No Closed Video Drivers For Next Ubuntu Release

lisah writes "Ubuntu's next release, Feisty Fawn, is due out in April and, according to company CTO Matt Zimmerman, proprietary video drivers failed to make the cut for the default install. Zimmerman told Linux.com that although the software required for Composite support is not ready for prime-time and therefore will not be included in Feisty, Ubuntu hasn't given up entirely on including video drivers in future releases. '[T]he winds aren't right yet. We will continue to track development and will revisit the decision if things change significantly.' Ambiguous or not, the decision to exclude proprietary drivers for now should satisfy at least some members of the Ubuntu Community. In other Feisty Fawn news, the Board also decided to downgrade support for Power PC due to a lack of funding." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Comments

Before the flamewars start

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in no way an "ideological" decision but a pragmatic one.

The propietary 3d drivers would have been included because the original plan was to support a 3d desktop (like compiz and beryl) out of the box.
As it has now become obvious that these desktops are not yet stable enough to be the default, there isn't any need to include the propietary drivers.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[MrvFD]

The only thing that bothers me is that they add to the confusion by not dismissing the general "proprietary drivers == 3D desktop" point of view. In summary, Intel integrated graphics have 3D desktop with the free drivers, ATI Radeon up to quite new X850-series have 3D desktop with the free drivers, and by the time of feisty+1 we just might have 3D desktop working on the free Nouveau drivers for NVIDIA cards. Not the top speed of course in case of reverse-engineered ATI/NVIDIA drivers, but enough.

The situation is even more interesting considering that the proprietary ATI drivers (that are required for the X1000-series to have even 2D support) don't support Composite with AIGLX, the default in Ubuntu and X.org, while the reverse-engineered open source driver does. I think it is one aspect that has been affecting this decision - why include proprietary drivers if they don't even work.

It is to be admitted though that NVIDIA has such a large market share (probably 20-30% of all desktop and laptop PCs, compared to ca. 50% with Intel integrated graphics), that it partly makes the issue "3D needs proprietary drivers"-like, until Nouveau gets usable.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[Anonymous Coward]

The big question is, do you want working 3d applications or do you want razor stability? So what if the propietary drivers crash more often; if they are the only choice for programmable shaders and acceptable speed, I know what I would choose.

In the other end of the spectrum, I can make a dummy driver really fast. Guaranteed to be bug free, as long as you don't expect any, you know, output or anything.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[auric_dude]

A short note from Mark Shuttleworth on this topic http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/95

Re:Before the flamewars start

[vhogemann]

I can confirm that for the Intel drivers.

I have a notebook with an i915G video chipset, and making beryl work on my system was a straight forward process. Now I'm using it all the time, with very few (if any) stability issues, and even when anything goes wrong it falls back to the default window manager.

What I'd like to see is a more serious effort to show what hardware is fully supported under Linux. Of course you have some listings at the Ubuntu wiki, and other distros provide similar info... but I don't think it's enough. It would be nice to have an unified online database of products that work out-of-the box with linux, complete with user reviews and per-distro issues listed. And, of course, a hall of shame... listing all unsupported hardware, and hardware that only have proprietary drivers.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[Grey Ninja]

Actually, in the original post, Nouveau was explicitly mentioned. Both ATi and intel have open sourced drivers that are sufficient to run composite desktops. If Nouveau was ready for prime time in Feisty+1, then it's entirely possible that we wouldn't need the binary drivers for anything but bleeding edge video cards.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[Oblong_Cheese]

Why the fuck has discussion continued past this point? This is really the only thing you need to read, aside from the other interesting post stating that, just like all previous Ubuntu realeases, the proprietary drivers will still be available in the repositories if a user wants them. As many have already said...

NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE PREVIOUS RELEASES.

In my opinion, the installation procedure should prompt the user and ask them if they prefer to use open alternatives or closed binaries for any particular driver that has either option, with an accompanying explanation for those new to the concept, and some pros and cons listed for both.

Is it really that hard? Then everyone can shut up and stop whinging, because there's a CHOICE, and neither option (closed or open) is "forced" onto the end user, which they then have to change post-installation.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[Etyenne]

Nvidia have 30% market share in desktop and laptop ? Which market is that ? In my world, integrated GPU from Intel dominate the market by a wide margin (like you said), with Ati second. Nvidia is really only seen in white box built by gamers and some few high-end laptops.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[Anonymous Coward]

The open-source radeon drivers SUCK SUCK SUCK. They're woefully unstable, and NONE of the FOSS ATI drivers are AT ALL compatible with the radeon framebuffer driver. In short, FOSS drivers are worthless. Ask anyone with an ati card.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[pato101]

Nevertheless, as a happy beryl+ubuntu64 user, I no longer use nvidia drivers from repos, since I need the very latest and I want to upgrade when a new driver is released (and perhaps go back if any issues happen) without having to wait someone that packages them unofficially. So the nvidia installer is the way to go for me already. I guess that is the way to go for most of the Beryl+nvidia users, no matter which is their distro.

And as for desktop stability, Beryl is quite stable right now but lacks of certain polish like proper viewport handling (send windows to # viewport via the window menu), on-top and sticky window handling, etc. You get used not to have them but I understand they are required for a distro in order to make Beryl a default desktop. You are saying that it is not enough stable, and I agree but I want emphasize the enough part; since people that has never used them might wrongly think that they keep crashing often. Beryl crashes are strange, but Beryl has some usability and certain performance issues that should be solved.

Re:Before the flamewars start

[kad77]

No holy war here.

Just a point: after scanning through the majority of the comments, it bothers me that hardly anybody...

...thinks that Ubuntu supporting two of the three major 3D/video GPU vendors on the market by default is important.

...thinks that supporting the second largest consumer desktop CPU platform (PowerPC of course) isn't feasible for one of the most popular home linux distros.

Think about that, really. Definitively valid reasons to post the article to Slashdot, and the best people can do is rationalize away decisions that most people would consider steps backwords?

Come on already! This is not ok/acceptable-- a help wanted sign, maybe!

Re:Before the flamewars start

[Brandybuck]

It's a sad sad day when Free Software desktops require proprietary video drivers. Somehow I think we made a wrong turn back there in Albuquerque.

misleading title

[Verunks]

the driver will not be enabled by default, but they will be still present in ubuntu

Re:misleading title

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr... wrong.

The driver will not be there by default, but it will still be possible to download it separately. So it will not "be still present in ubuntu" as it will not be part of the default installation.

Re:misleading title

[ardor]

The question is: will they be present in the repositories?

Re:misleading title

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is: Yes, like they always have been.

Re:misleading title

[strider44]

They're in the repositories now, why would they remove them?

Re:misleading title

[ernstp]

point is, they haven't changed anything. it will be exactly like edgy.

Re:misleading title

[rjshields]

A better question would be - since nothing has changed, what is the point of the article?

Re:misleading title

[Dunbal]

it will be exactly like edgy.


ie. it will kernel panic on my dual core machine?

Re:misleading title

[Zebedeu]

I think the point of the article is that the plan was to include these drivers by default, to properly support the 3D desktop effects.
What changed was that the software for these effects was deemed not mature enough, and the plan was reverted to leaving everything as it was before, except there will be a mechanism to make it easy for the user to try out the new stuff.

Re:misleading title

[AusIV]

A better question would be - since nothing has changed, what is the point of the article?

Because something has changed. While there's not going to be a change as far as graphics drivers between Edgy and Feisty, this is a change from the previously discussed course of Ubuntu. We frequently heard about Microsoft dropping new features from Windows Vista before it was released, and this is no different.

nope, you can't read this

[Anonymous Coward]

01110100011010000110100101110011001000000110110101 10010101110011011100110110000101100111011001010010 00000110100101110011001000000110000100100000011000 10011010010110111001100001011100100111100100100000 01100010011011000110111101100010001000000111010001 10100001100001011101000010000001111001011011110111 01010010000001110011011010000110111101110101011011 00011001000010000001101101011011110110010000100000 01110100011011110010000000101011001101010010000001 11011101101001011101000110100001101111011101010111 01000010000001100001011100110110101101101001011011 10011001110010000001110001011101010110010101110011 0111010001101001011011110110111001110011

Re:nope, you can't read this

[moranar]

The binary says:

this message is a binary blob that you should mod to +5 without asking questions

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.roubaixinteractive.com/PlayGround/Binar y_Conversion/Binary_To_Text.asp

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Anonymous Coward]

01001001001000000111011101101111011101010110110001 10010000100000011011010110111101100100001000000111 10010110111101110101001011000010000001100010011101 01011101000010000001110111011100100110111101110100 01100101001000000111010001101000011010010111001100 10000001100011011011110110110101101101011001010110 11100111010000100000011010010110111001110011011101 00011001010110000101100100

Re:nope, you can't read this

[markov_chain]

Is it a sailboat?

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Minwee]

It's not a sailboat, it's a schooner.

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Frequently_Asked_Ans]

yes i can,

this mÍÍ..."0--20s[\zH0blob t...Ðå½R6÷V[0to +5 ݥѽÕB6-(TM)È]Y\tions

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Critical Facilities]

You know what? There is no Easter Bunny, that over there is just a guy in a suit. Oh yeah, and isn't it "You dumb bastard, that's not a sailboat, it's a schooner"?

Such a great flick.

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Minwee]

That movie is what you need and I guarantee you'll see a sailboat, an ocean and maybe even some of them 3d accelerated mermaids doing some of that closed source binary stuff.

Re:nope, you can't read this

[bean123456789]

That kid is on the escalator again!

Re:nope, you can't read this

[Maltheus]

So I initially read your post thinking, "well of course it is, just post the fuckin' translation already." Whoops on my part!

...and can be easily enabled when...

[aeneas]

.. trying to turn on the 3D desktop.

--snip--
    * However, new infrastructure will be implemented which allows the user to
          trivially enable both enhanced desktop effects and the necessary driver
          support.
--snip--

Aero Ubuntu?

[choudesh]

1) Include snazzy GUI 2) Base it off some other OS's GUI 3) Include UAC 4) hmm... no profit.

Re:Aero Ubuntu?

[JoshJ]

Compiz came out last year, and Ubuntu has had the sudo+gksudo setup for longer than that. Sorry, but you've got it backwards- UAC is a ripoff of gksudo, not the other way around.

Community needs to get over this issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Graphics drivers are highly compex and extremely difficult to write and maintain and stay up to date, graphics advances happen tremendously quickly. The community simply cannot keep pace with the functionality and quality required. The test effort alone is huge and the available test cases are actually trivial compared to real world useage. The available drivers are ABI compatible and therefore simple drop-in replacements. Face it people available public implementations don't even have glslang compilers and that's not exactly brand new.

It's not an ideal world and distros need to treat these proprietary drivers as serious first class citizens.

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had taken the trouble to read some of the related articles here or on the Ubuntu wiki, you would have seen that the main reason why some of the open driver implementations are behind the proprietary ones is that the manufacturers refuse to release their specs and even threaten the developers who attempt to reverse-engineer the devices.

The drivers are highly complex and extremely difficult to write and maintain because it is hard (almost impossible) to get the specifications of the corresponding devices. If the specs were open, maintaining the drivers would be much easier.

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

The drivers are highly complex and extremely difficult to write and maintain because it is hard (almost impossible) to get the specifications of the corresponding devices. If the specs were open, maintaining the drivers would be much easier.

Much easer is realative. Kudos to the guys who manage to do it, and yah-boo-sucks to the manufacturers, I say.

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[Dunbal]

If you had taken the trouble to read some of the related articles here...
Obligatory:

You must be new here...

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[octopus72]

Not true.
It may be hard to get something on reverse-engineered boards, but Intel example shows that good performance and advanced drivers are possible if company decides to pay skilled programmers to work on it (and give them proper documentation). OTOH, dirty performance hacks, often used by manufacturers at the price of compatibility and stability of drivers, aren't acceptable in open source, so performance might be somewhat lower (Windows gamers are lucky that they can't see what kind of driver garbage is installed on their machines).

Good side of open source is certainly that there is common framework which can be used across graphic hardware: this significantly reduces duplication and is beneficial to all users, not just those using particular hw. (and btw. Microsoft if trying to force manufacturers into something like that in Vista, their system is similar in concept to DRI). Unfortunately manufacturers don't like this: especially those which invest a lot in Linux drivers, like Nvidia. They want to differentiate, not give their work to other companies for free (and btw, there is also issue of various patented stuff, like S3TC).

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[octopus72]

Hackers seem to be able to get this info from Nv cards anyway (renouveau tool, Radeons already figured out),
so giving documentation to OSS developer under NDA won't cost Nvidia anything:
It will be figured out sooner or later and open source driver code produced - it's just a matter of time.

Yes, it's hard to write graphic card drivers, but you are underestimating community skill (just look at amount and quality of driver work already present in kernel). As I said, whole community working on commong driver framework core features can significantly reduce total amount of work required, and also make getting working drivers for future hardware much easier.
(btw. GLSL compiler will be in next Mesa)

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[RAMMS EIN]

``Graphics drivers are highly compex and extremely difficult to write and maintain and stay up to date, graphics advances happen tremendously quickly. The community simply cannot keep pace with the functionality and quality required.''

I don't know who modded that up, because it's complete nonsense. If paid programmers can keep up with the advances that happen is graphics land, then so can the community. It's not like paid programmers are magically better than the community. They couldn't be, because the community encompasses everyone on the planet...including the paid programmers.

What's holding back the open source drivers is not some magical reason that keeps the community from writing good drivers, but lack of information. The programmers that companies hire to develop closed source drivers are given specifications of the hardware they are writing drivers for. If these specifications aren't given to the community, the community will have to reverse-engineer the hardware before they can start actually writing the driver.

In cases where the information required to develop drivers is available, open source drivers will usually be written. It is not unusual for such drivers to exceed the closed-source drivers in quality. Or for there to be no closed-source driver at all.

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you could say I work "on graphics hardware". My employer produces a custom OpenGL implementation for various video cards (not getting into the market for this, but suffice it to say it exists). GPUs are sophisticated, and the specifications are complex, but not insurmountably so. Give a few good hackers some time with those specs, and they could hammer out a driver.

There are much bigger specifications than a GPU (e.g. ACPI, or even processors -- the Intel manuals for the Pentium 4 are a couple thousand pages long, if you include the instruction set reference), yet open source software has implementations for these. But, you need the specs to do a good job. Reverse engineering is not the way to go.

Re:Community needs to get over this issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your opinion is wrong, sorry but as drivers go graphics drivers are many many times more complex than any other driver out there and there are a LOT of cards and it's moving faster than any part of the industry. Right now to be current you need an extremely good optimizing compiler embeded in your driver in addition to all the traditional stuff you need. You're flat wrong, there are very good reasons why this is not happening and why proprietary is the best option for many of us.

more than just desktops,

[Aeron65432]

Or maybe we complain just because we like our Tuxracer, UT, Doom3, and desktops to be ready to go when started.

Or, it could be because installing ATI drivers (for those of you out there who've done it know this) is an absolute pain in the ass on Ubuntu. When I installed NVidia drivers on my friends laptop, I groaned because it was so convenient.

People would complain if OpenOffice, Firefox, and some kind of movie/music didn't come packaged with Feisty Fawn, and for good reason! They are essentials to the system! I think it's really too bad they probably won't be included.

Re:more than just desktops,

[dinivin]

Or, it could be because installing ATI drivers (for those of you out there who've done it know this) is an absolute pain in the ass on Ubuntu.

What's so difficult about:

% sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10
% dpkg -i *deb

Re:more than just desktops,

[G3ckoG33k]

"What's so difficult about:

% sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10
% dpkg -i *deb"

How about:

# sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10
# dpkg -i *deb

Re:more than just desktops,

[dinivin]

Yes, please excuse my typing errors. It's still early here :-)

Re:more than just desktops,

[cortana]

The difficulty comes later on when you need to install or upgrade something else and the shitty packages built by the idiots at ATI who know nothing about how Debian-based systems are put together break.

Do yourself a favour and stick with the official packages: http://packages.debian.org/src:fglrx-driver

Re:more than just desktops,

[dinivin]

I've been using the ATI packages for over two years now (first on Debian, now on Ubuntu) without any major problems (at least due to the installation procedure).

Of course if you overwrite a file installed from the package you'll have to reinstall the generated ATI files (using that oh-so-complex 'dpkg -i' command). This is no different than installing the nVidia drivers from the nVidia package.

Re:more than just desktops,

[cortana]

Yes, my point is that *both* the official ATI and NVIDIA packages are shit. Users are much better off sticking with the official packages provided by their distributions. :)

Re:more than just desktops,

[torako]

What's wrong with csh?

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

So now you know "what's so difficult" about it. Your average newbie would simply give up at that point and go back to Windows, having no idea what went wrong nor what to do about it. And when someone asked him he'd say "I tried that feisty fawn that was supposed to be so good, but it doesn't work. I had to type in the gibberish and then nothing happened. When I asked why I had to do that the answer was 'The winds are not right'. What the fuck? Seriously, WTF is that supposed to mean?"

Re:more than just desktops,

[Tim_UWA]

People who replied to this, he's talking about needing root access

Re:more than just desktops,

[robinvanleeuwen]

"How about:
# sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10
# dpkg -i *deb"

On my laptop a compaq r4000 with a bcm43xx pcmcia network controller and ubuntu
6.10, xorg 7.1, beryl, and a ati 200M XPRESS controller it was a nightmare to get
it all working together. Either my nic would fail, graphics would fail, x would fail
, all would fail at the same time. I tried ndiswrapper, my system hangs on that one.
(three different versions of ndiswrapper). All on amd64.

After a week or so trying different versions of all programs involved i came up with
the right settings. A custom kernel 2.6.18.1, ati driver 8.29.6, x windows 7.1.1,
If i try a newer kernel, the ati drivers won't compile, if i try an older kernelversion
my wlan isn't properly supported, so i'm stuck at 2.6.18.1, and i want xen to run on
my laptop, which uses 2.6.17.x i think so i'm out ofluck...

I think they did a good job postponing the option of a beryl/compiz/xgl/aixgl setup
in ubuntu. If you get it working it's quite cool and worth the trouble. IMHO this kind
of thing is always worth the trouble (i have a relatively high geek factor).

Re:more than just desktops,

[Etyenne]

Or rather :

sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

You could even do that from Synaptic or gnome-app-install, if you need a GUI for the tasks.

