X 7.1 still testing on x86/amd64 because of BINARY drivers?

[R!tman]

The Gentoo X11 team has marked the modular X.Org stable. The amd64 and x86 architectures will update to 7.0, due to planned changes in the ABI (Application Binary Interface) that have broken binary drivers, and other architectures will update to 7.1. This allows for quicker upgrades in the event of bugs and also security problems as well as reducing the on-disk and in-memory footprint of the X implementation. This also allows for X-based packages to be installed on headless servers without requiring that all of X be installed, too.

I hope I understand this right. Version 7.1 is stil in testing for x86 and amd64, because the binary drivers (ati-drivers and nvidia-glx/kernel) do not work with it, right?

I'm sure most people have ati or nvidia graphic cards. Personally, I have an nvidia and use the nvidia closed source driver. Nevertheless, I'm wondering if it's a good idea to mark a presumably stable program 'testing', only because it does not work with some closed source drivers.

Lets not forget we're all using LINUX here. Everyone has his/her reasons for using it, one of mine is a feeling of freedom and togetherness. Linux has an ethical value that can easily be underestimated.

So, I believe it's wrong that a program which follows the open source idea and fullfills all the reasons why we all use linux should be degrated in favor of a closed source driver!

I know, I am using nvidia's drivers myself. But my concers have grown by a big amount due to this. Switching to open source drivers for ati or nvidia cards most probably is not an option for most people, but I would like to know what you think about this issue.

BTW, here is an interesting project: the open graphics project

[Genone]

Well, I voted no as technically it shouldn't be done this way, but unfortunately many users would either not understand the blockers that are in place or get quite upset about them which can be quite a burden support wise, and I'd want to avoid this stress as well.

[aidanjt]

The Gentoo X11 team has marked the modular X.Org stable. The amd64 and x86 architectures will update to 7.0, due to planned changes in the ABI (Application Binary Interface) that have broken binary drivers, and other architectures will update to 7.1. This allows for quicker upgrades in the event of bugs and also security problems as well as reducing the on-disk and in-memory footprint of the X implementation. This also allows for X-based packages to be installed on headless servers without requiring that all of X be installed, too.

I hope I understand this right. Version 7.1 is stil in testing for x86 and amd64, because the binary drivers (ati-drivers and nvidia-glx/kernel) do not work with it, right?

I'm sure most people have ati or nvidia graphic cards. Personally, I have an nvidia and use the nvidia closed source driver. Nevertheless, I'm wondering if it's a good idea to mark a presumably stable program 'testing', only because it does not work with some closed source drivers.

Lets not forget we're all using LINUX here. Everyone has his/her reasons for using it, one of mine is a feeling of freedom and togetherness. Linux has an ethical value that can easily be underestimated.

So, I believe it's wrong that a program which follows the open source idea and fullfills all the reasons why we all use linux should be degrated in favor of a closed source driver!

I know, I am using nvidia's drivers myself. But my concers have grown by a big amount due to this. Switching to open source drivers for ati or nvidia cards most probably is not an option for most people, but I would like to know what you think about this issue.

BTW, here is an interesting project: the open graphics project

The problem becomes this.. when you mark xorg 7.1, that should mean that most stuff that it depends on (including binary drivers for most people) should work also, which of course it doesn't.. as nice as it would be to have uber-performing open-source opengl accelerated drivers, it's not gonna happen any time soon, clearly nvidia and ati have no interest in helping us with it either. If 7.1 was marked stable today, there'd be a torrent of complaints on IRC, email and these forums as people upgrade to 7.1 and find their xorg.conf is worthless.

[gkmac]

I voted "yes", because I guess the majority of users will have ATI or Nvidia cards and run into this problem.

My laptop doesn't have either of those as a video chipset, instead having an Intel 855GM run by the i810/i915 driver. Being open source it theoretically shouldn't be a problem, but since it [topic=468064]doesn't work properly in xorg 7.1[/topic] and yet it does in xorg 7.0, I have further weight in keeping xorg 7.1 masked.

[mark_alec]

I voted yes because I believe it would be unacceptable to break many people's X installation. That being said, I would like a better solution whereby the user can easily select between emerging Xorg 7.0 and 7.1, so that those who use opensource drivers can benefit from the newer software.

