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Should X 7.1 still be testing only because of closed source drivers (ati/nvidia)?
Yes!
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 55%  [ 254 ]
No!
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 37%  [ 172 ]
I don't care!
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 6%  [ 28 ]
Total Votes : 454

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Q-collective
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I really fail to see why not to unmask 7.1 and just block te nvidia/ati drivers.
If people really want to keep using the nvidia/ati drivers, they just stay at 7.0.
As codergeek42 already pointed out earlier, it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Q-collective wrote:
I really fail to see why not to unmask 7.1 and just block te nvidia/ati drivers.
If people really want to keep using the nvidia/ati drivers, they just stay at 7.0.
As codergeek42 already pointed out earlier, it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.


Blockers halt a whole emerge process though, i.e. `emerge -u world` would cause the process to fail until the block is resolved. If people wish to update their Xorg installation to 7.1 they can always add the packages to their package.keywords file. There's no sense in giving the majority of users a headache over a philosphical issue.
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spielc
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Q-collective wrote:
I really fail to see why not to unmask 7.1 and just block te nvidia/ati drivers.
If people really want to keep using the nvidia/ati drivers, they just stay at 7.0.
As codergeek42 already pointed out earlier, it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.


Okey why don't you see it this way: The main reason why so many ppl use IE is because it comes preinstalled with every windows installation out there... The similar thing is with drivers for vid-cards. Every vid-card comes with a driver-cd that contains the OFFICIAL branded driver of the manufacturer. 99.9 % of Linux users are either dual-boot-users (windows/linux) or people who used windows before and grew tired of it and completely changed to linux but almost everybody HAS used windows before. When it comes to vid-card drivers and windows you don't have much choice you can either use the official drivers or the omega driver suite which is nothing more than a slightly altered version of the official drivers. SO when you change to linux and you want 3d-acceleration 90 % of the ppl will go and see if there are official drivers for the vid-card available and voila we do have such things for linux too, so they use it and they don't CARE about open-source vid-drivers.

So if you stabilize xorg-7.1 BEFORE ati and nvidia released working drivers for it ALOT of people will have the famous blocker (and i bet alot don't know what to do with a blocker)

Plus as someone said before, the stable branch of gentoo means STABLE (in the sense of i start the update now after the update is done i do a etc-update if necessary but i don't want to tinker around with things) if you want bleeding edge go with the testing branch
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R!tman
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

spielc wrote:
So if you stabilize xorg-7.1 BEFORE ati and nvidia released working drivers for it ALOT of people will have the famous blocker (and i bet alot don't know what to do with a blocker)

I believe most gentoo users, or at least the people updating the machines, do know blockers. It does happen on occasion, like in these examples:
  • modular X vs. monolithic X
  • seamonkey vs. mozilla
  • shadow vs. pam-login
  • libungif vs. giflib
  • ...
These were all in the stable branch. That's why I believe most people would know what to do, imho!

EDIT:
Q-collective wrote:
I really fail to see why not to unmask 7.1 and just block te nvidia/ati drivers.
If people really want to keep using the nvidia/ati drivers, they just stay at 7.0.
As codergeek42 already pointed out earlier, it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.

I concur by 100%. codergeek42 has a very good argument there, citing Gentoo philosophy!
Nevertheless, I do understand why people would want to mask 7.1, but in my opinion this is not the right way, especially because I think most people would know how to handle the situation with blockers.
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Q-collective
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:
Q-collective wrote:
I really fail to see why not to unmask 7.1 and just block te nvidia/ati drivers.
If people really want to keep using the nvidia/ati drivers, they just stay at 7.0.
As codergeek42 already pointed out earlier, it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.


Blockers halt a whole emerge process though, i.e. `emerge -u world` would cause the process to fail until the block is resolved. If people wish to update their Xorg installation to 7.1 they can always add the packages to their package.keywords file. There's no sense in giving the majority of users a headache over a philosphical issue.

I was referring to the current situation were ati/nvidia drivers block xserver. You don't *need* the drivers to have X running.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

spielc wrote:

Plus as someone said before, the stable branch of gentoo means STABLE (in the sense of i start the update now after the update is done i do a etc-update if necessary but i don't want to tinker around with things) if you want bleeding edge go with the testing branch


It's not a question of bleeding edge, it's a question of when a tested package is marked stable. Think of the ramifications should this policy of waiting for compatibility with proprietory software were also to be applied to cups, or even the kernel.
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Q-collective wrote:
I was referring to the current situation were ati/nvidia drivers block xserver. You don't *need* the drivers to have X running.