Is there a particular reason not to use the packaged binary drivers in the first place ?

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

sh is just a link to your systems default shell and every linux system has it.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Etyenne]

Installing proprietary video driver is already a breeze in Ubuntu. You just need to install the nvidia-glx package (if you have a Nvidia GPU) or the xorg-driver-fglrx package (if you have an Ati card). You don't even need to use the command line to do it; ou could use Synaptic or gnome-app-install (The "Add/Remove..." applet in the Applications menu).

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

followed by:

* X locking up randomly
* not being able to switch to console and back
* hours of googling
* lots of fun reading stupid posts by idiots claiming 'it works' just because it did for _them_
* upgrading the kernel (by a patch-level) to find that breaks the driver
* more hours of googling
* endless tweaking of xorg.conf to get feature x working again
* X locking up constantly ...
* rolling back to the free driver

Yes, clearly those drivers are ready for mainstream use. ... if you want bleading edge, be prepared to bleed.

Re:more than just desktops,

[MMC Monster]

Actually, I thought the above post should be marked funny. Yes, it's relatively simple and I've done similar for my nvidia drivers in the past. The problem is, you really can't expect end users to use a CLI to install anything.

End users should be told to go to one place. For now, that's synaptic. Maybe in the future it will be some click'n'run thing. Don't instruct them to

1. download a driver from a particular website.

2. open up a shell.

3. enter a cryptic line.

4. pray.

Plus, is the CLI way going to survive when a kernel upgrade is released? Presumably when the proprietary drivers are in synaptic they will be updated to work with the kernel updates.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

I copied your command into a command line, and it didn't do anything. The first command said it couldn't do the job.

[/troll]

Re:more than just desktops,

[605dave]

"What's so difficult about: % sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10 % dpkg -i *deb" Wow, and you people wonder why Linux hasn't taken hold for the average consumer. Sure it isn't difficult to type that line, but it looks confusing and intimidating to the average person. And that answer is always slightly condescending too, implying someone is an idiot for not knowing the obvious solution. Linux will not succeed anytime soon on the desktop market, because the geeks who make it don't respect the non-geeks who would use it.

Re:more than just desktops,

[PhoenixFlare]

Funny, when I installed the latest version of Kubuntu a couple weeks ago, the default "official" driver provided for my GEForce inexplicably locked my desktop resolution from going any higher than 1024x768 and did not give access to any of the advanced settings for the card. Installed the latest package from Nvidia's website, and both problems were solved.

I think i'll stick with the "shit" packages, thanks :)

Re:more than just desktops,

[cortana]

That is because Ubuntu gives you the open source 'nv' driver instead of the proprietary 'nvidia' driver. Any bugs you found have nothing to do with the distro-provided packages of the proprietary drivers.

Re:more than just desktops,

[MobyDisk]

I love comments where I'm not sure if they are insightful or funny. Is the poster pointing out how complicated it is? Or is the posting pointing out that it just takes one command to fix the problem so it is easy?

Re:more than just desktops,

[bberens]

Yep, I'm one of those linux users that can probably get it working if I really want to but for the most part if yum install [whatever] doesn't pick it up with my extended repository list it's just not getting installed on my Fedora box. While it's not exactly pertinent to Ubuntu it's basically the same idea. Even people who are capable of doing the work are less likely to do it because it's a pain.

Re:more than just desktops,

[PhoenixFlare]

That is because Ubuntu gives you the open source 'nv' driver instead of the proprietary 'nvidia' driver.

Yes, that is what I said, pretty much.

Any bugs you found have nothing to do with the distro-provided packages of the proprietary drivers.

Okay, the distro-provided package cripples my display capabilities for (to the best of my knowledge) no immediately apparent reason. The proprietary driver doesn't.

Whether you want to call it a bug, a "feature", a bad design decision, etc., it still boils down to the same thing.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Thundersnatch]

Finally, 2007, the year of the Linux Desktop!

Those commands are so much more intuitive than the "pick your card, now pick your OS, download driver, run installer" that Windows users must suffer through. (If they have to do it at all, a basic driver was probably included with the OS or by the OEM).

Re:more than just desktops,

[orkysoft]

You misunderstand. There is an official Ubuntu package that contains the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

Re:more than just desktops,

[cortana]

You are not understanding what I am saying. Your problems are with the default 'nv' driver. I am saying that NVIDIA's own installer for their proprietary driver is bad/crap/dangerous/buggy, and that people should use the packages of the proprietary driver that are provided by their own distribution (in Debian's case: http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages .pl?keywords=nvidia&searchon=sourcenames&subword=1 &version=all&release=all).

Re:more than just desktops,

[rbanffy]

There are different measures of success.

For me, Linux is very successful on my desktop (notebook, really) and on the server I depend. It beats Windows XP and 2003 hands down on many tasks I do on a daily basis and, when compared to it, Vista and its brain-dead UAC mechanisms are a bad joke. When considering my job, Windows - every single version - fails miserably.

On the other hand, most users seem to be happy with its shortcomings and Windows commands a huge market share.

But, really, I couldn't care less about their needs.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fucking *nix with a fucking GUI. If you can't use that GUI to operate the system, then what the fuck is it for?

Re:more than just desktops,

[BrokenHalo]

If i try a newer kernel, the ati drivers won't compile, if i try an older kernelversion my wlan isn't properly supported, so i'm stuck at 2.6.18.1, and i want xen to run on my laptop, which uses 2.6.17.x i think so i'm out ofluck...

What a tale of woe. I've heard ATI's Linux support can be a bit problematic...

When I first started playing with Linux some 14 years ago, I had battle after battle getting X11 to run on various graphics cards. Then I bought my first nVidia card (a Riva TNT) and it worked so well, I've never considered getting a GPU from anyone else.

Although I've upgraded my graphics cards from time to time, it has never been because they've gone wrong. The first one I bought still works, although it is occupying space in a very full box of bits...

Re:more than just desktops,

[SaDan]

Funny, I've never had issues installing ATI or nVidia drivers under any distro. That's what README files are for, and all of those pages in the support section of the card manufacturer's web site.

Anyone who cannot get an ATI or nVidia driver installed these days really doesn't have any place administering a *nix machine.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Stormwatch]

Honestly, what do people expect? It's a fucking *nix.

How was that again... "Mac OS X. Because making UNIX user-friendly was easier than fixing Windows."

Re:more than just desktops,

[Ultra64]

The problem is, you really can't expect end users to use a CLI to install anything.

Why? Why is it so unreasonable to expect people to know how to use their computer?

Using a CLI requires two things: the ability to read, and the ability to type (even if it's just hunt-and-peck typing).

If a user can't do that, they need to learn. There are too many users that shut off their brains when they sit in front of a computer and it needs to stop.

A recent conversation I had (after driving across town to our other office):
User: "The internet is down! I can't get to this web page."
Me: "You see where it says 'Click here to continue to this website'? Click it."

Re:more than just desktops,

[c_forq]

The problem is, you really can't expect end users to use a CLI to install anything.

I think anyone who used a computer during the Windows 3.11 days should be more than capable and maybe even expected to use a CLI. People always point to having to use CLI as saying Linux isn't ready for the desktop, but in my experiance it is more ready than Windows 95. Maybe you didn't have to deal with it, but I remember rigging up countless autoexec.bat and config.sys files and boxes of bootdisk to get program X working on Y computer. Anyone who gamed in Windows 95 had at least a couple bootdisks laying around for DOS games, and in the early days those bootdisks didn't write themselves.

Re:more than just desktops,

[cortana]

"Nothing happened" != "Permission denied".

Re:more than just desktops,

[samkass]

>> The problem is, you really can't expect end users to use a CLI to install anything.
>
>Why? Why is it so unreasonable to expect people to know how to use their computer?

"Using a CLI" != "Using a computer". "Using" a computer should be about identifying what you want to create, edit, contribute, read, etc., then being able to do so in the easiest way possible. Maybe that's a CLI for you, but for most people double-clicking on an icon, or even having something already done so you don't have to worry about it at all, is a lot easier.

I thought you people lost these arguments in the late 80's. 20 years later and you STILL think CLI's should be necessary to perform basic functions on your computer?

Between putting dogma over usability and insisting everyone else should use a computer like a developer prefers to, combined with the big split in the licensing models coming up with GPLv3, I foresee some dark days ahead for open source on the desktop.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Deliveranc3]

Um, could we get a system for something like a web based .bat (Or any kind of script) with basic security?

Re:more than just desktops,

[EdibleEchidna]

How about a straightforward GUI-based installer THAT JUST WORKS???

I have been using Ubuntu for several years now, and SuSE before that, and my next upgrade will be to an iMac. I am fed up to the back teeth with the crappy HW support in Linux, and the loss of support for the scanner part of my Epson CX5400 in Edgy was the final straw. I work in IT and the last thing I want to do is to have to piss around with obscure command-line switches and settings just to install a video driver or support a scanner. In the 21st Century it's (a) insane and (b) not acceptable in a desktop environment. If OSS programmers clubbed together to write a handful of top-end apps rather than hundreds of mediocre ones Linux could be a world-beater.

I am very sorry to say, because I want it to work, that at the moment Linux on the desktop sucks.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Deliveranc3]

I just used synaptic to upgrade from Dapper to Edgy, it hosed my swap partition (The move from logical disks to UUIDs broke them)... My local linux guru can't fix it.

So please go on about how great the official packages are?

Re:more than just desktops,

[cortana]

What has that got to do with the packages of the NVIDIA driver?

Re:more than just desktops,

[Ansoni-San]

It's not difficult it's just different. Yes people are usually intimidated by things they don't know (hell all animals are). But it's a moot point. People have to either get over their irrational fear and educate themselves to gain an understanding or accept that they're no smarter (if not dumber) than their pet Fluffy. And if their argument is that they don't have the time to educate themselves of the operating system they are trying to use then we're back to them being dumber than Fluffy.

Yes we can lower the learning curve for ex-Windows users, but when the base/starting point of knowledge is Microsoft Windows then all lowering the learning curve does is bring us closer to Windows...and *nix is NOT Windows. The way forward is not to lower the learning curve for people with Windows experience, the way forward is to emphasise, advance, and improve Linux's good points (unique or otherwise) whilst decreasing any flaws in the basic components of the operating system(s) (HAL, xserver, GNOME etc.). This along with better hardware support in certain areas (which may come as a consequence (in part) of improving the aforementioned) I believe is the best path.

I don't know what everyone is so excited about anyways, making up imaginary pressure here and there about "desktop linux". Linux does what it does best perfectly, which is run on servers. Yes Linux is good on the desktop when you know what you're doing. And as long as enough developers are interested it will get better on the desktop, and there's obviously enough developers interested as is evident with the amount of GUI-centered distros. So can people just shut-up or help develop, talking does not speed anything up. The only thing worth mentioning is pushing for hardware support, and you don't get that by talking to yourselves. You get that by writing letters/e-mails and supporting companies who do provide support. Just my 2 cents. There's still a hell of a lot more development to be done. You can't be telling me you're going to be talking about this non-stop for years. I'll just end up not reading any *nix related articles on slashdot

Re:more than just desktops,

[PhoenixFlare]

No, I understood that pretty well, and I actually tried installing that package too.

Doing a quick search on Google, it seems it might have worked eventually if I had screwed around with editing various config files by hand....But by default the resolution was still crippled, and it didn't give any immediate access to the nvidia-settings program that finally solved the issue after I installed the binary blob from Nvidia's site.

Re:more than just desktops,

[notamisfit]

I've rarely had nvidia problems with a kernel that didn't have 'rc' or 'mm' in the title somewhere.

Re:more than just desktops,

[jZnat]

If you know how to copy and paste text, then you're competent enough to follow instructions on how to get some obscure thing working. To those who actually want to learn how their computer works, they will ask what the particular commands do, and they might even look into more CLI things in order to further understand how their computer works. The others that don't care will just copy and paste it into a terminal, see that it works now, and move on with their lives. Maybe they'll write it down somewhere so they know what to do if that problem happens again, but they won't look into what it does.

Besides, what's the difference between following a tutorial that gives you commands to copy and paste and a tutorial that gives screenshots of the program and tells you what to click and type? Neither are teaching what's going on, and since GUIs can and do change, it's usually a bit easier to give the instructions to the command line form (some people would be stumped if the picture of the GUI in the screenshot was different than the one they're seeing; this does not happen on the CLI).

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

I also foresee some dark days ahead for open source, but the attitude of the open source community about CLI will change once it won't be needed anymore. It's like GUI in general. Ten years ago, most people were saying that a GUI was not needed. Now that KDE and Gnome are somewhat usable, most people say using a GUI is more efficient. Same thing for eye candy. The open source community is a feel good community. People don't like to admit they are behind, so they bitch the competition. They prefer to close their eyes, instead of working to get better.

The last example of this is OpenOffice. A lot of people bitch the ribbon from Office 2007, but I put it on some people's workstation to see how they will react and after a few hours, or a few days for the older one, they ALL said they wouldn't go back to Office 2003 interface. Yet, when there is talk about something like a ribbon for OpenOffice, most devs say it's a bad idea. They are basically shooting themselves in the foot, but they prefer to do that instead of admitting the competitor is now better.

As for drivers in Linux, right now, the problem is Linux is made in a very decentralized way, yet the programing model is made like a very centralized program. Drivers should be completely out (and mostly independent) of the kernel. Unfortunately, it won't happen anytime soon. It would require a lot of change in mentality, which would require a complete new set of people. Until it happens, Linux (on a desktop) will still be a niche OS for a bunch of geek.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you people lost these arguments in the late 80's. 20 years later and you STILL think CLI's should be necessary to perform basic functions on your computer?

Between putting dogma over usability and insisting everyone else should use a computer like a developer prefers to, combined with the big split in the licensing models coming up with GPLv3, I foresee some dark days ahead for open source on the desktop.

The parent to your post doesn't get it. Then again I know some out of work VMS guys that think that "it's the way."

A computer is a tool. The tool should be easier to use, with options like a shell for power users, programmers, and admins. That's it. And I say this as a UNIX admin who is quite fluent with ksh and csh: anybody who falls back to the "well, if you don't know how to grok the CLI you should learn or not use a computer" is a fucking moron and an anachronism.

Re:more than just desktops,

[shish]

| . <-- the joke
|
|\o/
| | <-- you
|/ \

(Both ati and nvidia drivers are point & click installable nowadays)

Re:more than just desktops,

[xenocide2]

as far as I know, the nvidia drivers break things like suspend. and most developers refuse to invest time and effort into driver support for closed source technologies. Especially now that we're seeing OSS progress on NVidia, I think you'll have a had time convincing people to make it work for free. Canonical probably will, if you hand them over the cash ($250/yr).

Re:more than just desktops,

[antdude]

What's a command line? --newbies

Re:more than just desktops,

[Blakey Rat]

Typing in the stuff isn't difficult.

Figuring out what to type in is. Rebooting, then coming up with a text screen because "startx" failed and there's nothing but an instruction telling you to restore your backed-up config (with, of course, no instructions on HOW to do that or, even better, an option to automatically do it)... that's very difficult.

Of course typing in those commands *is* difficult for somebody who's visually (or otherwise) impaired. You can install a driver on Windows or OS X using a screen-reader... try typing in 6-x86.x86_64.run with a screen-reader.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Blakey Rat]

The vast majority of personal computer users never used Windows 3.11 or a CLI-based computer. (A larger percentage of corporate users did, but they also had an IT department to take care of things like installing drivers.)

but in my experiance it is more ready than Windows 95.

That's a safe assumption. In fact, I'd be more generous and say Linux is probably closer to Windows 98/Mac OS 8.x standards. The problem, of course, is that it's not competing with Windows 95 or Mac OS 6.0.8. It's competing with vastly superior software, Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X.

Anyone who gamed in Windows 95 had at least a couple bootdisks laying around for DOS games, and in the early days those bootdisks didn't write themselves.

No, you went to the Add/Remove Components control panel and clicked a button. (Might have been in the System control panel in Win 95... I can't remember. Point is, you did it with a GUI.)

Re:more than just desktops,

[MMC Monster]

Windows 3.11 was the early 90s. At the dawn of the WWW. Now we're ~15 years later with a home computer boom between then and now.

I'd wager most home users know nothing about Windows before '95.

Regardless, it should be relatively simple for a end user to install a driver without resorting to the CLI. Just as it was almost revolutionary for Ubuntu to not install gcc by default, I think some distribution should not install a CLI interface by default. Not to hobble the end user, but to have the community rethink how to distribute software in a system where CLI is not available.

Re:more than just desktops,

[mrsbrisby]

Wow, and you people wonder why Linux hasn't taken hold for the average consumer.

I agree. It's all ATI and NVidia's fault.

Let's tell consumers to stop buying their low-quality buggy hardware that require special installation procedures, and maybe they'll stop dragging down the consumers idea of the Linux Desktop.

I have an intel-based graphics setup that works just fine with beryl- no special install voodoo necessary. It might not get quite as many FPS as my coworkers' firegl board, but it never crashes, and never freezes up on me.

He's convinced all he needs to do is tweak some underclocking or somethingrather I don't really understand, but at this point I'm pretty sure a big part of his efforts are there to justify his purchase and vindicate his decision, and that the ATI board really wasn't worth it even to him- an otherwise very technical person.

Maybe after we get ATI/NVidia to stop hurting Linux with their inferior hardware and software, we can get some OEMs- besides TiVO- to actually ship with Linux desktops...

Re:more than just desktops,

[ltbarcly]

Using a CLI requires two things: the ability to read, and the ability to type (even if it's just hunt-and-peck typing). Actually it requires 3 things. Reading, typing, and a working knowledge of the syntax of the command line, precedence of commands, memorization of the 2 dozen or so commands you might use regularly, understanding of the help system to find commands you might need but rarely use, and so on.

Most people aren't smart enough to master this with out hours of formal training. So don't complain that most people don't use a CLI, most people don't use calculus either.

Re:more than just desktops,

[joe_cot]

And it's attitudes like that that keep us behind. "It's better for me, so I don't care if it's better for everyone else".