[Archangel1]

Yes. It's all very well to talk about free software etc, but the open source nv driver is shithouse. No 3d acceleration, no TwinView, that's _not_ acceptable for my setup, and I'm not about to downgrade to it. nVidia have supported their hardware far better than their competition, enough that I'm happy with what I'm getting and I'm not swapping just for some warm fuzzies about free software.

The fact that nvidia-kernel is in Portage means it's tacitly accepted as an option by Gentoo, and I think it'd be pretty silly to pretend that a large number of users (possibly the majority) aren't using binary drivers and break stuff for them. To me stable means that it basically works without any real problems, and breaking many or most user's configurations is a big damn problem.

[codergeek42]

Gentoo's Social Contract states:

Any external contributions to Gentoo (in the form of freely-distributable sources, binaries, metadata or documentation) may be incorporated into Gentoo provided that we are legally entitled to do so. However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

My two cents...

[enderandrew]

Gentoo's Social Contract states:

Any external contributions to Gentoo (in the form of freely-distributable sources, binaries, metadata or documentation) may be incorporated into Gentoo provided that we are legally entitled to do so. However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

My two cents...

I couldn't agree more.

[nesl247]

It shouldn't even be a question about being marked testing on x86/amd64. It shouldn't even be unmasked. With as many users who use nvidia and ATI binaries, why make those people suffer through having to mask it themselves so they can actually use it without the problems that have arrisen.

I know I along with several other people were very upset when that occured, thus I voted yes.

[zatalian]

Look at how many people get affected by the change.
I think there will be much more users who have to mask 7.1 because they want to use the closed drivers than there are users now who have to unmask it.
Perhaps a good howto with a list of packages that go into packages.unmask would help out?

[alistair]

Gentoo's Social Contract states:

Any external contributions to Gentoo (in the form of freely-distributable sources, binaries, metadata or documentation) may be incorporated into Gentoo provided that we are legally entitled to do so. However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

My two cents...

I voted yes because it is [slightly] nicer for someone to keyword than to mask..

Also not to nit pick, as this is what im doing, but Gentoo doesn't depend on x11 and can therefore not depend on nvidia or ati drivers.

Hopefully this will insight some debate, as to what Gentoo (or any distro) is, as opposed to flaming. Sadly I see both points of the arguement and don't really want to be on one side or the other of the arguement.

[aidanjt]

Gentoo's Social Contract states:

Any external contributions to Gentoo (in the form of freely-distributable sources, binaries, metadata or documentation) may be incorporated into Gentoo provided that we are legally entitled to do so. However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

My two cents...

Oh I totally agree with you, and it's a nice ideal to not have to depend upon a company for closed source junk... but being realistic.. most people with real graphics cards have a modernish ATi or nVidia GPU, and the opensource drivers for these GPUs are a joke at best.. So for now we're stuck with propriatory binary junk whether we like it or not.
So, for that reason I picked yes.. if anyone uses an arcaine video card which has an opensource driver that actually works, they can easily add xorg 7.1 to their package.keywords.

[vipernicus]

It shouldn't even be a question about being marked testing on x86/amd64. It shouldn't even be unmasked. With as many users who use nvidia and ATI binaries, why make those people suffer through having to mask it themselves so they can actually use it without the problems that have arrisen.

I know I along with several other people were very upset when that occured, thus I voted yes.

I agree, using ~x86, this upgrade annoyed me entirely.

[mrsteven]

Xorg 7.1 has other problems, like this: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134395
If only binary drivers were the problem, I'd say "mark it stable" (but make ati-drivers or nvida block the update, so users won't get a bad surprise).

[R!tman]

What'll happen if there's only one proprietary graphics driver available? Nvidia seems to have a better linux support than ati. It's very well possible that they release their xorg-x11-7.1-compatible driver a lot earlier.

[xglad]

If binary drivers were the only issue...
Politically, mark it stable.
Practically, wait.
Personally, I couldn't care less either way. Have echo, have /etc/portage, will travel.

[Q-collective]

Oh, karmapoints to codergeek
I also voted no, it's silly to wait for binary drivers. And it's an extra stimulant for nvidia and ati to get their stuff right, asap.
I have (hard)unmasked xorg for about a year now, love it

[dberkholz]

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

I completely agree, but I was overruled by the larger development community. Those of you arguing technicalities (Gentoo doesn't "depend" on X11), this is about the spirit of the matter. Allowing ourselves to depend on outside companies to release binary drivers and allow them to hold back our progress is a very slippery slope, one that at least the Linux kernel is brave enough to refuse to start upon.