You do if you want non-laughable OpenGL performance. Or in the case of only having Vesa as an option, eye/headaches on CRT monitors.
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micmac
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In my opinion waiting for binary drivers to catch up sends out the wrong message. The more people complaining about binary drivers the better. Puts pressure on the binary providers and eventually more people will only buy hardware supported by OS drivers.
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chunderbunny
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What if ATI don't release a working driver for 2 years? Or longer? At what point do we stop inconveniencing people who use Free drivers for the benefit of those who do not?
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spielc
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Q-collective wrote:

I was referring to the current situation were ati/nvidia drivers block xserver. You don't *need* the drivers to have X running.


LOL what do you suggest should ppl like me with ATI X1x00 cards do? the open-source drivers don't have support for them... Should we be FORCED to use vesa? that'S ridicilious

I NEED those ati-drivers to have a X with decent performance
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Kensai
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

chunderbunny wrote:
What if ATI don't release a working driver for 2 years? Or longer? At what point do we stop inconveniencing people who use Free drivers for the benefit of those who do not?

Well at least we know NVIDIA will release a new driver before the end of this year, and most likely will be in August, if you look at the NVIDIA linux forum you notice that the developers are aware and are taking the steps to fix this problems. As to ATI if they keep behind for long then they should be left behind then and proceed to xorg 7.1. So worries are not on NVIDIA's side is on ATI's side.
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micmac
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

spielc wrote:
Q-collective wrote:

I was referring to the current situation were ati/nvidia drivers block xserver. You don't *need* the drivers to have X running.


LOL what do you suggest should ppl like me with ATI X1x00 cards do? the open-source drivers don't have support for them... Should we be FORCED to use vesa? that'S ridicilious

I NEED those ati-drivers to have a X with decent performance


Why should Open Source support you if you don't support Open Source (by buying a card that's not supported)? :D
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spielc
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

micmac wrote:
spielc wrote:
Q-collective wrote:

I was referring to the current situation were ati/nvidia drivers block xserver. You don't *need* the drivers to have X running.


LOL what do you suggest should ppl like me with ATI X1x00 cards do? the open-source drivers don't have support for them... Should we be FORCED to use vesa? that'S ridicilious

I NEED those ati-drivers to have a X with decent performance


Why should Open Source support you if you don't support Open Source (by buying a card that's not supported)? :D


Just something to think about: Another main idea of Gentoo is to let the user choose what he wants to do and wants to use! As i don't have much choice i CHOSE to use the closed-source driver provided by ATI and i guess alot of other ppl chose the same thing, so if xorg-7.1 is put into stable branch we are pretty much f***ed (not me personally as i use the testing branch anyway and have put everything that smells like xorg-7.1 into package.mask)

don't get me wrong i had alot of f***-ups during my time with gentoo and i managed to solve everything somehow (except expat-2 but that's another story) BUT by not waiting for the official ati-/nvidia-drivers to officially support xorg-7.1 you FORCE these people to either mask everything that has anything to do with xorg-7.1 OR they use xorg-7.1 but HAVE to use the open-source drivers at least till the binary drivers support xorg-7.1. So where is this so called freedom in this case?
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dberkholz
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

spielc wrote:
don't get me wrong i had alot of f***-ups during my time with gentoo and i managed to solve everything somehow (except expat-2 but that's another story) BUT by not waiting for the official ati-/nvidia-drivers to officially support xorg-7.1 you FORCE these people to either mask everything that has anything to do with xorg-7.1 OR they use xorg-7.1 but HAVE to use the open-source drivers at least till the binary drivers support xorg-7.1. So where is this so called freedom in this case?

The freedom is that you are free to choose between masking 7.1 or using open-source drivers. Forcing someone to make a choice between multiple options is far different from forcing a single option on people with no choice.
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sofachillax
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

gentoo is not about easy handling.

if you want the old X, you can use it. gentoo (and all other distributions) should not be held back by companies who provide open source drivers only for VERY old hardwhare which isn't used anymore by people.
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

micmac wrote:
spielc wrote:
LOL what do you suggest should ppl like me with ATI X1x00 cards do? the open-source drivers don't have support for them... Should we be FORCED to use vesa? that'S ridicilious

I NEED those ati-drivers to have a X with decent performance


Why should Open Source support you if you don't support Open Source (by buying a card that's not supported)? :D


Show me a graphics card that will play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion above 30fps with HDR, which also has opensource drivers and I'll buy it.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:
Show me a graphics card that will play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion above 30fps with HDR, which also has opensource drivers and I'll buy it.

Try a Radeon X800 XT with the r300 drivers in xorg 7.1.
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dberkholz wrote:
AidanJT wrote:
Show me a graphics card that will play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion above 30fps with HDR, which also has opensource drivers and I'll buy it.