Let me make this clear. Until Linux is easy enough for someone to pick Ubuntu up off a shelf (which is complicated, since it's free) and get it working without issue on install (including their 3d acceleration, mind you):

We will never see Adobe Acrobat for Linux
We will never see Turbotax for linux
We will never see Quicken for linux
We will never see new mainstream games (sans for Id games) for linux

I'm quite happy that kvm is built into the new Feisty (even though I don't have virtualization support, so it doesn't help me at all), which fixed this problem for /us/ but that doesn't change the fact that mainstream people won't use it until their programs exist on it. My mom can't go through tax season without Turbotax. Most of my friends don't switch because WoW won't run (except in Cedega, which breaks every 3 days). Until it's usable enough that most people will try it, main stream vendors won't take it seriously, and it will always be half an OS

Re:more than just desktops,

[ltbarcly]

I thought you people lost these arguments in the late 80's. Really? You thought that the GUI won in the 80's? Which GUI was available then? And you think THAT was more powerful than CLI? You're an idiot.

Maybe that's a CLI for you, but for most people double-clicking on an icon, or even having something already done so you don't have to worry about it at all, is a lot easier. Really? You think the CLI is equivalent to double clicking on an icon? You realize that the CLI on a unix machine is an operating environment, right? It isn't just used to start GUI applications, most of the time spent on it is actually spent getting things done.

Let me put it this way, let's say you have a comma delimited file, file1, and you need to produce a file containing fields 2 and 3, sorted via field 2. How long does it take you to do this in Excel? a minute?

$ cut -f2,3 -d',' file1 | sort > newfile

3 seconds, no starting a program or using the mouse. Now, lets say I have 10,000 files and I need to do this to each of them. I guess you could whip up some kind of VBAscript to do this, it might take an hour, less if you use VBAscript all the time, (who would want to do that??).

Let's say the files have a csv extension.

$ for f in `ls -1 *.csv`; do echo Processing $f; cut -f2,3 -d',' $f | sort > processed/$f ; done

8 seconds for that one.

These are trivial examples, yes, but you would be shocked to learn how much processing is trivial once you start doing it in an environment that doesn't hold your and and change your diaper for you.

Re:more than just desktops,

[mcrbids]

It is probably possible to do exactly as you describe - I'm a Fedora/Red Hat user, so I don't know about Ubuntu enough to say.

But I think a major point is being missed, here. How come producers of binary packages aren't supplying their own public repos? Here we are, we've produced this whiz-bang neato set of tools from either the Debian (and the .deb derivatives) front or the RedHat (and it's RPM-based derivatives) camps, and the binary drivers aren't available in a repo of any kind.

If ATI, NVidia, AMD, Intel, etc. were to build/maintain THEIR OWN repos and provide the settings to be included in Debian/RedHat, it would greatly improve their image, make our lives much easier, without costing them much at all.

Yes, licensing concerns prevent RedHat from *distributing* the sources to these binary files. But, they wouldn't be distributing these binary drivers.

It just seems to me like there's a deal that should be made with the community: Vendors should either:

1) Work with us so that we can develop drivers for their stuff in an open forum, or

2) Provide their own binary drivers in such a way as it can integrate with our already very sophisticated and functional software distribution network(s). (EG: yum and apt)

Pick one.

Re:more than just desktops,

[MayonakaHa]

Hot wiring a car only requires the ability to recognize colors and connect some wires together. But people don't expect me to know how to do that in order for me to operate my vehicle. Neither do they expect me to know how to fix it by crawling under the hood and figuring out what's wrong with the engine.

I know how to fix my own car just like I know how to operate Linux using a CLI, but do I expect others to? Nope. While it may be fairly simple, at least to us, it's very intimidating to the average user who would rather stick the keys in the ignition and "make it go" so they can get their work or play going.

Re:more than just desktops,

[robinvanleeuwen]

Once you figure out the settings it's easy. My desktop has a AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+
and a 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro]
2.5 Gb of ram, X 7.1.1, ubuntu edgy eft and runs Linux main 2.6.17-10-generic kernel without
any problems. With beryl.

I don't have a wireless nic in this one, so it seems that the ati drivers and the bcm43xx bite
eachother in the ass...

Re:more than just desktops,

[the_womble]

installing ATI drivers (for those of you out there who've done it know this) is an absolute pain in the ass on Ubuntu

The announcement says "new infrastructure will be implemented which allows the user to trivially enable both enhanced desktop effects and the necessary driver support"

So driver installation should come closer to being always very easy.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

What has that got to do with the packages of the NVIDIA driver?

You must be new here

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because even if install they don't work with the 3D desktops ? and you can spend lots of time trying to get them to work but they don't.
The ATI drivers are useless. All Beryl, AIGLX, Compiz, etc. work is done for nvidia because their drivers are far better, which is why those technologies don't work for ATI users.

A better solution would be good quality open source drivers rather than crap binary ones.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

heh... emerge ati-drivers

Re:more than just desktops,

[triffid_98]

Not since the 70's. All modern cars lock the steering column, you'd need to disable that in order to steer the car you just hotwired. Unless it has a chipped key, in which case you'd need to fool the ECU as well...but I digress.

In Ubuntu I think they've done an awesome job of hiding the CLI and providing a clean UI. Configuring printers, driver updates, installing common apps/plugins, all of this is scripted for you. However, like all abstractions, it leaks. If you have a quasi-supported ATI board, it leaks badly. At which point you need some understanding of how things actually work.

Hot wiring a car only requires the ability to recognize colors and connect some wires together. But people don't expect me to know how to do that in order for me to operate my vehicle.

Re:more than just desktops,

[bky1701]

On Fedora and SUSE you will never get such a message. On suse you just had to run sax2 (I can see someone not knowing how to operate a package manager from the command line, but I really don't think that 1 command will give any reasonable person a problem) and go through and fix it. On fedora it will ask you to automatically restore the defaults. I donno about Ubuntu, I never had it's X server fail, but I would guess it does something similar.

As for visually impaired, I will agree with that. There is another similar problem relating to that: tablet computers or other such devices that don't have a keyboard that is easy to get to. In this case, you could make scripts to reconfigure X and restart it on fail, but most distros don't have this (fully automated).

Re:more than just desktops,

[c_forq]

No, you went to the Add/Remove Components control panel and clicked a button. (Might have been in the System control panel in Win 95... I can't remember. Point is, you did it with a GUI.)

Umm... no. That is how you isntalled Windows games. DOS games required at the least the "Shut down and Restart in MS-DOS" option, but in most cases restarted with a bootdisk.

Re:more than just desktops,

[rantingkitten]

Guys, I hate to break this to you, but "most users" can't install the drivers on Windows either. You ever walk someone through that process?

"Okay, so go to nvidia.com and find the driver for your card."
"How do I do that?"
"Click Downloads, select your operating system..."
"Is that Windows?"
"Yes. So select that and--"
"It says.. Windows XP slash 2000... Windows 98 slash 95..."
"You're on Windows XP. So select that."
"Okay."
"Now which video card do you have?"
"I don't know."
"Right click on the desktop. Go to properties. Go to Advanced. Do you see it?"
"No."
"Right above the colorful thing."
"Oh. Okay.. uh.."
"..it'll say Nvidia something, or maybe GeForce something."
"Ohhhh. GeForce 5200?"
"Okay, select that then."
"Where?"
"On the WEBSITE."
"Exit out of this?"
"YES, EXIT OUT OF THE PROPERTIES THING AND GO BACK TO THE WEBSITE."
"Okay."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Did you select the 5200 yet?"
"No, am I supposed to?"
"YES. Click that. Click next."
"Do-I-want-to-download-the-following-file: installer dot exe."
"Yes. Download that."
"Where should I save it?"
"ANYWHERE. The desktop, okay?"
"Okay... it's downloading."
"..."
"Do-I-want-to-run-the-following-application: installer dot exe."
"Yesssss."
"It says.. warning-some-software-can-damage-your-computer-are -you-sure-you--"
"Yes."
"Accept terms and conditions?"
"...yes..."
"This-will-install-nvidia-drivers-blah-blah-blah, continue?"
"...yes..."
"Setup is preparing the... uh, install..shield.. wizard?"
"That's fine, just let it go."
"Do I click Next?"
"YES. YES. JUST KEEP HAMMERING NEXT UNTIL IT SAYS FINISHED."
"Okay. ...it says finished, do I click Ok?"
"YES FOR GOD'S SAKE ALREADY!"
"Okay, now it says I must reboot. Should I do that?"
"@#%"

Yeah. That's much, much easier for most people. The CLI looks intimidating but, to most people, both Windows and Linux CLI are incomprehensible gibberish anyway, so what's the difference?

Re:more than just desktops,

[MayonakaHa]

Well yeah that was an oversimplification. You could just as well apply it to changing spark plugs, changing your oil, checking the transmission fluid, etc. But the point still stands. I'm glad to see a distro of Linux focusing on end users rather than power users that isn't a mess. I'm going to be switching to Kubuntu myself soon.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

Some might ask, why does a visually impaired person need a new graphics driver?

Re:more than just desktops,

[rbanffy]

Sorry to say, but it's attitudes like yours that burn a lot of developers.

Let me be very clear. I will work for free to solve _my_ problems. I will stop working when _I_ am satisfied with _my_ solution to _my_ problem. I will work to solve other people's problems for a (hefty) fee.

If you want me (or anyone else, BTW) to work to solve _your_ problems, you will have to pay for it.

Enjoy the free ride, but stop telling me where to go.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Stormx2]

HEY! Its valentines day! You and a server should go out an have a romantic meal.

Re:more than just desktops,

[JCMay]

Let me make this clear. Until Linux is easy enough for someone to pick Ubuntu up off a shelf (which is complicated, since it's free) and get it working without issue on install (including their 3d acceleration, mind you):

I did just that. Well, almost. I downloaded the Ubuntu 6.06LTS DVD, and installed from that.

Everything worked. My PC is an Abit NF7-M with 512MB RAM, Athlon XP 2000+, and the only card I installed is a Belkin 802.11 wireless card I got at Wal-Mart. Everything worked "right out of the box," including the nForce video, audio and ethernet, and the Belkin wireless card. I would have had to install a driver from the Belkin CD with windows, but Ubuntu recognized it and worked right away! Everything works.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Risen888]

Sure it isn't difficult to type that line, but it looks confusing and intimidating to the average person. And that answer is always slightly condescending too, implying someone is an idiot for not knowing the obvious solution.

I think you are being condescending in your assumption that the "average person" is too stupid to handle it. They aren't, of course, they're just trained to think they are, because it makes them better consumers. [Insert obligatory story about grandma/kid sister/roommate not pissing themselves when faced with a CLI]

Linux will not succeed anytime soon on the desktop market, because the geeks who make it don't respect the non-geeks who would use it.

Oh my, I'm terribly sorry. I didn't realize we were making it for them. I'll pass that memo up the chain.

Re:more than just desktops,

[SyncNine]

He wasn't talking about installing the games -- he was talking about making the boot disk. Windows 95 and 98 had the ability to create a bootdisk under the 'Boot Disk' option found in appwiz.cpl (Add/Remove Programs Control Panel Applet). It did it with a GUI, held your hand throughout the process, etc., true to Windows form.

So, no, Windows 95+ users never had to manually do a 'format /s' to make a boot disk unless they didn't know about the control panel applet, and that case is not the operating system's fault. As a side note, 'format /s' isn't a very difficult command -- nothing like trying to create a custom kernel package for your latest install of Debian from the source code. So, any argument that Windows 95 was 'difficult' in this aspect is moronic. I ran Slackware in 1995, and doing _anything_ in that OS was about as fun as gouging your eyeballs out with hot pokers.

So, yes, mucking with your config.sys and autoexec.bat may have been somewhat difficult, but any computer user that used DOS / Win 3.11 was probably already intimately familiar with it, as they probably had to install QEMM or 386Max for extended memory support long before breaking the plastic wrap on their fresh, new copy of Windows 95, and anyone who remembers eras that long ago will remember that QEMM and 386Max (or any other memory manager, for that matter) were remarkably difficult to get working 100% without diving in up to the elbows in your config.sys, manually.

Lastly, DOS had 'memmaker', which was the closest thing to a GUI for managing your LOADHIGH vs LOAD statements in your config.sys -- theoretically taking away the necessity for end users to have to muck with their config.sys or autoexec.bat files. But, I digress.

Re:more than just desktops,

[triso]

Or, it could be because installing ATI drivers (for those of you out there who've done it know this) is an absolute pain in the ass on Ubuntu.

What's so difficult about:

% sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10
% dpkg -i *deb Maybe the fact that the 3-d drivers don't work. I wish ATI would make a real commitment to Linux and produce drivers that work at least as well as their XP drivers.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Chandon Seldon]

Okay, the distro-provided package cripples my display capabilities for (to the best of my knowledge) no immediately apparent reason. The proprietary driver doesn't.

You're completely missing the point of the post you're responding to.

He agrees that the default "nv" driver has less functionality than the proprietary "nvidia" driver. He then suggests that you install the official Debian or Ubuntu package *of the proprietary driver*. You didn't know that there was an official package of the proprietary driver? There is, it works better with the package system, and even gets automatically upgraded occasionally.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Chandon Seldon]

Did you even open the package manager and search for "nvidia"?

If you had, you would have seen that both the binary driver and the nvidia-settings are available as official packages.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying punch cards are better? I think you don't know what you are talking about.

Re:more than just desktops,

[AbRASiON]

I must admit, I'm not a retarded user but I'm not a linux guru and I had a hell of a time installing the latest nvidia drivers on my desktop rig (the stock Ubuntu drivers had nothing short of shit refresh rate support)

I read a 3 page howto on the Ubuntu forums, I think I eventually got it working but it was no simple task.

I can, in some ways understand keeping the complexity in linux in general, it does ensure that less dipshits (like myself) get into the community but there needs to be a tradeoff somewhere.

Ultimately all I wanted was to see my 22" CRT @ 1280x960 at 60hz, it shouldn't be that difficult to acheive.
(for free however, I won't deny - it's pretty darn good)

Re:more than just desktops,

[Blakey Rat]

Really? You thought that the GUI won in the 80's? Which GUI was available then?

Mac OS.

And you think THAT was more powerful than CLI? You're an idiot.

Ask someone interested in desktop publishing. Hell, Apple's Macintosh along with the LaserWriter printer *invented* desktop publishing. Decades of the CLI didn't create it, but only a couple of years with a GUI did.

And for what it's worth, yeah, Mac OS was pretty damned powerful. It wouldn't still be around if it didn't meet people's needs.

3 seconds, no starting a program or using the mouse.

Plus the months of learning curve so that you know what the hell that "cut -f2,3 -d',' file1 | sort > newfile" gibberish even means, not to mention the time taken learning how to create your own gibberish that does what you want. Given a choice between doing an extremely rarely-needed task in 3 seconds with years of learning curve, or doing it in one minute in Excel, I'll pick Excel every time.

These are trivial examples, yes, but you would be shocked to learn how much processing is trivial once you start doing it in an environment that doesn't hold your and and change your diaper for you.

If you're the type of person whose job consists mainly of combining and/or sorting strange random data files over and over again, you might have an argument. Maybe. (Except still not, since it's trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI-- try running GUI tasks like photo editing or desktop publishing in a CLI!)

But that type of person is a very small minority. Face the facts, bud, you're only deluding yourself. I may be an idiot for agreeing with the grandparent poster, but at least I'm not a delusional idiot.

Re:more than just desktops,

[complete loony]

Mind you NVidia are having huge trouble with supporting Windows ATM as well...

Re:more than just desktops,

[ZERO1ZERO]

Good point, nicely made.

Re:more than just desktops,

[toddestan]

Well, they are really suited for different things. I wouldn't want to edit a an image from the command line (as a matter of fact, I've used image manipulation utilities that are purely command line based. Pain in the ass, give me a GUI any day). Same with movies, or even sound editing. I also wouldn't want to, say, sort a directory of MP3 files by genre into sub directories using the command line either. Ctrl+click and drag is far faster and easier than anything that can be cooked up from the command line. I also wouldn't want to browse the internet from the command line either.

I also don't know much about VBAScript, but I'm sure a whiz could come up with something in much less than an hour, which is only fair if you are going to put him up against a command line guru.

Re:more than just desktops,

[A Nun Must Cow Herd]

I use Envy to install the ATI drivers. It actually works ;-)

Re:more than just desktops,

[HobophobE]

Agree and disagree. There are certainly ways that the majority of computing tasks can avoid a CLI, and yet a CLI is very powerful to have. If you're using an application extensively you probably want to be able to learn a command line for it. You're better off if you do. On the other hand, if you're a casual user of a program you are better off with some form of GUI.

Now here's where the breakdown lies: some applications are CLI-only and many are clunky-GUI + CLI. This is a horrible design flaw. All applications should be CLI-only EXCEPT applications that exclusively provide a GUI for a CLI-app. In other words, if written properly any application should be functional on the command line (okay, probably some exceptions which I'll simply acknowledge and ignore). Therefore, GUI-ing an app should be less stringent task and one that allows for multiple GUIs for the same app with various targets in mind _without_ trying to pack a novice/expert/etc. set of options and aspects under a single roof.

Why do I make that claim? One important but oft-ignored design tenet is to divide and conquer. As much as rationally possible things should be broken into units of work and reused. If I'm writing a calculator I want one function for each basic operation, I want one module to handle input from other input modules, etc. You can complain all you want "KISS" but when you've written a monolithic calculator program and we both want to change the system in some way, you're busy trying to declunk the monster and rewrite massive parts while I can just exchange the head or tail or a few guts (depending on the change) and I'm done.

This sort of thing is coming... we're probably about 20 years away from a sane computing environment, but it'll happen. Until then you'll just have to make due and weigh what's important to you as the burden of what system you use and accept its faults.

Re:more than just desktops,

[agendi]

It's not even a matter of "smart enough" it's a matter of familiarity and frequency of use as you've already identified. The "average" person is maybe going to install a piece of software every few months once their computer is set up. This is not frequent enough to warrant learning the command. I would suspect that in reality the average person install software even less than that. I love the CLI and I would not use and OS that didn't include a decent CLI but I write scripts and other shell based automation to make my geek-life easier. The CLI is not necessarily efficient to learn if all you use the computer for is some word processing and web browsing or game playing. One of the great power features of CLI ways of life is that it generally makes no assumptions about how the end user will use it. String together commands in myriad ways for powerful new tools is great and all but when my mother sits down to write a letter she wants the software to make certain assumptions on her behalf ie lay it out as a letter with margins at x and page size y and font "blah" etc. In the same way when my brother wants to play game x on computer y he is under that same kind of task focussed assumption. I've gotten off track. At the end of the day apt-get and the repository structure makes installing software easier because it puts it all in the one easy place to get at. If we use that as a feature over say windows where you have to find the driver/app then we should be consistent we should try not to have some drivers installed easily through the system install tool and other drivers installed by CLI, the only people it's hurting is the ones making/packaging the distro, the average person isn't going to get political and write angry letters to ATI demanding them to make their drivers more open, they are just going to stop using the OS.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

>20 years later and you STILL think CLI's should be necessary to perform basic functions on your computer?

grep searchString list > new.list

Show me how to perform this basic function on windows with a few clicks. Please?