The problem, as one poster mentioned, is that we package the binary drivers and thus implicitly support them. We've developed a solid mechanism for making libGL etc switchable between various vendors, and I'm also reluctant to turn away from that by removing binary drivers from the tree entirely as many other distributions have done.

[EzInKy]

Gentoo's Social Contract states:

Any external contributions to Gentoo (in the form of freely-distributable sources, binaries, metadata or documentation) may be incorporated into Gentoo provided that we are legally entitled to do so. However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

My two cents...

I absolutely agree and even though I have had to pay the price of losing GL support since I run "~amd64" I voted no. The primary purpose of open source is to free users from being slaves to proprietory software. Delaying Gentoo's progress in order to preserve binary compatability is counterproductive and could lead to real problems if such a policy was extended to other closed sourced drivers.

[Azarah]

Maybe it's just me, but waiting for new proprietary drivers before marking X11R7.1 as stable makes Gentoo seem dependent on that company (in this case, Nvidia and ATi) to update its drivers. This, in my mind, violates the spirit of Gentoo's social contract, in that legally-redistributable non-F/OSS stuff should be nothing more than an optional add-on. In this case, it is this non-F/OSS stuff which is preventing Gentoo (temporarily) from moving forward in its development.

I completely agree, but I was overruled by the larger development community. Those of you arguing technicalities (Gentoo doesn't "depend" on X11), this is about the spirit of the matter. Allowing ourselves to depend on outside companies to release binary drivers and allow them to hold back our progress is a very slippery slope, one that at least the Linux kernel is brave enough to refuse to start upon.

The problem, as one poster mentioned, is that we package the binary drivers and thus implicitly support them. We've developed a solid mechanism for making libGL etc switchable between various vendors, and I'm also reluctant to turn away from that by removing binary drivers from the tree entirely as many other distributions have done.

Loving open-source and all, I will be unfortunately be one of the first to 'cry murder' if the binary drivers was removed This is due to nvidia working fine here without issues, and it being the only decent performance card that actually works well (ati binary drivers have given me too much issues, and the last time I tested ati with the open-source drivers, it was bad .. although a while back). Sure, I know some people have lockups, etc with binary nvidia drivers, and others are perfectly happy with the smaller ati cards an xorg drivers, but here on my intel and amd boxes it works fine.

Anyhow, enought about the age old argument when conserning X and video cards, cant we just have the binary drivers conflict with xorg-server-7.1 ? It should tell the user that might have to upgrade that it wont work, and they can then local mask as needed ?

[TehCaster]

Voted no
- as said, Gentoo shouldn't depend on closed source drivers
- xorg 7.1 already blocks with those drivers (this block wasn't correctly mutual before, causing pain for ~arch users but that's fixed now)
- while this block will tell users something is fishy, there should still be some way to tell them what exactly to do. That means putting up some official docs explaining the reasons and what to put in package.mask. It would be great if blocks could be somehow commented in an ebuild and emerge would print this comment (link to the explaining docs) when block happens. That would also solve other issues like pam/shadow block etc ...

[sergi34]

I voted yes, because the main thing of a democracy is the recognition of the majority.
So if most of the people have an ATI or a NVIDIA graphic card, let's make things work
on their cards and let's make the choice to the others (minority) to keyword and get 7.1

I recognize that I've masked 7.0 because I'm happy with 6.9 already. But this doesn't mean
I like to mask packages.

Gentoo Linux is the best Linux distro I've tested. Let's make it continue this way. And unmask
7.1 by default will guide Gentoo to a geek puritan distro more than a great and usable distro.

Sergi

[EAD]

I don't think it is a right reason for putting Xorg 7.1 in testting.
Any way, what is the problem with nvidia?
Cant we just compile it own ourself? Someonw used Nvidia and Xorg 7.1 with out any bugs or problems?
Is there a WIKI about it? or some kind of info?

[Q-collective]

Any way, what is the problem with nvidia?
Cant we just compile it own ourself?

No, that's the problem: it's closed sourced.

And the DRI efford to make nv a great driver seems to have died a long long time ago.
The r300 DRI driver is nice though, although still experimental.

[munsen]

It doesn't matter to me. I would just mask it locally until the binary nvidia driver catches up. Do what you have to do.