Try a Radeon X800 XT with the r300 drivers in xorg 7.1.


The x800 doesn't support HDR, that feature was introduced in the x1000 series of GPUs.
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micmac
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:

Show me a graphics card that will play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion above 30fps with HDR, which also has opensource drivers and I'll buy it.


Hi,

excuse me for thinking so black and white earlier. I get your point of view. I can imagine there are a lot of people who want to use Linux but also want to play the latest games and feel a bit left alone by the graphic card driver situation. I myself don't play games and have no use for the latest cards - I'm happy with my Radeon 9250 and the OS drivers. That's why I voted "no", because I'd like to see the treats X.org 7.1 will provide. For me having to wait for binary drivers is the blocker.

Cheers
mic
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dberkholz
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:
dberkholz wrote:
AidanJT wrote:
Show me a graphics card that will play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion above 30fps with HDR, which also has opensource drivers and I'll buy it.

Try a Radeon X800 XT with the r300 drivers in xorg 7.1.


The x800 doesn't support HDR, that feature was introduced in the x1000 series of GPUs.

Nah, not true. x800 supports shader model 2.0b, that has some HDR just not the latest SM3 stuff.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 12:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

micmac wrote:
AidanJT wrote:

Show me a graphics card that will play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion above 30fps with HDR, which also has opensource drivers and I'll buy it.


Hi,

excuse me for thinking so black and white earlier. I get your point of view. I can imagine there are a lot of people who want to use Linux but also want to play the latest games and feel a bit left alone by the graphic card driver situation. I myself don't play games and have no use for the latest cards - I'm happy with my Radeon 9250 and the OS drivers. That's why I voted "no", because I'd like to see the treats X.org 7.1 will provide. For me having to wait for binary drivers is the blocker.

Cheers
mic


That's perfectly fine and understandable, but that's what /etc/portage/package.keywords is for.
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yoshi314
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i do not understand the topic of this quarrel. what's the big deal?

if the new X breaks compatilibity and cause errors for many users - it should not be stable. (7.1 actually crashes from time to time on my PC).

i'm an ati user and i now use radeon driver. i don't complain.

i would understand you if 7.1 ebuilds would be still unavailable in portage. that would be a bad thing to do.

if someone is willing to try 7.1 - he should just get up from his lazy butt and get it unmasked for himself. he has been warned and now he would know what he is risking, probably.
that's what the ~[arch] branch is for.

7.1 changes the abi and breaks things. that's why it's risky rushing it into stable. (and there's more to it than just the binary drivers)

i can't think of any distribution that would push 7.1 to stable.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

yoshi314 wrote:
i do not understand the topic of this quarrel. what's the big deal?

if the new X breaks compatilibity and cause errors for many users - it should not be stable. (7.1 actually crashes from time to time on my PC).

i'm an ati user and i now use radeon driver. i don't complain.

i would understand you if 7.1 ebuilds would be still unavailable in portage. that would be a bad thing to do.

if someone is willing to try 7.1 - he should just get up from his lazy butt and get it unmasked for himself. he has been warned and now he would know what he is risking, probably.
that's what the ~x86 branch is for.

7.1 changes the abi and breaks things. that's why it's risky rushing it into stable. (and there's more to it than just the binary drivers)

i can't think of any distribution that would push 7.1 to stable.

Aaaaabsolutely :-)

This is what I tried to say - I was probably too much verbose... :D

Let me add this simple demonstration:
  1. Gentoo aims at performance by default
  2. XOrg 7.1 with nVidia drivers will lose performance since 3D acceleration is disabled.

Conclusion: XOrg 7.1 will perform less than if it had not been upgraded. And if upgrading to 7.1 requires users to tweak their system to keep it stable or to keep the same level of performance it is not quite logical and surely not what Gentoo is made for. I'm not sure the "social contract" meant that either...

You should not be required to tweak your system to keep it stable or consistent. Marking XOrg 7.1 stable will. Hence 7.1 should remain "testing" - at least.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with making Gentoo depending on proprietary software. Gentoo is already "depending" (somehow) on proprietary software since the very first day it included them in portage.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 11:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Q-collective wrote:
... it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.

Then explain why put closed source [packages] in portage?
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 11:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

VinzC wrote:
Q-collective wrote:
... it is against the Gentoo philosophy to depend on closed sourced software, and that's exactly what is happening here.
Then explain why put closed source [packages] in portage?

There is a difference between providing a package for a closed source package and avoiding to stabilise an important package (X11) because of it.
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