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the steps to stop X server and restart it again.

Unfortunately the space in /. is not big enough to put all the required steps.

Re:more than just desktops,

[jwhitlark]

just use envy: http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html Click on the deb to install, run envy from the command line, tell it to do it's thing. It figures out what make and model card you have, and downloads and installs the appropriate proprietary driver. Works like a charm.

Re:more than just desktops,

[SanityInAnarchy]

Installing a driver should not be considered "basic functionality" on any computer. If you have to go beyond the standard drivers, something's wrong, and you damn well better be able to handle at least a commandline+google, even on Windows -- or you shouldn't be touching the drivers.

And yes, in that respect, Linux installation is very broken. I'll remind you of the simple solution: Have it come pre-installed. Ultimately, Windows can be just as hard to install, but installing an OS is not something ordinary users should have to be subjected to.

By the way, this has nothing to do with GPLv3 -- and GPLv3 will not split the licensing any more than it already is. If diverse licensing is what's killing open source on the desktop, proprietary software should've been dead for 3 decades or so.

Re:more than just desktops,

[SanityInAnarchy]

It wouldn't still be around if it didn't meet people's needs.

Yes it would. And for what it's worth, Pre-OSX Mac isn't something I'd touch if I could help it.

Given a choice between doing an extremely rarely-needed task in 3 seconds with years of learning curve, or doing it in one minute in Excel, I'll pick Excel every time.

Don't think you learned to use Excel and GUIs without years of learning curve. You like Excel because you can leverage all that. Well, I know the CLI, and I can leverage it for all kinds of things. That one command may not be needed very often, but there are an endless number of things I need to do that I can accomplish with 3 seconds on the commandline, easily adding up to years of time when many of them would be five minutes to half an hour trying to make it work in Excel, then calling tech support or relatives to see if they can make it work in Excel...

it's trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI-- try running GUI tasks like photo editing or desktop publishing in a CLI!

To the extent that you mean, I have an answer for you:

$ gimp

Ok, I know I'm cheating here, but really, think about that. And it's certainly possible to create a command which launches the Gimp and its GUI without already being in a GUI.

It's trivial to run a CLI in a GUI. It's not trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI, unless you can show me a GUI way of combining 3-5 hyperspecialized programs to do one small task on a set of data.

GUIs currently lend themselves to large, monolithic programs, which have thought of 90% of what you want to do. CLIs have tons of tiny programs, each of which covers only a small part of what you want to do, but you can combine them to cover really anything you want to do, because at that point, you're programming.

However, before the flames start, I am not advocating a return to the CLI for absolutely everything. I do think it's still a useful skill, however, and when I have essentially no CLI (OS 9) or a CLI that sucks (Windows/NT/DOS), I feel as frustratingly restrained as I do when my X won't start and I'm restricted to a commandline only.

Every interface has its place, and there are at least a few of them that are absolutely irreplacable. Another one is the 3D interface -- all hype aside, you simply cannot do 3D modeling or mapping effectively with only a flat GUI, much less a commandline -- you really need to be able to fly around your creation.

If you're the type of person whose job consists mainly of combining and/or sorting strange random data files over and over again, you might have an argument.

It's not even my job, really. Consider things like this:

$ for i in */*/*.flac; do destdir=/ipod/`dirname \"$i\"`; mkdir -p "$destdir"; oggenc "$i" -o "$destdir/`basename \"$i\" .flac"; done

I believe if I were to separate that out into a shell script, I could throw an ampersand at the end of that oggenc command to make this suddenly multithreaded.

Basically, the above command converts an entire music collection from Flac to Ogg Vorbis. I could easily do other conversions, and there's plenty more I could do here, but I think it serves to illustrate something. Even if I expand the above, it's maybe ten lines, and anyone who knows even a little bit about the commandline can begin to understand it and hack on it. But this kind of thing -- batch processing -- is something that Windows people have whole specialized applications for. The above would probably be some little freeware download, it'd be a megabyte or two, and it'd come with spyware.

With a proper commandline, it's a 10-line shell script.

I can't say I have to do that particular thing every day. However, there are things every day that are made significantly easier by Unix tricks under the hood, even if I eventually turn the one liner into a 50 line shell or Perl s

Re:more than just desktops,

[Skrynesaver]

Anyone who gamed in Windows 95 had at least a couple bootdisks laying around for DOS games

>HmnpH< Nonsense I had two commands
ldac.bat
and svac.bat
ldac.bat <configname> loaded autoexec and config.sys saved in c:\configs\$configname
svac.bat saved the current set-up to c:\configs\

I have resisted wandering in to this thread as it's bloody obvious that a CLI app can do some things better and a GUI app is more suited to others. Every day I write a 'bash|perl' script that makes my and my colleagues life easier, once a month I throw a few of them that are related together give the result a few parameters and document it for internal use, I've even been known to throw a Tk interface on it where a script is very popular, combining both worlds.

Weirdly we are not using a shell script to edit images, (we do to produce thumbnails though, imagemagick is a fine set of tools), so yes, the right tool for the job.
As most users don't deal with raw data so the brightly coloured tool with the foam protected edges and warning to stand back and wait while it operates is more suited for them than the carefully assembled auger, bicycle sprocket and chainsaw combination but you know which one bores though a terabyte of data first (that's right the one with the bits of finger hanging off of it where something went wrong in testing ;) ). beat that for a bad analogy

Re:more than just desktops,

[Blakey Rat]

It wouldn't still be around if [Mac OS] didn't meet people's needs.
Yes it would. And for what it's worth, Pre-OSX Mac isn't something I'd touch if I could help it.

So now you're arguing that the free market economy doesn't work.

Don't think you learned to use Excel and GUIs without years of learning curve.

Not years. But yes, there's a learning curve to learning Excel. It's still months shorter than the learning curve involved in learning the Unix CLI interface, and I stand by my point. Ignoring the thrust of my argument to point of a minor omission doesn't change my mind, sorry.

It's trivial to run a CLI in a GUI. It's not trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI

I have an answer for you:

Double-click Terminal.app.

What the hell whack-ass GUI are you using that doesn't have a Terminal program? Either that, or you have so little experience running a GUI that you don't know about the Terminal program. Either way, I don't think you're qualified to talk about the GUI if you know nothing about it. Seriously, try actually turning on a Mac running OS X sometime.

but you can combine them to cover really anything you want to do, because at that point, you're programming.

Oh yeah, and we all know how popular programming is. Surely your "everyone must learn CLI" philosophy will make computer sales skyrocket!

I feel as frustratingly restrained as I do when my X won't start and I'm restricted to a commandline only.

So now you're arguing the opposite you have in the last two posts. What the hell? Make up your damned mind!

Every interface has its place, and there are at least a few of them that are absolutely irreplacable. Another one is the 3D interface -- all hype aside, you simply cannot do 3D modeling or mapping effectively with only a flat GUI, much less a commandline -- you really need to be able to fly around your creation.

Wait... so every 3D animator at Dreamworks and Pixar, every architect, every video game artist, every CAD user... they "cannot" do their job "effectively?" Have you told them this? I'm sure they'd be very interested.

(Come on, let's engage the brain before we start typing, huh? Or at least make an argument I can't shoot down in one sentence?)

But this kind of thing -- batch processing -- is something that Windows people have whole specialized applications for.

OH NOES! PEOPLE USING WINDOWS DOWNLOAD UTILITY APPLICATIONS TO GET WORK DONE!!! CALL THE COMPUTER POLICE!!!

Ok, sorry, sarcasm there. What exactly is your argument? And why the hell does anybody *need* to convert FLAC to OGG? What the hell even *are* those? (I have the vague idea they are file formats for music... right?) Can you pick a task that a normal rational person might someday need to actually do, and not these crazy contrived examples?

It's this realm between usefulness and cool hacks that is so attractive to the technically inclined.

And all ten of them are very excited. The rest of the population wants to use the computer to get work done, or maybe surf the web or play videogames. But there's a big difference between saying "the CLI is very attractive to the technically inclined" and saying "everybody must be able to install a video card driver using only the UNIX CLI."

Oh, and BTW: You're wrong. I'm technically inclined, and I hate the damned CLI. I'd much rather use something like Word/Excel macros or AppleScript (or Automator) to do batch processing on the rare occasions I need it because those technologies are actually easy to use. When I do need to use a GUI, I prefer DOS because DOS Batch files are a lot easier to write than Unix .sh files. And DOS can actually cope with spaces in filenames! *gasp*!

One more example: My DVD drive seems to kick into high gear ... [rambling about using a CLI program to fix faulty hardware] ... but I pretty much guarantee you'll never run into it not

Re:more than just desktops,

[SanityInAnarchy]

First, let me apologize for something. I really should get out of the habit of replying to a post without reading the grandparent, and explicitly stating where I don't agree. For one thing, I am NOT claiming that a CLI is in any way a replacement for a GUI. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll note that I say ALL forms of UI have their place.

Now, on to the content...

So now you're arguing that the free market economy doesn't work.

Basically yes, basically because people are idiots.

More specifically, Mac OS has evolved, and in particular, I'm convinced it would've died without OS X or something similar, just as I'm convinced Linux could've easily stomped Windows if Microsoft had stayed with the Windows 98 code.

So, this has nothing to do with whether the original Mac OS continues to meet everyone's needs, or whether it was particularly impressive. It does have something to do with how you define a need, and whether most people objectively evaluate their own needs. Some people think they need OS X when Win3.1 would really meet their needs. Some people are on Win95 or such and manage to mentally block out their problems (BSODs and such) as something that should be expected of all computers, and thus don't see why they REALLY need to at least get a new XP box, if not a Mac.

I think the primary factors driving OS adoption are not needs or even really wants, but everyone's own personal delusion about their needs, and vendor lock-in creating artificial needs. (For instance: If Java had worked, and 90% of new apps were completely cross-platform, there would be far less "need" for Windows.)

yes, there's a learning curve to learning Excel. It's still months shorter than the learning curve involved in learning the Unix CLI interface, and I stand by my point.

Let's keep in mind, also, that this learning is an ongoing thing. To some extent, understanding "man" and "google" is most of what you need to make the CLI explorable, and a decent GUI is inherently explorable. But once you know how to explore, it will still be awhile before you're proficient.

So, bearing that in mind, I think they end up being closer than you think. GUIs still have a shorter learning curve, but I don't think it's so much shorter as to invalidate the results.

It's trivial to run a CLI in a GUI. It's not trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI

I have an answer for you:

Double-click Terminal.app....

[rambling about how my GUI must suck to not have a terminal]...

You obviously missed the distinction. I used OS X daily until my Powerbook broke. I currently use Linux, with all kinds of flavors of terminals. But these are running a whole CLI in a GUI. For all intents and purposes, everything inside that little window is just as if I was back on vt1.

That may seem pedantic as hell, but there's a point: You can, in fact, run a GUI in a CLI. On Linux, the main GUI we all know and love is X.Org, which runs in a virtual terminal -- you can verify this by hitting CTRL+ALT+F1, and CTRL+ALT+F2 and so on. Traditionally, somewhere around CTRL+ALT+F7 will take you back to the GUI.

Or, you can treat it as a bit of a hybrid. For me, that means I make heavy use of the "run" command (bound to a key) in favor of menus, as most programs I want to run are easily-typed English words that I can type much faster than I can find in a menu. This includes my terminal window, which runs fully in the GUI (to the point of being translucent and wobbly), and GUI programs I may launch from the terminal -- meaning I get to specify commandline options, do pipe redirections, all that good stuff, and the GUI program comes up, but will report status and error messages back to the terminal.

As for really running CLI commands in a GUI, or getting CLI-like functionality in a GUI, you may be right about Automator (haven't tried it), but I'm sure Auto

Re:more than just desktops,

[Blakey Rat]

First, let me apologize for something. I really should get out of the habit of replying to a post without reading the grandparent, and explicitly stating where I don't agree. For one thing, I am NOT claiming that a CLI is in any way a replacement for a GUI. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll note that I say ALL forms of UI have their place.

Fair enough.

But these are running a whole CLI in a GUI. For all intents and purposes, everything inside that little window is just as if I was back on vt1.

"But" nothing. The answer "double-click Terminal.app" was at least as useful as your previous answer "type in GIMP".

I avoid Word macros and AppleScript with a passion, and I haven't tried Automator (and probably won't), so you may be right here.

So you're qualified to speak to the merits of AppleScript without having tried it. AppleScript and Automator may not be perfect, but the point is that you *can* get the kind of scriptability/programmability you want without ever leaving the GUI. (And it's not like UNIX is perfect, either. It could improve in a dozen ways if UNIX users like you weren't so habitual.)

I'm not sure whether to insult you directly, viciously, or stealthily and sarcastically. The obvious thing is to make some joke about how for all your smugness about the Internet, you obviously can't use Google.

There's a difference between "knowing how to use Google" and "caring enough about the topic to Google it." You're the one who brought up those mysterious acronyms, not me.

You're on. Let's grab two normal people who have never used computers at all, ever, and you try to teach them a GUI web browser, and I'll teach them lynx. I'll have them exploring Google by the time you've taught them the difference between "right-clicking" and "left-clicking".

Why would I teach them about right-click at all? In the continuum of computer users, "right-click" is a power-tool. The vast majority of computer users never use it.

If a large corporation can save thousands of dollars by moving everyone from paper files to some ungodly VAX klugde where you have to manually type PostScript commands, they'll go with the VAX every time.

The VAX kludge would probably be superior to paper files. Of course, for a tenth the cost the same company could move to Windows Small Business Server or something similar *and* be more productive than the VAX solution. So your argument sums to "any computer is faster than doing things on paper," which while I'm sure most people would agree, has nothing to do with this particular debate.

Certainly not better, not really worse, and utterly pointless when Gaim works so well.

This GAIM?
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/gaim_2_is_ugl y.png
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/gaim_2_is_bug gy.png

That GAIM? Oh yeah, it works so well it puts an un-movable un-resizable window on my screen, or on half my screen. That truly is the hallmark of well-working software. If you want to see decent multi-IM software, try Adium on OS X, but GAIM is a piece of crap.

Re:more than just desktops,

[SanityInAnarchy]

the point is that you *can* get the kind of scriptability/programmability you want without ever leaving the GUI.

Can I attach the output of one program to the input of another? Can I get any sort of feedback from programs as to when they're finished with a task, and whether they've finished successfully? Can I loop on something arbitrary -- like, say, the result of another task?

Can it do all this from a true GUI? Or will I see source code with GUI shortcuts (like Eclipse)?

I don't think it's quite the kind I want. And if it were, it still has to prove useful enough for me to give up how quick I am with a keyboard.

Why would I teach them about right-click at all? In the continuum of computer users, "right-click" is a power-tool. The vast majority of computer users never use it.

And they are missing out. My mother, after learning to right click, is considerably more able to figure things out on her own. Have an object that you want to do something with, but don't know what menu it's hidden in? Right-click on the object.

Regardless, what are you going to do? Give them a Mighty Mouse or something? They're going to ask about the right mouse button.

So your argument sums to "any computer is faster than doing things on paper," which while I'm sure most people would agree, has nothing to do with this particular debate.

What it has to do with this debate is that it is the businesses which ultimately made a choice, way back when, between GUI and CLI. It's really difficult to say which is better without hopping in a time machine and going back to that crucial moment, then convincing all the Fortune 500 companies to train everyone on Unix instead of Windows/Mac -- perhaps by developing a killer app for Unix. You'd then have to compare that timeline to our own.

As it is, the popularity of an interface says nothing about it except that it is popular. Only very rarely is an interface so amazingly better that it doesn't matter whether it's popular or not. But it's kind of hard to tell which is the case once things settle down and start to mature.

This GAIM? [insert screenshots]

What's ugly about that? If it's just the look of it, both Gaim and GTK are fairly themeable. Besides, weren't we talking about usability, not aesthetics?

it puts an un-movable un-resizable window on my screen, or on half my screen.

I suppose I'll have to try it on Windows sometime, then. On both Linux desktops I use, it's been every bit as usable as Adium, though I do miss Growl. One very resizable window that fits neatly in a corner of the screen, and which now wobbles and jiggles with everything else now that I'm on Beryl/Compiz everywhere.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Thundersnatch]

Yes, but how is one to know that "xorg-driver-fglrx" is the correct package? Other than experience, or trial and error? A non-default package description search for "ATI" in the debian package repository gives 12,000 hits, but a package name search for ATI doesn't return this package.

And yes, I know a description search for "radeon" would bring this up, but the results are certainly confusing for Joe User, even if he is fairly experienced. It isn't clear that "xorg-driver-fglrx" is what is needed, rather that say "xfree86-driver-fglrx" or "xserver-xorg-video-ati". Yet Ubuntu is probably the easiest Linux distro to use.

Re:more than just desktops,

[Anonymous Coward]

You use Excel to cut a line up by delimiters, sort it, and put it in a second file? Odd. GUI vs CLI is a matter of preference. But, it IS better to know both. Even for something like copying some files. If I want to copy like 1-5 to a directory, file 6-10 to another, 11-15 to a 3rd, and 16-20 to a 4th, it's probably fastest to sort by name or date depending, rope 'em and drag 'em onto some folders (especially if the folders already exist). If I want to take a directory with 10,000 files (or even 100) and want to put the a's in directory a, b's in b, etc., that's definitely much faster and easier by command line. Or like all the files with "foo" in the name, for that matter. Just the act of having to physically select or rope around a huge block of files makes it slower to deal with large numbers of files via GUI.

          MacOS isn't still around. OSX isn't really related to the previous MacOS 1-9. If you run a classic app, this virtual machine boots up a copy of MacOS 9.2.2 or so, it boots, and runs your classic app. OSX does have GUI and CLI available since FreeBSD is thrown into the mix.

