've ported 15 other drivers to it in this time. It will not
> > change before 1.5 final is released.
> > 2. Nvidia don't release drivers for X.org releases.
> > 3. Nvidia only bother releasing drivers when a distro has shipped the
> > ABI. Now we happen to be the first distro to ship most things, so we get
> > to be distro that nvidia have to port their drivers to. Other distros
> > lag releasing, however it won't help us if we lag, as Nvidia won't do
> > anything until one of Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, RHEL, or SLED do a
> > release.
> > I was as much responsible for shipping 1.5 pre-release in Fedora as ajax
> > was, and funnily these threads actually move me to break the nvidia
> > driver more often rather than less :-)
>
> You know a lot more about this stuff then I do but I don't see any
> thing you posted there to make #3 and #5 any less true. The point I
> was trying to make in #3 and #5 was consideration for the user in such
> decisions and noting such things as this in the Release Notes.

Point 5 is okay, but you're point 3 said
"The root issue is that Fedora shipped a prerelease version of Xorg
that many are unhappy with.". I was merely pointing out that this wasn't
the root issue, and that I had pointed it out before in this thread as
had other people. so again, if Xorg had released 1.5 before F9 shipped
it wouldn't have mattered to the current situation. See point 2 above,
and then read point 3.

Dave.

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On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 7:50 PM, Erich Zigler <ezigler@gmail.com> wrote:
> You know a lot more about this stuff then I do but I don't see any
> thing you posted there to make #3 and #5 any less true. The point I
> was trying to make in #3 and #5 was consideration for the user in such
> decisions and noting such things as this in the Release Notes.

Here let me show you something... pointing out that NVidia lagged the
X.org 7.3 release and its stable ABI.

Fact 1: X.org 7.3 was released on 09-06-07
Reference: http://www.x.org/wiki/Releases/7.3

Fact 2: NVidia did not have a new driver ready as of X.org 7.3 release:
Reference: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97942
Quote Nvidia developer on :09-06-07
"To reiterate, we can't comment on driver release schedules but I can
confirm that the next driver release will support X.org 7.3. In the
meantime, using -ignoreABI should be safe as long as you disable the
Composite extension."

Fact 3: Nvidia does not time releases around X.org releases:
Reference: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=98635
Quote NVidia developer on :09-06-07
"the next driver release is not pending the Xorg-7.3 release."


-jef

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On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 11:05 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:

> Here let me show you something... pointing out that NVidia lagged the
> X.org 7.3 release and its stable ABI.
> Fact 1: X.org 7.3 was released on 09-06-07
> Reference: http://www.x.org/wiki/Releases/7.3
> Fact 2: NVidia did not have a new driver ready as of X.org 7.3 release:
> Reference: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97942
> Quote Nvidia developer on :09-06-07
> "To reiterate, we can't comment on driver release schedules but I can
> confirm that the next driver release will support X.org 7.3. In the
> meantime, using -ignoreABI should be safe as long as you disable the
> Composite extension."
> Fact 3: Nvidia does not time releases around X.org releases:
> Reference: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=98635
> Quote NVidia developer on :09-06-07
> "the next driver release is not pending the Xorg-7.3 release."

Thank you. Clue gained.

- Erich

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On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 22:02 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Tue, 20 May 2008 19:54:42 -0700
> "Christopher Stone" <chris.stone@gmail.com> wrote:
> > that an upgrade path for nVidia users could be provided without much
> > extra effort.
>
> The nVidia thing comes up every release. Eventually I'm sure nVidia
> will update their driver and then the upgrade path for users
> choosing to use that driver will be an option. Waiting a few more weeks
> for that to happen is not the end of the world.

Go nag nvidia about this, not fedora.

nvidia sprout corporate nonsense about not supporting pre-release
software and stating that they can't (won't) develop the driver without
a stable ABI.

This begs two questions.

Firstly, how do you define release. For example on Windows, is release
the day that that version of Windows is released? It appears not. So
to use this same set of values for Linux (or Fedora) seems nonsense.

Maybe release is when the ABI's are declared stable. This brings me to
the second point. The devel cycle for Fedora has a point in the roadmap
where the developers have to declare the ABI's stable so that developers
can rely on them for the next release. This should have been more than
enough for nvidia.

The simple fact is that it's not ajax's fault that nvidia don't take
Linux users seriously. And while it might be frustrating, you can do
two things. 1. Put up with these issues with nvidia support and accept
where the real blame lies. 2. Stop buying nvidia products until such
time as they take Linux support seriously.

As a laptop owner with a nvidia graphics driver, I won't be getting
another nvidia graphics card in any new machine from now on, until I see
an improvement in their approach to Linux.

Just remember, ajax has supplied support for all the drivers he can
(every open source driver), but he can't be expected to support closed
source drivers (that's nvidia's responsibility).


R.
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"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
It's much better on my side"

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