          Oh, and this is pretty disturbing even to me, but people do use TeX layout system to type up a fully typeset book entirely using a plain text editor. It's used quite a bit in mathematics books for instance, because it's relatively painless to layout the math with it. I think there are GUIs to make this easier but I know for a fact some people just bang out TeX commands in with the text, and type it up in a plain text editor.

          There is also a netpbm toolkit that allows photos to be diced, cut, contrast applied etc.. I used some of these utils to cut a 10800x8000 photo into more manageable strips. If you want to brighten 10,000 photos by 10% or something, these would be the way to go. Yes, it's contrived, I would do most editing with a GUI app 8-).

Re:more than just desktops,

[ltbarcly]

Oh, and BTW: You're wrong. I'm technically inclined, and I hate the damned CLI. I'd much rather use something like Word/Excel macros or AppleScript (or Automator) to do batch processing on the rare occasions I need it because those technologies are actually easy to use. When I do need to use a GUI, I prefer DOS because DOS Batch files are a lot easier to write than Unix .sh files. And DOS can actually cope with spaces in filenames! *gasp*! I think this just about wraps up the discussion. You're 'technically inclined', and you hate command line. you prefer word macros. Dos batch files are a lot easier to write than unix .sh files. And DOS can cope with spaces in file names...

This is the classic case of 'talking out ones ass'. Word macros and dos batch files are easier *for you* because that is what you have been using. Therefore, you conclude without actually learning the other system at all, the system you randomly happened to learn is better. BTW, DOS batch files can only handle 8.3 filenames, no spaces OR lowercase letters are allowed. But to a 15 year old like you this probably seems like gibberish because you've never actually used DOS. You mean the cmd shell that comes with windows of course, which is similar but not the same.

My advice to you is to not talk shit all your life, and stop assuming you know better than everyone else just because you have written a word macro.

Re:more than just desktops,

[ltbarcly]

Ctrl+click and drag is far faster and easier than anything that can be cooked up from the command line. False. Suppose you want to add a watermark to 50,000 image files. I can do it in less than a minute on the command line, how many weeks will it take you?

Perhaps you will say that you intend to do it with a macro or some freeware. That is fine, if you don't mind learning whatever macro language or searching around for some weird freeware program. That will shave down your effort to a few hours if you are lucky.

But what if we change the scenario to this: Add a watermark to every file uploaded to your ftp server before allowing it to be hosted on your web server? Good fucking luck with your macro language or finding freeware that does that.

Again, I can do this in less than a minute.

I grant you that some operations are more suited to a gui, such as photo manipulation. Yes, you must have the feedback and flexibility of input of a GUI to do this. However, for those millions of tasks that you do every day that don't require this flexibility, a gui is the wrong tool for the job.

Complaining about having to learn a CLI is false economy, just the same as the idiots who refuse to learn a real editor and instead use notepad or nano (pico). They are too lazy or stupid to spend a week learning something that will speed up everything else they do, and let them do things in a second they wouldn't even have considered otherwise.

Re:more than just desktops,

[toddestan]

Programming a macro in Photoshop is pretty easy. In your example, I could open up the first image, hit the record button, do whatever to put the water mark on the image, then save the file. Then I point Photoshop to the files, tell it to run the macro, then go grab a sandwich 'cause it's going to be while. Mainly because putting a watermark on an image has to (at a minimum) load each image to ram, put the the watermark on, and then write it back to disk. Doing 50,000 images in a minute is pure BS.

By the way, the stuff I was doing was manipulating images captured from a CCD camera on a telescope. We had a program that could display them, but not really manipulate the images. So change the contrast? Execute a command line tool to do that, open the image, see the results, be not happy, close the image, execute another command to change it again, open it back up, be not happy etc. etc. Sure, once I had a setting I liked I could then apply it to 2000 images with relative ease, but not having a GUI to find the initial settings was a real thorn in the side, or to just play around by being able to rapidly change settings and instantly see the results would have saved tons of time of having to constantly type in commands that only would take a couple of clicks on a GUI. And don't even get me started on stacking all those images.

But what if we change the scenario to this: Add a watermark to every file uploaded to your ftp server before allowing it to be hosted on your web server? Good fucking luck with your macro language or finding freeware that does that.

Again, I can do this in less than a minute.

What in the hell does the CLI have to do with this? If you want your FTP/webserver server to watermark images for you, then you are going to want to put some script files on your server to run off of some event that gets triggered. Granted, if it was a Windows server it could be a bit tricky.

Complaining about having to learn a CLI is false economy, just the same as the idiots who refuse to learn a real editor and instead use notepad or nano (pico). They are too lazy or stupid to spend a week learning something that will speed up everything else they do, and let them do things in a second they wouldn't even have considered otherwise.

I suppose a "proper" editor is something along the lines of "edlin" and "copy con"? Being able to type one line at a time with no way to change an error after hitting Enter is about as close to the command line as your going to get. Oh, you want a UI with that?

Like I say, they are both seperate tools and have their uses. I don't suppose you are browsing slashdot right now from the comand line, are you?

Re:more than just desktops,

[ltbarcly]

Come on,

You quoted almost my entire post except where I say

Yes, you must have the feedback and flexibility of input of a GUI to do this. However, for those millions of tasks that you do every day that don't require this flexibility, a gui is the wrong tool for the job. So your conclusion

they are both seperate tools and have their uses is just my conclusion rehashed with a defense of photoshop on top. Nicely done, you manage to be obnoxious for no reason whatsoever.

Finally, a proper editor isn't the CLI. Emacs and vim are proper editors. Notepad and Nano are for people who are too stupid to remember how to operate in Emacs or vim. (That is why nano puts the commands down in the bottom wasting space.)

Re:more than just desktops,

[toddestan]

Yes, you must have the feedback and flexibility of input of a GUI to do this. However, for those millions of tasks that you do every day that don't require this flexibility, a gui is the wrong tool for the job.

Which I read as, in the context of your posts, as "Except for a few things, the CLI is the only efficient way to use the computer." Backed up with a few contrived examples - how many people need to mess with 10,000 csv files on a regular basis anyway? A bit different than my conclusion, but whatever.

Finally, a proper editor isn't the CLI. Emacs and vim are proper editors. Notepad and Nano are for people who are too stupid to remember how to operate in Emacs or vim. (That is why nano puts the commands down in the bottom wasting space.)

Now who's being obnoxious for no reason whatsoever?

This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[drsmithy]

Apparently what is probably the premier desktop-oriented Linux distro doesn't think it's stable enough to include, but it's just as good - nay, better - than Aqua and Aero ?

Sounds like just another day in Linux-land to me :).

(Aside: I've used Beryl, etc on Ubuntu and it definitely does some cool stuff. To try and suggest it's anything close to the equivalent of OS X's and Vista's offerings, however, ignores some pretty hefty usability issues with regards to getting - and keeping - it working.)

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Beryl is that the code being written by the Beryl community is really quite bad. It resembles code I see regularly from university students who are doing their first real graphics work. To make matters worse, instead of bug fixing, optimizing and improving the basic plugins, they have the attitude that as soon as a plugin works, they can move on to work on a new plugin and almost forget about the somewhat working old plugin... Until they get past that attitude and start working on fixing and optimizing the core, Beryl will never be more than a toy for users who need the pretty graphics and are willing to give up system speed and stability to get it.

In my opinion, Apple and Microsoft have a big advantage in this area as they have significant leverage over their developers. If the desktop teams at Apple or Microsoft pushed out some of the stuff being pushed out by the Beryl community, they'd either be fired or forced to optimize and bug fix it before being allowed to move on to the next thing.

I'm really glad that Ubuntu has ditched the idea of including this stuff by default. A lot of people that are new to Linux start out with Ubuntu, and they would instantly be under the impression that while Linux looks nice and has some cool effects, it's very slow and unstable.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[kripkenstein]

Apparently what is probably the premier desktop-oriented Linux distro doesn't think it's stable enough to include, but it's just as good - nay, better - than Aqua and Aero ?

Sounds like just another day in Linux-land to me :).

You are comparing them on one aspect, in which admittably the Linux offerings fall short - stability. But the people who say that Compiz/Beryl are better aren't talking about that, they are referring to other aspects - say, that they require less in the way of hardware (especially vs. Vista), or that they allow a lot more user customization.

So, you are all right.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[oohshiny]

Apparently what is probably the premier desktop-oriented Linux distro doesn't think it's stable enough to include, but it's just as good - nay, better - than Aqua and Aero ?

Look who's talking: OS X 10.4 has most OpenGL acceleration disabled by default because Apple doesn't consider it release-ready; to enable them, you have to dig around with low-level settings. The only hardware-accelerated desktop operations in 10.4 appear to be texture operations. And Vista apparently has serious problems with 3D graphics drivers not quite doing what they are supposed to (see FPS story earlier).

Don't kid yourself: none of this stuff is new and neither Apple nor Microsoft pioneered it. The reason they are all coming to market with this functionality in mainstream systems at around the same time now is because hardware is finally cheap enough and fast enough to do so. If Linux were a little later to market (I don't think it actually is), it has to do with getting drivers out of recalcitrant vendors, not with Linux "following" Apple or Microsoft.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[arevos]

Apparently what is probably the premier desktop-oriented Linux distro doesn't think it's stable enough to include, but it's just as good - nay, better - than Aqua and Aero ? From a stability perspective, Beryl and Compiz have quite a way to go. However, the base systems seem more flexible than their proprietary counterparts from what I've seen. Do you know if Aqua or Aero have a plugin system that enables one to add third party effects to the graphics system? For instance, could I write a plugin for either desktop that would make my windows "wobble" when moving them around? Or explode in a shower of sparks when closed? Or would adding such features be built into the operating system and unable to be altered or extended by third party developers?

I don't think it's accurate to say that 3D acceleration on Linux is necessarily better than Aqua and Aero, as it's currently more immature. However, the X based systems seem to me to be more flexible, with a more clearly defined architecture. When this reaches stability, it seems that Linux will enjoy a not insignificant advantage over its competitors. Until then, I'd have to consider it as not better, but perhaps "more promising".

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[jalefkowit]

For instance, could I write a plugin for either desktop that would make my windows "wobble" when moving them around? Or explode in a shower of sparks when closed?

That's correct; unlike proprietary systems, Linux has no mechanism to protect you from your own bad taste.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[rbanffy]

This is the mechanics of Linux and its surroundings. You can't expect to pay nothing for something really cool and still think you can order or direct developers to do or fix what _you_ think is important in order for their project to succeed.

the haven't appointed you as their leader or advisor and, while they care if the software work, they care even more for the cool stuff the infrastructure they are building allows them to create.

If you really want your issues fixed, you either fix them yourself or hire someone who can. That help will be gladly accepted as everyone, even the developers, can recognize good code and, while not always wanting to return to some parts of the programs to tidy them up, they will be happy if it's stabler or faster.

Until _they_ feel they need to fix things, they won't.

It's just like Aero and Aqua, but here you have the option to get involved and fix the issues you think are important and, if you do it, you may get a lot of respect from them.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[tyahand]

Linux on the desktop has always been "more promising" than the alternatives, and looks set to be "more promising" for the indefinite future. Maybe one day it'll all come together and work the way software is supposed to, but personally I got bored of waiting. It'd be one thing if the problems were mostly technical, because then I (and I'm sure others) would be more than willing to help out. Alas, as this and other stories show, the biggest problems are all cultural, religious, and political, and most of them will probably never be fixed. Which is a shame, really, because there really is a ton of promise waiting to be realized on the Linux desktop.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[arevos]

It'd be one thing if the problems were mostly technical, because then I (and I'm sure others) would be more than willing to help out. Alas, as this and other stories show, the biggest problems are all cultural, religious, and political, and most of them will probably never be fixed. In the case of Beryl and Compiz the problems are plainly technical in nature. I don't think it'll be too long before some manner of stable hardware accelerated desktop arises for Linux, especially since it's a rather interesting problem, and development in this area is very rapid.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[imess]

Have you heard of WindowFX? Yes it's technically not a plugin to Aero, but it does do custom windowing effects, and it works on XP.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and Microsoft get drivers out of those "recalcitrant" vendors. Oh wait, they don't insist of the source code. The fact is Linux has drivers, note this article is about NOT using the drivers from the "recalcitrant" people who kindly provided them. The only recalcitrance is with the distros and community.

Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is Linux has drivers, note this article is about NOT using the drivers from the "recalcitrant" people who kindly provided them. The only recalcitrance is with the distros and community.

Apparently, you can't read. The article explains in great detail that Ubuntu has shipped binary drivers in the past and will likely again in the future; the reason why they aren't shipping them right now is because the ones the vendors are providing aren't working sufficiently well.

Year 2038 problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to look at http://slashdot.org/index.pl?issue=20380119 and future dates and it shows up a completely blank page! But dates are tried before it do show up things! Isn't that interesting? I feel really special now! :)

Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too much.

[MrvFD]

I'd understand the "give us our whatever-blobs"-attitude better if the "half" of the proprietary drivers people want wouldn't suck so bad. On my 64-bit Ubuntu, the proprietary ATI fglrx drivers:
- Hang the whole machine every time I logout (apparently because I'm using DVI output... gosh!), so I exit that installation of Ubuntu (which is not my primary, just testing the fglrx drivers etc. there) with alt-sysrq-e/i/s/u/b because it's safer.
- Give only green stripes and a complete hang if using _both_ DVI and VGA outputs at the same time (oh my god, we never though that could happen!).
- Do not give any 3D support if I happen not to disable Composite/AIGLX in Xorg.conf.

...while the reverse-engineered drivers give my Radeon X800 card 3D acceleration, DVI output, DVI+VGA output, accelerated Beryl 3D desktop via AIGLX etc. just finely. So I just don't belive in the FUD (from eg. NVIDIA) that they are so complex and extremely difficult to write, that the worldwide OSS community couldn't do that - those handful of reverse-engineering people are already doing better drivers than ATI with all the in-house knowledge!

I do symphatize with the people who just want "stuff to work", and know that NVIDIA proprietary drivers happen to be better quality at this time, but all my experiences with binary blobs has been so bad that I will take reverse-engineered drivers anytime, even for NVIDIA.

For those who haven't read it yet, David Airlied's LCA 2007 talk is a really good and entertaining piece: http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied/talks/lca07/nouveau. odp (yes, server's mime-type is probably wrong, you have to save it first)

Re:misleading title AND misleading summary

[Mjlner]

Reading the title + summary I got the impression that Feisty would not offer any way of installing these drivers and that I would have to download the drivers for my Nvidia card separately. Fortunately, this is not the case, which you'll see in TFA. I say "fortunately" because many of us do not mind having proprietary software on our machines (at least not as much as RMS) and prefer to have all the goodies accelerated OpenGL et al. (Debian is still around for RMS & friends.) I can handle the installation of proprietary drivers, but some of my less proficient Ubuntu-using friends can not and such a decision would likely put them off using Ubuntu.

Lesson learned (again): Don't rely on /. for the full story - RTFA!

Incorrect interpretation of the decision

[jdub!]

As with every previous release of Ubuntu, proprietary drivers will be provided and installed by default, but they won't be used by default unless the free drivers do not function at all on the hardware present (a choice that has nothing to do with 3D acceleration). This decision just means that the plans to use proprietary display drivers by default have been nixed, but only for feisty.

Everyone seems to make a big deal about the display drivers, but Ubuntu has shipped proprietary wifi drivers since warty, and they are used by default on vastly more hardware than the display drivers.

On the whining about blobs..

[STDOUBT]

I don't like 'em

I use as few as possible (wifi and 3d accel is all). To the folks of ubuntu who are sad about their distro embracing the 3v1l, I'd like to point out that GNU/Linux is an open system. Go ahead and limit yourself. Please don't presume to limit others. However, IMO, ubuntu did break an implicit promise to its users. Gladly, I've always run Debian.

If anyone is interested in a distro that actively excludes proprietary stuff *for real*, have a look at http://www.gnewsense.org/. It's sponsored by the FSF. I haven't tried it, mind you, as it's (drumroll please)....based on ubuntu.

I sincerely wish for open spec 3d hardware and wifi drivers. I just don't have time to wait around for them (nor the ability to "support" their development).

Re:On the whining about blobs..

[cortana]

Users who care about freedom could also just check out Debian in the fist place. I don't really undestand the point of gNewSense when Debian already exists, it seems like wasted effort.

Re:On the whining about blobs..

[notamisfit]

The main points of gNewSense are 1.) Pissing and moaning about aggregated kernel firmware and 2.) Pissing and moaning about an optional non-free software repository.

Re:On the whining about blobs..

[FishWithAHammer]

You forgot about feeding rms's god complex.

Re:On the whining about blobs..

[notamisfit]

That was implied.

Re:On the whining about blobs..

[FishWithAHammer]

Gotcha.

No more PPC support?

[nurb432]

Well, that sux.

Re:No more PPC support?

[sid77]

[evil overlord]
BWAWAWAWAWAAWAWAWAA more slackintosh minions!
world domination is a step closer now *g*
[/evil overlord]
it's sad that one of the prominent linux distro is cutting down PPC support, even now that PS3 is out.
hope to see them back on the development/testing stuff.

Re:No more PPC support?

[Anonymous Coward]

ya, that sux. i'll stick with pure debian, cos they support more archs.

These names kill me.....

[Chineseyes]

for the next few releases I suggest nibbling nymphs, fighting phallus, and nasty necrophiliac.

Re:These names kill me.....

[heroofhyr]

AFAIK, they have to be the name of an animal and sound like a character from some sort of terrible children's tv programme. Pernicious Penguin, Whistling Wallaby, Heretical Hermit Crab, Frugal Ferret, Balanced Budgie, and so on. Although I'd like to see a future 3d desktop release called Toucan Playatthatgame.

Re:These names kill me.....

[aug24]

Sorry, but sticking with the traditional alphabet it's clearly going to be Gobbling Girlfriend next.

Ubuntu adoption will go through the roof ;-)

J.

Re:These names kill me.....

[Bender Unit 22]

"Endut. Hoch Hech!" should be the next name.

Confused ...

[foobsr]

Quote: "Starting with Ubuntu's 7.04 release in April, Ubuntu users will gain access to Linspire's newly opened CNR (Click and Run) e-commerce and software delivery system."
referenced here: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/08/ 1830240 : "Canonical and Linspire Make a Deal ... Ubuntu users will get access to proprietary software (DVD players, media codecs) via Linspire's ..."

What will a potential user make out of this while asking himself whether things will work for him?

CC.

Well, so much for Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

When ubuntu started, I had high hopes for it as a project. Now I see it's become just like Debian, and Mandrake/riva/whatever, and Redhat/Fedora, and EVERY OTHER LINUX DISTRO. It's become mired down in it's own politics rather than working on making better releases. So, what's a good distro to move to now?

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[ajs318]

So, what's a good distro to move to now?

LFS.

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

With that attitude? Windows or Mac OSX

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[arevos]

Politics don't have very much to do with it. It's largely a pragmatic decision, rather than an ideological one.

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[cortana]

Binary blobs running in the kernel that are impossible to debug, alter or improve would not make a better release.

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[smash]

So, what's a good distro to move to now?

FreeBSD. Seriously. Less political crap, extremely similar functionality, much nicer/more reliable documentation...

Yes, it does take a little change in mindset to "get" the freebsd way, but once you do, it all just makes sense and feels much "cleaner" :)

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

PCLinuxOS

Re:Well, so much for Ubuntu

[Doctor Crumb]

The headline is very misleading. Ubuntu has decided to maintain the status quo, based on their analysis of this particular bit of technology. You can still install and use the proprietary drivers, and it sounds like they are actively trying to make that as easy as possible.

Don't base your distro decisions on slashdot's headlines; at least RTFA...

Why?

[jopet]

What is so bad about including the proprietary drivers. For many users, they are the only way to make proper use of their hardware and e.g. run 3D design programs or something like X-Plane under Linux.

Why make it harder for these users?

What is so bad about giving me the proprietary but working NVidia driver for my NVidia hardware right from the start instead of forcing me to read countless HOWTOs and jump through holes first?

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Proprietary drivers are against the spirit of the community.

Re:Why?

[peragrin]

And what happens when the drivers don't work quite right but instead hang the entire kernel on you while your doing some menial task.

Who's fault is it? Who do you go to get help? I have had the NVidia driver die on me but it killed off the system. when you have a closed blob you can't figure out which part is broken. is it the kernel, or is it a driver?

That is what is wrong with them. Even on windows. how do you know which part really breaks? is it the crappy third party drivers, or is it MSFT's interface? Both sides blame each other if you ask them. All you can do is throw out the card or wait for an update. At least with linux if you have the mind to you can do the work yourself.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you have just opened the floodgates of hell^H^H trollcountry and Flamonia all over you, don't you?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want the technical reason, or the legal reason?

From a technical point of view, the proprietary drivers may just not work. What happens if the driver hangs the kernel, or (worse) causes memory corruption or other malfunctions? What if it doesn't actually do anyway? How could the Ubuntu developers fix anything if they can't get at the code. Microsoft has pretty much the same problems with drivers, by the way.

From a legal point of view, the proprietary graphics drivers are not legally redistributable. Ubuntu can not simply package them up, include them and run them by default without being extremely careful not to violate the EULA on the drivers, or the license on the Linux kernel itself.

Re:Why?

[Hal_Porter]

That is what is wrong with them. Even on windows. how do you know which part really breaks? is it the crappy third party drivers, or is it MSFT's interface? Both sides blame each other if you ask them. All you can do is throw out the card or wait for an update. At least with linux if you have the mind to you can do the work yourself.

Or you can get Windbg, find the non Microsoft module in the stacktrace and either upgrade or uninstall it.

Interestingly, on Win XP, the machine uploads a dump to Online Crash Analysis which tries to find the faulty driver. I've seen this on a laptop with an Intel graphics chip - the machine would freeze for a few seconds, then Windows switched back to the default VGA driver at 640*480*16 colors and said that the device driver had got stuck in a loop and prompted me to save my work while it rebooted. After the reboot, OCA run and told me to install a new version of the graphics driver from the Intel site. Very, very impressive.

You can see that the GDI has some kind of watchdog to detect infinite loops in graphics drivers. It also knows how to reinitialize itself from 1024*768*64K colors to 640*480*16, and run in that crippled mode until the user has saved his documents. And OCA can presumably spot patterns in stacktraces submitted by the developers who found the original bug.

So it's possible to have systems based on untrusted kernel mode code which can heal themselves without needing any human input by talking to a server, with a bit of organisation.

Re:Why?

[jopet]

Sorry, but that community must obviously be 1) nuts and 2) not representative of Linux users if it thinks that way.

I am really sick and tired to see a couple of fundamentalist nuts hinder the success of Linux through nonsense like this. Until you can actually use hardware the way you do with other OS, Linux on the desktop for everyone will remain fiction.
It is already sad enough to see how much hardware there is were no driver at all (proprietary or not) is available -- to limit Linux even more by not supporting companies to easily include and distribute proprietary drivers is just insane.

I and many others have been using Linux (and before, *NIX) for many many years and I hate to see some fundamentalists declare themselves "the community" and speak for me and many others.

Of course, they are free to finally drive Linux into total irrelevancy with this, but I hate to see it happen.

Re:Why?

[jopet]

This is a bit of a contrived argument. First of all, billions of users use mixes of closed software that depend on each other without much of a problem -- in fact with much *less* of a problem than Linux users who have to fight with half- or notatall working or not-existing drivers. Second, it is not that hard to isolate components in a well designed system and to make it easy to figure out which component was the one that failed.
However, that would mean that there is an explicit way how closed drivers should get included and seperated from the rest of the kernel. That would mean that this is something that is planned and agreed to to work instead the topic of silly eternal relgious fundamentalist quarrels.

If Linux is to become successful as an alternative OS for the desktop that is usable by nearly everyone instead of computer geeks with too much time, there will have to be ways how to make all those hardware components work quickly and effortlessly and with proprietary drivers.

I am an enthusiast myself and I use Linux (for years now) in a way where these issues are not really that relevant. But I simply cannot at the moment use it for my children or many of my friends or recommend it for people who want to do what they usually do under e.g. Windows. Which means, among other things, simply use the driver of the company that sold me my graphics card.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you as far as general software goes, but this is nVidia we're talking about here. They have closed, proprietary hardware in my system already. I am currently trusting them not to glitch my display, short out my AGP bus or burn my fucking house down. On that scale I trusting them not to crashing my OS makes very little difference.

Re:Why?

[Just Some Guy]

What is so bad about including the proprietary drivers.

It breeds complacency. My home desktop has an old GeForce MX 400 card which still works perfectly well. It renders my 1600x1200 desktop cleanly and quickly, and basically does what I want it to. I don't have a strong need for OpenGL but do like to play games occasionally (eg Quake or Second Life) and although it's not fast, it worked perfectly.

Note I said "worked". Nvidia has officially deprecated my card, so no new drivers will ever support it. New kernel with an incompatible ABI? I can't upgrade to it. Security vulnerability? I can't get the fix. Basically, I can either keep using my system in its current state forever, or buy a new card purely for the driver upgrade.

Yes, I know my card is old and slow by today's standards. But if it works for me and I'm happy with it, why should I have to replace it? Given that my motherboard has an old Via chipset that Nvidia only supports in AGP 2x mode and that new cards are all but impossible to get working (I've tried), I'm looking at a complete system upgrade just to get a new driver.

With a Free driver, in the worst case situation I could at least attempt to fix new problems on my own as they arise. With closed drivers, I have no control whatsoever. I like Free software for philosophical reasons, but it also has huge practical advantages. This is one of them.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Actually, it's sad that you feel representative enough of the community to feel you can take away the freedom of others for the sake of the 'success' of GNU/Linux on the desktop. Millions of people are already using the GNU/Linux system, but almost none of those users have a machine that runs only free software because many people are not willing to fight for their freedom.

I agree a lack of drivers is not a good thing, but we should not give up. Buy hardware from manufacturers that support free drivers and refuse to accept proprietary software compromises from those who do not value your freedom.

Re:Why?

[notamisfit]

What freedom? The freedom to see and use code we don't own?

Re:Why?

[MostAwesomeDude]

Um, no. Put away the tarbrush.

So, here's a handful of reasons why bundling the drivers is bad.

First, it's copyright infringement two different ways to do so. ATI and Nvidia both forbid commercial and non-commercial redistribution of their drivers -- the only way to get them is from ATI or Nvidia. This is the same on Windows boxes and Linux boxes alike. Also, it's against the terms of the GPL to redistribute (ship) a tainted kernel, if I remember correctly. At any rate, I do know for a fact that the kernel developers refuse to debug tainted kernel dumps, so a kernel that ships tainted is not conducive to errors that might affect an entire distribution. (Before you get all angry about kernel devs, let me remind you that if a binary blob is the cause of a kernel panic, the devs have no real way to fix it.)

Second, it's a waste of space. This argument is somewhat dated, considering the current distribution mirrors (my university, OSU, hosts one of the biggest American Linux mirrors, and it's FAST), but it's still somewhat relevant. Distros like Ubuntu have "generic kernels," in which there is a stripped-down kernel with only the most basic optimizations and an initial ram disk with just about every module on the planet inside. Now, the proprietary drivers are not exactly small. If they can be kept out of the ram disk, then the amount that has to be redistributed grows.

Third, they are not "necessary for boot." Debian and many of its descendants, including Ubuntu, have a "popularity contest" system. Popularity contest is a way of tallying packages and seeing what is commonly on a system. This data is used to prioritize packages for LiveCDs and one-CD Internet installers. At current, the free drivers can provide 2D support, a framebuffer, and a text console, which is just fine for some people (case in point: I have a handful of headless servers, and except for the fileserver which requires VNC administration, they are all non-graphical.)

Fourth, you make it sound as if Linux should magically work perfectly out-of-the-box. Let us say that Linux should work as well as Windows without extra stuff. Well, it does, except for video codecs for Windows Media and DVDs. (Oh, and there are a few rare USB devices and wireless cards that don't have native drivers, but those are few and far between.) On Windows, drivers do not magically work for video cards. You get basic VGA-level support and a framebuffer, just like on Linux. If you want your hardware acceleration and your OpenGL, you've still got to go and get your drivers online (or sometimes they're on a CD with the card), but it's not any easier.

Fifth, it's not permissible. You may not appreciate the work ethic behind Linux, but I guarantee you that the thousands of people that coded long, arduous hours to bring you the system upon which you now work are damn well aware of the conditions under which they make available their code. You might not realize it, but the Debian coders whom Ubuntu and other derivatives are descended from work very hard at making things work. On some systems, like Gentoo, there is actually a package, "debianutils," that contains the Debian-specific utilities not provided by GNU or BSD. I would say that at the very least, you could acknowledge their rules and refrain from being the most recent person in a very long line to ask for something that is blatantly against policy.

Sixth, it's not helpful to the community. Supporting the proprietary drivers by default chokes off impetus to work on the open-source drivers.

There's why.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

        * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
        * The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
        * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
        * The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Re:Why?

[jopet]

That is all nice and fine in theory, but 99% of the users would happily give up some of those freedoms (and maybe even pay) to just get the freedom to use some hardware with an OS other than Windows. I am one of them.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of crap, and to say you are presumptive to speak on behalf of 'the community' would be the understatement of the year.

"Buy hardware from manufacturers that support free drivers"? Unfortunately that leaves me with a choice of zero actual vendors with performant 3D-accelerated cards. And that's why you fundies are such an annoyance - because you talk yourselves blue in the face like a bunch of idealistic teen debate-team champs, but have no real alternatives - you just insist that we continue to alienate Joe Sixpack and Gramma Jo while we await the commencement of some great corporate enlightenment.

I'm part of a silent majority of Linux users - I've been here from the beginning, and I've installed and admin'ed Linux in countless production environments. I have known SO many people who have tried Linux on the desktop, even "giving Linux another chance" on a near-yearly basis, but who ultimately can't deal with the roadblocks that have been intentionally thrown into their path by fundy free software politics. You do NOT speak for me, nor even for most of us - you speak for a loud and extremely obnoxious minority.

I am all for the lofty goals of the FSF, but there is a time to get real. A little bit of pragmatism in the area of "making Linux able to run GLGears at > 2fps" is not a complete capitulation to all that is evil in the universe. Bottom line is that Linux is going nowhere fast on the desktop as long as fools like you insist that I should buy my hardware from imaginary vendors in cloud cuckoo land.

Re:Why?

[petrus4]

Fifth, it's not permissible. You may not appreciate the work ethic behind Linux, but I guarantee you that the thousands of people that coded long, arduous hours to bring you the system upon which you now work are damn well aware of the conditions under which they make available their code.

It's them having this type of attitude which makes me wish that assembling a distro was a lot easier. That way people could still use a FOSS operating system without having to put up with tyrannical fanaticism. If more people had the ability to assemble their own, when such zealots tried to control their behaviour on the basis that the zealots felt they were owed something, said other people could tell the zealots to shut up and go away.

This however is what a lot of people in the "Linux community" desperately need, in my observation. They need to be told to disappear...Loudly, consistently, and repeatedly...until they actually do so.

Re:Why?

[peragrin]

I did say if you have a mind to fix the problem yourself. Linux isn't for everyone. I personally don't think it will be for everyone. But it is perfect for IT depts and large scale deployments. Where the end user just needs something that works.

Answer this question. Would you trust your life to windows operating properly? Fact is Computers aren't mature enough the OS's are to bloated. With the advances in Hardware MicroKernels could make a real comeback and still have decent performance. Systems that don't die completely when just one poorly written app is used.

Of course saying that is like saying one day Java will be fast. One can dream but that isn't going to make it true.

Re:Why?

[JoshJ]

If you want to steal peoples' work, go here.
Otherwise, go here.
Free Software is not tyrannical fanaticism. These people work hard to make a working Free kernel, operating system, and applications. Their only request is that it stays Free.
If anyone in the "Linux community" needs to be told loudly to disappear, it's people like you- people who want to take that freedom away.

Re:Why?

[Eivind Eklund]

That is a question with a long and complex answer. A short answer could be that one benefit of forcing you to go through all that is that it may make you investigate the long answer, and get some idea of the philosophical differences between free software and proprietary software.

Anyway, they're planning to make it easy to install the binary drivers, so that's not the WHOLE answer...

Eivind.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

It has nothing to do with paying. You can pay for free software. Don't confuse commercial software with proprietary software.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux didn't come this far because it's free as in beer. it did so because it's free as in freedom. Start closing it down and you'll get another Windows. Having crappy closed drivers on linux isn't a good thing you know. Not to mention once the vendor is gone or decides not to support a certain device you are accidentaly using, anymore - you're fucked. Having binary blobs is in the end not good for you - the end-user.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Actually, Intel graphics cards have working 3d performance, including 3d desktops like Beryl with free drivers. You could buy a card from them.

Re:Why?

[petrus4]

Proprietary drivers are against the spirit of the community.

And there we have it...the proverbial totally emotive, BS subjective abstraction which means exactly zero.

If we want to talk about emotions, I can also talk about how I'm still figuring out how to control mine over the fact that attitudes like the above still exist. The real problem is that if you're the type that the above comment leads me to suspect you are, you really deeply believe that you're right thinking the way you do. You're not aware that attitudes like the above only really serve as a massive impediment and obstacle, or how misguided and utterly induced via mind control such perspectives are. If you're like the usual individual on here who holds such attitudes, try consciously realising that such ideas (and I use that word loosely, here) aren't actually yours. They're Richard Stallman's, which you've adopted entirely uncritically because of how much easier it is for you to use his brain in leiu of your own.

Re:Why?

[Lumpy]

Dead on! My wife's pc runs ubuntu and I can not at EVERY release get her Geforce4 card to work. Back in the Mandrake 10 days it worked great, it worked FANTASTIC! now it dont and following every FAQ and other help online does not get it working worth a darn. To the point that I yanked the card and use the built-in Intel video chipset as it works better.

The only thing she really wants 3d for is the screensavers. This is something that is important to an accountant.

Honestly I am almost ready to give up and buy her a old lamp style mac and call it done as each release from all the linux distros are worse than the previous. They dont work on stability or useability, they work on "OHHHH SHINEY!"

I am a dyed in the wool Linux fan/guy I have been using linux cince the pre 1.0 days and honestly see it starting to go backwards over the past year.

Re:Why?

[JohnFluxx]

This is why people don't take you zealots seriously. Your fundamentalist foaming-at-mouth speaking just puts people off without getting your message across.

If you want to make a case about why a distro should include binary drivers and why we should give up the basic principles of a Free OS just for a short term gain but at the sacrifice of the long term, then you should try to do so with logic.

Frothing at the mad zealotry will blind you my friend.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

And hey, if you don't care about freedom, why aren't you using a mac? When it's time to buy a new computer, buy a mac and you'll get an OS that is not Windows and you won't have problems with video drivers.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

That's a lot of words to say that you think I'm just giving the opinions of rms. I don't think I am, I've spent a long while formulating my own ideas on this subject and while rms and I agree on a lot of things, I also believe there are areas we disagree on.

Why do you believe that proprietary drivers are not against the spirit of the community? A community built on a body of software that is available to be customised by anyone who choses to do so, whether for fun or to solve a business task, cannot continue in the same spirit if users willingly give away their freedoms for the sake of convenience.

Re:Why?

[remmelt]

Why not just use Windows? Or Macintosh? They're both stable, have stable drivers for any decent hardware, look nice...

I happen to value my freedom a lot more than that, especially when it comes to computers. As for the topic at hand, the proprietary drivers are usually pretty bad (I have an Ati card, so I'm partly to blame for that) as you can see in another post above this one.

Linux is a free operating system, in all senses of the word free. If that is not to your liking, there are loads of other OSes out there. Good luck.

Re:Why?

[petrus4]

That is all nice and fine in theory, but 99% of the users would happily give up some of those freedoms (and maybe even pay) to just get the freedom to use some hardware with an OS other than Windows. I am one of them.

I don't look at it in terms of giving up freedom, and I prefer myself anyway to try and avoid talking about it in those terms, because that simply gives cultists like the parent's author ammunition to think of us as moral degenerates.

The real problem with the FSF's perspective is that, apart from anything else, it absolutely stinks of fear. In Stallman's mind there is only room in the world for one perspective; his own. He thinks that if people are not completely uncompromising and unquestioning in their adoption of his perspective, that we are all doomed to a situation of total corporate fascism; it's a case of giving corporations way too much credit, and everyone else not nearly enough.

The man is nowhere near the visionary people claim he is...he's a blind, bigoted, autocratic moron, and his followers generally are worse. I see more evidence of that every day.

The thing that really sucks recently in particular is that if music DRM *is* abandoned, the FSF are just sufficiently delusional that they might actually try and take credit for it, rather than realising that they were actually grossly ignorant and stupid all along for ever thinking that DRM was going to be a viable means of controlling technology.

Re:Why?

[notamisfit]

And you know what's good for him better than he does? Make your choice, and allow him to make his.

Re:Why?

[halivar]

Actually, it's sad that you feel representative enough of the community to feel you can take away the freedom of others for the sake of the 'success' of GNU/Linux on the desktop.

What about my freedom to run the graphics driver I want to?

Re:Why?

[cronot]

~ Whhoooooosshhh! ~

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Nobody can tell you that you can or can't install a proprietary driver on your GNU/Linux system. If you wish to sacrifice your freedom to do that, nobody can prevent that, however it should not be the job of distributions to subjugate and sacrifice the freedoms of users.

Re:Why?

[petrus4]

cannot continue in the same spirit if users willingly give away their freedoms for the sake of convenience.

My real problem here I think is that it at least sounds as though you're claiming the perogative to make this decision for other people. If you on your own didn't want to use the binary drivers, I'd have no issue with that. However, if I want to use them and you try and insist that I shouldn't, or even worse, actually try to prevent me from doing so, I'm going to object.

Not all of us subscribe to the "100% either/or" mode of thinking that the FSF/its' fans do. Yes, obviously we want most things to remain OSS, but we're not going to think that *nothing* can be proprietary in order for FOSS software as a whole to be able to continue to exist at all. IMHO anywayz it's stupid thinking, and as I said earlier, it's based on fear.

The other difference between the FSF/its' supporters and some of the rest of us is that we don't adopt the attitude that we need to bully the rest of the planet into conforming to our every whim, merely in order to ensure that we're going to be able to co-exist with them. Again, this is erroneous, fear based thinking. It's the idea that *everything* must be FOSS in order for FOSS to continue to exist at all.

Re:Why?

[chthonicdaemon]

Why make it harder for these users?

Because everybody knows that these linux distro guys are just selfish pigs that are only in it for profit. I mean, they're giving stuff away for free, spending their time on it, trying to make it the best they can, and then they have the gall not to put every other user's needs first! Honestly, I tire of these rants against projects that have no real motivation to listen to their customers. This is not a company that has to listen to your demands or lose your money. A bit of calm debate, reasoned arguments -- that may bring them over to your point of view.

Or better yet, stop whining and do something about it yourself!

Re:Why?

[Cyclops]

Because in a couple of years your graphics card may be well enought for you, but no longer accelerated since the vendor doesn't support it any longer.

If I hadn't traded the NVidia I bought for an equivalent ATI card when I did so, today I'd not have 3D simply because the kernels and X evoluted but the driver stopped in time. NVidia doesn't support that card any more.

Since I bought a supported-by-free-software-drivers ATI card, today I can run compiz & beryl on my home's desktop.

Re:Why?

[radarsat1]

I have the exact same situation. I wonder how many others..
It drives me crazy. All they have to do is let the source out, no more work on their part, and we'll take care of it. Hell, not even the source, just the damn specs! But no. That's too hard for them.

Re:Why?

[dpilot]

No, at the moment you can't buy a *card* from them, though I understand that that might be changing.

At the moment, you can buy a motherboard with integrated graphics from Intel.

If/when Intel comes up with standalone cards with Open Source drivers, I'll take a serious look.

Re:Why?

[chthonicdaemon]

Just a thought: you complain about "the roadblocks that have been intentionally thrown into their path by fundy free software politics". I am eager to know how these fundies are stopping you from rewriting a whole system from scratch 'the right way'. I agree that it would rock if Linux would be as well supported by the hardware vendors as other operating systems (note the object-subject relationship there), but I don't really know how this would come to be.

Now, I am a pretty ok programmer myself, and I maintain a few small private projects. I cannot even begin to imagine the time that these fundies put into their projects. The truly contribute, they give it to you to use or not. I don't think they are stopping you in any way from doing a better job. I think that you, like me, do not have the time/skills/inclination to do a better job. And here's the bottom line: until you can make a really good case that they are doing the wrong thing (which I don't think you can, as they tend not to be as pragmatic as you seem to be) you will be stuck with whatever they give you.

BTW: Don't think you're just cluing them in on your needs by ranting about how they done you wrong by not giving you (for free) something that is exactly what you wanted. I think you're just pissing them off. Perhaps focusing on the positive aspects of a working unix-like system at little cost will make you happier.

Re:Why?

[chthonicdaemon]

So, if they are willing to give up those freedoms and pay for software, why are the not just buying Windows and getting done?

Re:Why?

[cortana]

Because it's *so* hard to install the nvidia-whatever packages from the package archive.

You should forget about reading third party howtos from mailing lists and wikis. Just use the distribution's own documentation and packages.

Re:Why?

[cortana]

Could you link me to somewhere that will sell me one of these cards?

Re:Why?

[smash]

Get off the high horse before you fall off.

Hypothetical situation: i have pre-existing nvidia hardware. Canonical decides to not support closed drivers. My hardware is now less functional. How the hell is canonical "sacrificing my freedom" if they simply support a working driver for my hardware? I'm either going to use the driver anyway (despite the *inconvenience* imposed by the canonical/fsf zealots) or simply drop Ubuntu/Linux altogether because it's broken on my hardware - and be forced back to a proprietary o/s.

That's really helping my freedom, yeah!

Re:Why?

[dodongo]

Yes, I know my card is old and slow by today's standards. But if it works for me and I'm happy with it, why should I have to replace it?

Well, to upgrade to Vista, of course.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop being so short sighted. This issue transcends your crappy video card.

Re:Why?

[tlacuache]

As much as I'm a proponent of free software and use it whenever possible, I think that it's this zealotry pushed down the throats of others which turns some off from the Linux movement. I'm reminded of this article a few months ago, and what Linus said.

ATI and nvidia and whatever other hardware companies, as companies, are also free to release their drivers however they choose to. They are under no obligation to make it easier for you. And you, as a consumer, are free to not buy their hardware.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

Who's fault is it? Who do you go to get help? I have had the NVidia driver die on me but it killed off the system. when you have a closed blob you can't figure out which part is broken. is it the kernel, or is it a driver?

Given that without the driver you can't use any of the capabilities of the hardware that make it cost so much, I'd say the user is still better off with a binary driver than no driver. On one hand you have "might not work and can't easily debug" (although you are wrong when you say you can't figure out which part is broken, it just makes it much harder.) On the other you have "doesn't work". Which do you think users want?

Ubuntu is as much about usability as about Freedom, maybe more. That is why it is currently the most successful Desktop Linux (if nothing else it's growing fastest and has the most hype, even if it doesn't yet have the most users.) If you want a distribution that's primarily about Freedom, go install good old regular debian, don't add any commercial or nonfree repos, and live the life you want to live - because you have a choice.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

Actually, it's sad that you feel representative enough of the community to feel you can take away the freedom of others

That's an interesting statement. How does installing a binary driver on my system take away your freedom? Because I'm supporting the use of binary drivers? I didn't make you buy an ATI or nVidia graphics card. You could be using intel integrated graphics (and if you have an intel macbook, you are, but not a MBP, which has the ATI crap in there) and have Open/Free drivers. It's not my fault if you don't.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Can you not use the free `nv' driver?

Re:Why?

[electrosoccertux]

This may sound troll, but nobody cares if you are sick and tired of it. If you don't like it you are welcome to move back to Windows and stay there for all we care.

Linux wouldn't be here today if the people who worked on it decided they were too impatient to wait for it to get better and too lazy to write the code themselves. Why should they, when there is a perfectly good proprietary alternative? How much could it really hurt Linux? Far more than you can imagine. Your view is very nearsighted.

My sole interest is in maintaining control of what I run. That's the whole reason behind running Linux. If you don't like it you're welcome to leave. People with _your_ attitude are the ones creating the problems.

Re:Why?

[Billly Gates]

Your card is still supported.

Infact I referred a few users to go to www.nvidia.com who had your hardware to update their drivers so graphical distortions would go away in our game we made. The latest drivers always helped

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

My real problem here I think is that it at least sounds as though you're claiming the perogative to make this decision for other people.

And you don't? You're posts in this discussion have been uniformly ridiculous.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because then you wouldn't need the local linux geek to come in and install shit. Then the local linux geek would be lonely.

Re:Why?

[Just Some Guy]

Your card is still supported.

No, it's not. The "supported" page in the README is out of date. Whenever I tried to use the latest drivers, X failed to start with an "unsupported card" message in Xorg.0.log.

From the site, it would appear that the card will still work. From the driver itself, it doesn't.

Re:Why?

[halivar]

however it should not be the job of distributions to subjugate and sacrifice the freedoms of users.

"OH, DEAR GOD, THERE'S A BINARY ON THIS CD!!! IT'S TAINTED THE WHOLE DAMN DISTRO!!!"

nVidia's binary licensing isn't going to kill the GPL, and putting the blob on a CD just in case isn't going to bring the F/OSS world to its knees. I think all this anti-free-but-not-free-enough stuff is irrational histrionics. I use computers and software to get stuff done, and I'll pick my philosophical fights only so far as that primary purpose is served.

Re:Why?

[ecliptik]

Yes, it still is supported, but it's only supported under the legacy driver which you need to dig into the Nvidia forums to find. If you try and use the most up-to-date driver with these older cards you'll get an error message in the installer telling you to use the legacy drivers.

I went down this road and followed their instructions, only to get a low res and odd looking desktop with the new legacy driver. After trying an array of different options and fixes in my X config file, I eventually had to drop back to the release before the legacy driver split in order to get a properly working desktop.

If you had referred me like the user you mentioned I would have been SOL on trying to get your game to work. At least if the driver was free I could have had a chance to figure out why exactly the old driver worked while new legacy driver didn't.

Re:Why?

[3choTh1s]

And what happens if I was not a programmer. Do I care if it was the kernel or the driver that was broken?

At least with the closed blob from the manufacturer I know that they have a financial stake in making things work. Which makes for a very good motivator.

Lets not kid ourselves. ATI/AMD and nVidia are in a very competitive field and are very unwilling to give even a hint at what is really behind the scenes. Sure we can make guesses and backwards engineer what they have done. But doing this will always put us at least one step behind. Sure we can say, "Well wouldn't it be great if...," but we don't live in that reality right now. So if we look at it from this perspective there really isn't anything wrong with closed blobs in linux. And until we get Open Source Video Cards, Open Source Video drivers will always be a few steps behind.

Re:Why?

[Billly Gates]

Oops I was under the impression that the linux drivers were just the ported win32 ones and they had an abstraction layer to support multiple platforms. I have not used linux on any of my machines with nvidia graphics in over a year and use intel graphics with ubuntu.

This sounds to me that nvidia is still favoring windows as the newest drivers there work on older geforce3 cards running directX and Opengl fine.

Thanks for the info as I am typing this on a brand new Core duo with an nvidia 7600GT. I think I will keep linux off it if this is nvidia's idea of support.

Re:Why?

[Just Some Guy]

Oops I was under the impression that the linux drivers were just the ported win32 ones and they had an abstraction layer to support multiple platforms.

They are. Well, more accurately, the drivers are identical - neither is the "native" version. There's no such thing as the "win32 ones", since they're written against the same HAL.

Ergo, that board is officially dropped on all platforms as of the new 97xx series of drivers. Don't blame Linux; they've cut off support universally.

Re:Why?

[Torodung]

Well, in Dapper at least, the restricted modules included (for my ATi Radeon) were deprecated faster than you can say "boo." Vid card companies find newer and better instabilities in their drivers so quickly, for bleeding edge hardware that's obsolete in 6 months, that it makes no sense whatsoever to include them in a distro. By the time you've downloaded the ISO, there are 3 new versions and a beta available!

If you want maximal stability, you're going to have to suck it up and learn to compile the kernal modules yourself. Not such a bad thing really, and the HOWTO's aren't too hard to find.

What's so difficult about typing "M-A B-I (3dcard)" anyway? ;^)

That's why. 3D hardware is *never* going to be a mature stable technology, by its own nature, so there is no such thing as a mature, stable driver that takes advantage of all the features. I think the decision is a trade-off that makes reasonable sense, even to a non-zealot.

--
Toro

Re:Why?

[drsmithy]

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software

What is your moral basis for asserting these are "freedoms" (or, "rights", if you prefer) ?

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

How does installing a binary driver on my system take away your freedom?

You no longer have the four freedoms on the software you run on your machine.

You could be using intel integrated graphics

Yes, you could. That would be a good thing.

Re:Why?

[petrus4]

And I'm supposed to care about comments from people too gutless to identify themselves...why exactly?

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

You no longer have the four freedoms on the software you run on your machine.

Gee, am I contravening the laws of robotics, too?

You could be using intel integrated graphics

Yes, you could. That would be a good thing.

But choice is a bad thing?

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Choice is a good thing, but when a choice is used to control users and take away freedoms, I don't think people should have the freedom to impose a non-freedom on others, it doesn't make sense.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

Choice is a good thing, but when a choice is used to control users and take away freedoms, I don't think people should have the freedom to impose a non-freedom on others, it doesn't make sense.

What you are clearly missing is that no one is imposing anything on anyone. You have a choice whether or not to purchase an AMD or nVidia graphics card that is unsupported by Free drivers, and you have a choice whether or not to use the full functionality of that card by installing binary drivers, which are not installed by default (though they may come on the CD.) If AMD or nVidia had a monopoly, you would have a point, but they don't, so neither do you.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

And binary blobs? They're enabled by default.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

And binary blobs? They're enabled by default.

Since you apparently don't understand this, I guess I should have mentioned that Ubuntu isn't a monopoly either. You could install good old Debian (like I just did in a vmware for a LAMP VM which I sometimes run under Windows XP, and sometimes under Ubuntu Edgy.)

It all falls under the header of "choice" until you have a monopoly involved, which we don't.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Except Debian has binary blobs by default too :)

gNewSense is a good example of a free GNU/Linux distro.

Re:Why?

[smash]

The free NV driver is useless for the purposes one buys an openGL card for.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

Well okay, point taken, I don't know everything, but my point DOES still stand :D There's alternatives out there. And you don't even have to run Linux! You could be running OpenBSD for example. Or you could be hacking up minix for your uses for all I care. Hell, you could run the HURD, if you could figure out a reason to do so...

So help out

[Anonymous Coward]

Install Feisty and the development version of the next code and let them know you are available to test the code works on your machine.

Re:So help out

[nurb432]

I tried to offer, but as of yet i have not heard back if they care or not.

Sorry but..

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why we can't use proprietary drivers if they exist. I mean support from the hardware manufacturers are what Linux lacks and needs and what many wants, at least bitch about. Let proprietary and open source live together and take advantage of each others existence since proprietary drivers means that developers have one thing less to do and might use their time onanother project.

All of the above IMHO of course.

Re:Sorry but..

[petrus4]

I don't understand why we can't use proprietary drivers if they exist.

Because the FSF and the reactionary, brainwashed morons who support them also want control over what everyone else does, is why.

"Free as in do as I say."

Re:Sorry but..

[Anonymous Coward]

This may have escaped your notice but users are free to link any proprietary blob against GPL code so long as they don't redistribute.

> "Free as in do as I say."

Why not spare us the invective until you have a clue?

Re:Sorry but..

[Mr. Roadkill]

I don't understand why we can't use proprietary drivers if they exist. I mean support from the hardware manufacturers are what Linux lacks and needs and what many wants, at least bitch about. Let proprietary and open source live together and take advantage of each others existence since proprietary drivers means that developers have one thing less to do and might use their time onanother project.

Additionally, for some devices with binary-only drivers, there are other matters that prevent the manufacturers opening up the drivers fully. The one that everyone always brings up first is that of the hardware manufacturers not always owning all the IP that goes into the drivers, and thus not being able to release all the specs. That's perhaps a very real and legitimate concern, and ought to be respected by people who get all pissy when some piece of free code gets misappropriated. The one I'd like to focus on though, even if it's slightly off-topic given that the discussion is video drivers, is that of open-source drivers not necessarily being compliant with regulations conceringing the operation of a particular piece of hardware. I've have EXTREMELY good results from an LT Winmodem (from the junkbox) I've dropped into a smoothwall box (also from the junkbox) that I built to save a relative from pr0ndiallers, but I would not like to see completely open-source drivers for such devices. "Why not?" you ask, quite legitimately. Well, who is most qualified to write drivers that affect things like how strong a signal and what encoding to pump down the phone line - some random hacker, or someone who knows PSTN technology? And who is liable if a home-built driver causes the modem to do nasty things to the phone line? At least with a vendor-supplied driver you can point the finger back to them, but here in Oz with a homebrew driver you could be facing a $12K fine if your softmodem does something funky to the exchange. With some wireless chipsets where a lot of stuff is done in software the same arguments could apply - it would theoretically be possible for people to write their own drivers that push the gear out-of-spec, which may be fine if you're out in the middle of the desert but which is definitely not desirable if you have to share the spectrum with your neighbours.

Given my 'druthers, I'druther have hardware that just does what it's asked to do with minimal CPU effort required - "Here are these bits, you know what to do". But then, I do recognise that software-based control of those devices means that they can be easier to update - for example, installing new drivers rather than flashing and hoping that you don't brick the device. I also recognise that CPUs are fast enough these days for the additional load from these kinds of devices to be neglible compared to that from the eye-candy most people have on their desktops these days, so the old system performance arguments usually don't hold water any more. Finally, from a freedom perspective, what's the difference between a black-box that you plug into your computer and a black box that you run on your computer? You don't hear people complaining that they're somehow oppressed because they can't get the source code for their external throw-bits-at-it-down-the-serial-line modem, yet somehow a software modem or wireless nic with binary-only drivers is the spawn of satan?

I don't care - mod me down if you feel compelled to do so. Honestly, though, I can't find a reason to get my knickers in a twist about binary-only drivers and their supposed deleterious effects on free software. If a manufacturer is prepared to put together good, stable and functional binary drivers, then good for them - they'll at least be considered next time I need a piece of hardware. If it gives me the freedom to choose from a wider range of products at a wider range of prices, I'm all for it. If you're concerned with the gear getting orphaned, think about the last time you used a piece of older gear - and what you used it in. Sure, I can p

Re:Sorry but..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're rant is lengthy but I think the gist is this. The free software community should accept binary drivers because you don't see a problem with "free as in no freedom to modify"?

Free software isn't about price, why aren't you using Windows or OSX?

Re:Sorry but..

[dodongo]

In fact, you are wrong about this altogether. The policy is not a change, but rather, maintaining status quo. The proprietary drivers will not be available by default, in the default repos. However, Synaptic has *check boxes* now where you can activate the Universe and Multiverse repositories where the proprietary drivers reside.

By default.

Just by clicking a check box.

No one is preventing anyone from using proprietary drivers. They just aren't going to be in the initial install of the distribution, enabled and used by default. That is all. Stand down.

Re:Sorry but..

[cortana]

Good answer. It is also compatible with Ubuntu's current behaviour, which they reaffirmed with this news article. :)

Re:Sorry but..

[Mr. Roadkill]

You're rant is lengthy but I think the gist is this. The free software community should accept binary drivers because you don't see a problem with "free as in no freedom to modify"?

In some cases, no - I don't. Do you have the right to modify your semi-automatic rifle to full-auto? If not, why the hell not? It's yours, why shouldn't you be able to do whatever you want with it? Why can't you remove the catalytic convertor and fiddle with the engine control systems for your car to increase its mileage dramatically - it's yours, and it's not your problem if certain kinds of emissions go through the roof. There's no problem if your softmodem scrambles the telephone exchange, or your modified wifi drivers screw things up for your neighbours, is there? Sometimes, there are very good public policy - and even just common-sense and common-courtesy - reasons to curtail what we can do. I can't piss on my neighbours at random, so why should my hardware be permitted to?

Of course, we may have some areas we agree on. If someone wanted to modify their display drivers to allow them to play HDCP content through their own capable but ageing projector or a DVI-only flat-panel, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to do so. If someone wanted to modify their wifi drivers in a way that gained them some advantage but did so to the detriment of their neighbours, they ought not consider it in the first place - but because some people will, I have no problem with things that make it difficult for them to do so. Some people simply don't give a shit about what effect their actions will have on others, and so we need laws and rules and maybe the occasional piece of mob justice or political activism.

Free software isn't about price, why aren't you using Windows or OSX?

For some things, I am. For me, it's a matter of using a suitable tool for the task at hand. Don't I have the freedom to choose the tool that fits my circumstances best, even if I have to pay for it? As someone else got modded troll for saying, it sometimes seems like the FSF wants everyone to have the freedom to do things the way the FSF wants them to be done. And if I dislike something that a software vendor is doing, I have the freedom to look at alternatives and vote with my dollars - and even to write something that suits my needs better than some commercial offering and release it under whatever licence conditions I like.

Buy hardware

[Kludge]

Or maybe we complain just because we like our Tuxracer, UT, Doom3, and desktops to be ready to go when started.

My Tuxracer, bzflag, + AIGLX/compiz bling-bling work out of the box because I only purchase hardware that is supported out of the box: ATI 9200 or less, or Intel graphics.

If you don't support the companies releasing open source drivers, those companies will disappear. And please don't give me the boo-hoo about Intel graphics not being as fast as the latest-latest-latest ATI/NVIDIA card. They really are fast enough for 99% of gamers.

Re:Buy hardware

[BecomingLumberg]

In principal, I agree, but I have a hard time saying that 5% of the market is going to make a company disappear.

Re:Buy hardware

[und0]

/me looks at his old Ati 9000. At least it's fanless... (=

Re:Buy hardware

[advocate_one]

where are the Intel graphics cards then??? all I see are laptops with Intel graphics... I would like to replace the nVidia cards in my boxes with Intel cards but can't.

Re:Buy hardware

[Talchas]

Only if by 99% of gamers you mean 99% of gamers who only run linux games (or maybe ones who are willing to deal with very low gfx settings on new games). You try to run say Oblivion or BF2142 with one of those "fast enough" cards with decent graphics settings and you'll get something like 10 fps.

Re:Buy hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

You remind me of a bunch of people from a Buenos Aires LUG, they also think tuxracer and bzflag are modern games. Bzflag is 15 years old, and it looks that way, too, tuxracer, besides being extremely *not* fun unless you spend a lot of time learning the courses (a common flaw in FLOSS games), is not exactly a complicated game in any way, 90% of the game is just a heightmap, it could be done in software, too.
  Intel cards are crap, only the latest chips support hardware T&L, which was available back in the first 3D cards (pre-opengl), they focus on pixel shaders, they are good only for regular desktop stuff, not gaming.
  Old ATI cards are, of course, old, and while they support T&L, they don't support modern shaders, so...
  Just because you don't use any serious 3D hardware, doesn't mean other people don't.

Re:Buy hardware

[madcow_bg]

And what if that 5% of the market were the deciding part - like ... a friend asks a geek - which one to choose, NV or ATI? Is he not going to trust the geek?

Re:Buy hardware

[evilviper]

ATI 9200 or less, or Intel graphics.

If you don't support the companies releasing open source drivers, those companies will disappear.

ATI hasn't ever released open source 3D drivers. There's just been more interest in writing drivers for ATI than NVidia... Perhaps because ATI has been around, and popular, for a lot longer than NVidia.

And as for 2D drivers, NVidia is supporting open source development a lot more than ATI is (or has in the past).

Intel certainly has released GPL'd drivers for their chips, but I've already explained why I'm not going to get an Intel system for that reason alone: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=219944&cid=178 40084

Would you buy a crappy car you don't want, just because it's the only way to get good tires, and to indirectly support the company that makes them? Not me.

Re:Buy hardware

[Kludge]

Bzflag is 15 years old, and it looks that way, too,

But lots of people still play it because it is fun! It requires quick thinking and strategy as well as skill, unlike most pretty-graphics first person shooter games that I've played.

Intel cards are crap, only the latest chips support hardware T&L, which was available back in the first 3D cards (pre-opengl), they focus on pixel shaders, they are good only for regular desktop stuff, not gaming.

As I said in my original post, no whining, please. If you want the extra fancy graphics, install the stupid proprietary drivers yourself.

Re:Buy hardware

[BecomingLumberg]

I am a good enough friend to not force my OS beliefs upon my friends. The /. community feels decidedly that it is that way for religion- I think it should be for all things.

Thus, if a friend asks me what video card to get, I ask him what OS he uses and what he wants to do with it. Based on that, I advise.

Plus, neither NV nor ATI release their code for anything that could be called a modern card. Assuming my friend likes playing a game made in the past three years (and for some odd reason is not fully content with Wesnoth and UT2k3?) then I could not advise him to buy a card with an open driver, since Intel doesn't cut it and old Radeons may not have enough juice.

Re:Buy hardware

[notamisfit]

Actually, DRI drivers up to ATI r200 were based on code contributed by ATI. The main reason for the relative 'success' of r300/r400 is that the open source community has ATI's code to work with (r500 is too different, and the hackers are pissing in the wind). nVidia's 'nv' 2d driver is horribly obfusticated, and should hopefully be replaced by the working 2d portions of Nouveau in a future release.

Re:Buy hardware

[evilviper]

Actually, DRI drivers up to ATI r200 were based on code contributed by ATI.

What gives you that idea?

ATI gave Gatos limited docs under NDA-only. I've never heard of them doing any more than that.

Re:Buy hardware

[notamisfit]

OK, you're right. ATI just released docs and specs under NDA.

Re:Buy hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Tuxracer _was_ fun, until it became planetpenguin and lost all the good maps.

Re:Buy hardware

[westlake]

And what if that 5% of the market were the deciding part - like ... a friend asks a geek - which one to choose, NV or ATI? Is he not going to trust the geek?

The geek is less visible than he thinks. I wouldn't know where to find one off-campus.

Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems ready for sale January 31st. OEM Linux at Walmart.com has shrunk to a single Xandros desktop. Not definitive, perhaps, but still suggestive.

Re:Buy hardware

[triffid_98]

So I should base my recommendations on an OS they're likely never to install? I wouldn't recommend ATI for a linux box, but sometimes ATI is the best choice (ex. if you wanted an enthusiast level card with AGP support prior to 3/06)

And what if that 5% of the market were the deciding part - like ... a friend asks a geek - which one to choose, NV or ATI? Is he not going to trust the geek?

Re:Buy hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Kludge, you're a god-damned idiot. BZflag is stupid as shit. If it was so fun and required "quick thinking" and strategy above what current games offer it would be #1 all over the world. Instead, it's a game played by people who are too ideologically crippled to enjoy a modern gaming experience.

a question

[PopeRatzo]

Excuse me, I'm not able to follow all the Linux news, so I've got a question here:

Is there any project similar to Nouveau underway for ATI? What's the ETA for Nouveau? I'm going to make another serious run at using Linux as a production system when UbuntuStudio comes out, and I'd like to plan for the platform starting next month.

Re:a question

[baldass_newbie]

I'm not looking for a distro fight, but have you tried MEPIS and found it lacking something?

Re:a question

[Grey Ninja]

Actually, the open source ATi drivers are far more advanced than nVidia's. (Probably due to the lower quality of the proprietary ATi drivers). You can find what you are looking for with the open source "ati" or "radeon" drivers. The radeon driver is actually the only ATi driver that works with compiz/aiglx. The proprietary drivers will only work with XGL.

Re:a question

[notamisfit]

The open source radeon driver is decent for cards that support it, but r300/400 support is bad (locked up at least four times a day when I tried it), and plans for r500 support, AFAICT, boil down to "let's ask AMD really nice, and maybe someday they'll say yes."

Re:a question

[dpilot]

I was under the impression that the radeon driver that covered up through R200 was done under contract, and it was paid for by the weather service, IIRC. With that in mind, I suspect that there was some involvement from ATI, though I have no idea how much. From what I know, the R300 effort is entirely reverse-engineered.

I run the Radeon drive on the ATI 7500 Mobile on my laptop, and am reasonably happy with it. Only thing I miss is getting accelerated video out through the svideo port, but Windows doesn't do that, either. (Linux will do it, but with "issues".)

Re:a question

[PopeRatzo]

No fight from me. I'm a Linux novice. Not having the media production apps and advanced midi support has kept me from really getting into Linux. When I asked the question about Nouveau, it was because I really didn't know.

I'll google MEPIS though, and see what I can learn.

Now that I've admitted to not being an experienced Linux user, do I lose my Slashdot privileges? I hope not, I like it here.

Re:a question

[baldass_newbie]

Now that I've admitted to not being an experienced Linux user, do I lose my Slashdot privileges? I hope not, I like it here.

No. Look at my 'newbie' handle, from back when I was first learning about Linux back in the late 90's. It was Red Hat 4 or 5 using AfterStep as a window manager, I think. Everybody starts somewhere. Folks here are pretty forbearing as long as you're not an asshole about a distro or pretend something that is not the case.
Reason I recommended MEPIS is it's based on Ubuntu and tries to keep it simple - one app for each function. It also includes all of the codecs you'll likely want without having to use Automatix. UbuntuStudio looks groovy, though, so thanks for the heads up.

How "up to date" do they need to be for a desktop?

[Chuck Chunder]

I am sure there are things going on with the latest "gaming" cards that open source would have trouble keeping up with but how much "functionality" and "quality" is needed for the desktop? My laptop has an Intel chipset in it and it does an admirable job the the Beryl effects I have set up on my Ubuntu Edgy installtion. The drivers for it are open source (supported heavily by Intel).

apples and oranges

[idlake]

To try and suggest it's anything close to the equivalent of OS X's and Vista's offerings, however, ignores some pretty hefty usability issues with regards to getting - and keeping - it working.)

Beryl and and Compiz go far beyond the released versions of either OS X or Vista, both in functionality and in architecture. Current OS X and Vista-like functionality have been in X11 desktops since before they were included in Apple's and Microsoft's commercial releases.

There are no installation issues with Beryl and Compiz: you install them using the package manager, like everything else. It's just that Beryl is not part of any release yet, and your graphics card many not be supported either.

In fact, you may never be able to run Beryl or Compiz reliably on your hardware because your hardware may never be fully supported. That has nothing to do with the maturity or usability of Beryl or Compiz. Heck, there are some "pretty hefty usability issues" getting OS X to work on my PC hardware--does that mean that OS X isn't mature yet?

Re:apples and oranges

[drsmithy]

Beryl and and Compiz go far beyond the released versions of either OS X or Vista, both in functionality and in architecture.

Really ? How ?

Current OS X and Vista-like functionality have been in X11 desktops since before they were included in Apple's and Microsoft's commercial releases.

Right. Which is why the OSS community is making such a big deal of them *now* - because the functionality has been around for ages ? Maybe that would also explain why, until quite recently, those fancy features were nowhere to be seen ?

(I can just see that you're going to pull out some example from SGI or similar, thus providing another excellent example of "just another day in Linux land".)

There are no installation issues with Beryl and Compiz: you install them using the package manager, like everything else. It's just that Beryl is not part of any release yet, and your graphics card many not be supported either.

Damn, talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I think you took your whole leg off !

"There aren't any installation issues with Berly and Compiz. Except for the massive problems involving hardware support and the actual installation process (ranging from the good old "compile the latest source from CVS following this poorly written guide in an email posting" all the way to the technological marvel of hacked-together shell scripts to try and automate the same process)."

In fact, you may never be able to run Beryl or Compiz reliably on your hardware because your hardware may never be fully supported.

Oh, I can. At least some days. Then the next update breaks something (or maybe it fixes something the last update broke).

That's the problem - it's a lottery, not functionality.

That has nothing to do with the maturity or usability of Beryl or Compiz.

Yes, yes it does. It has _everything_ to do with it.

Heck, there are some "pretty hefty usability issues" getting OS X to work on my PC hardware--does that mean that OS X isn't mature yet?

"I don't want to buy a Mac" isn't a usability issue.

(Unless you wrote the whole post tongue-in-cheek - I couldn't decide so I flipped a coin before replying.)

Re:apples and oranges

[Bent Mind]

Right. Which is why the OSS community is making such a big deal of them *now* - because the functionality has been around for ages ? Maybe that would also explain why, until quite recently, those fancy features were nowhere to be seen ?

I've been playing around with XGL for a couple of years. However, I couldn't remember when I first heard about it, so I looked it up. The earliest reference I found was an email from David Reveman dated Nov 4, 2004. The first I heard about AIGLX was in February 2006. nVidia presented a paper at XDevConf that talked about it. I don't have the history of development of Apple's Quartz Compositor handy. Maybe a Mac user can add that information? However, I believe it predates XGL. To be fair, Windows Aero Desktop Compositing Engine was first demoed in 2003.

I can just see that you're going to pull out some example from SGI

I was going to give Sun's Looking Glass as an example. However, the earliest material I can find on that is 2004. Maybe Microsoft was first on this one. However, to be fair, you couldn't use Aero until recently.

XGL/AIGLX has come a long way in a short time. It's biggest problem has historically been lack of interest and poor 3D support in Linux. I'm glad there is finally some interest being generated.

Re:apples and oranges

[Blakey Rat]

Mac OS X 10.0 was released to the public March 24, 2001. Sorry, but both Linux and Microsoft are way behind the curve on this one.

Re:apples and oranges

[idlake]

" Beryl and and Compiz go far beyond the released versions of either OS X or Vista, both in functionality and in architecture." Really ? How ?

Well, what does Apple actually actually ship in terms of graphics beyond software-rendered vector graphics? Texture composition with OpenGL, that's it. On top, they have built some graphically neat special effects, nothing more.

XGL and AIGLX are OpenGL-accelerated drawing through and through (in fact, XGL can simply run entirely on top of OpenGL). Compiz and Beryl are based on a general purpose compositing architecture. Apple has nothing like Compbiz/Beryl, and probably still won't have by the time those systems ship with every Linux system.

Right. Which is why the OSS community is making such a big deal of them *now* - because the functionality has been around for ages ?

The excitement about those systems isn't because of some pissing contest with Apple, it's because people like those features and because they are well designed and well implemented, and they enable some powerful new functionality.

Maybe that would also explain why, until quite recently, those fancy features were nowhere to be seen ?

The reason why you see all three major desktop environments adopt them now is simply because graphics cards have finally gotten cheap enough so that it's worth putting in the effort for mainstream desktop environments.

Trying to imply (as people like you do) that Apple is leading and others follow is bullshit; Apple is just following trends and costs. (Look at the iPhone/Prada thing for another example of Apple's false claims of leadership.)

"I don't want to buy a Mac" isn't a usability issue.

Neither is "I don't want to buy a supported Linux computer." or "I can't get Linux to work on my Windows PC hardware."

Re:apples and oranges

[drsmithy]

Mac OS X 10.0 was released to the public March 24, 2001. Sorry, but both Linux and Microsoft are way behind the curve on this one.

10.2 was the first to actually have the 3D _acceleration_ part (ie: use the GPU), however. It was released in August, 2002 and, quite arguably, is the release that 10.0 *should* have been (Apple had an even worse time getting "OS X" to market than Microsoft did with Vista, though, so they had to get _something_ out the door).

Re:apples and oranges

[drsmithy]

XGL and AIGLX are OpenGL-accelerated drawing through and through (in fact, XGL can simply run entirely on top of OpenGL). Compiz and Beryl are based on a general purpose compositing architecture. Apple has nothing like Compbiz/Beryl, and probably still won't have by the time those systems ship with every Linux system.

So, it's like, what ? 47.8% betterer ?

The excitement about those systems isn't because of some pissing contest with Apple, it's because people like those features and because they are well designed and well implemented, and they enable some powerful new functionality.

But apparently they didn't like them a few years ago, despite the systems being capable ?

The reason why you see all three major desktop environments adopt them now is simply because graphics cards have finally gotten cheap enough so that it's worth putting in the effort for mainstream desktop environments.

Graphics cards have been cheap enough since 2002, if not earlier. That's when OS X's first 3D-accelerated version hit, and it was targeting machines that were already available. Vista shoots a little higher, requiring video cards that only started appearing ca. 2003. Of course, the Linux folks keep telling us how much better their solution is because it doesn't require the "high end" hardware of OS X and Vista - so lets say their minimum requirements are targeting hardware that's been around since, say, 2000.

In short, the "because the hardware has only recently become available" argument is bunk.

Trying to imply (as people like you do) that Apple is leading and others follow is bullshit; Apple is just following trends and costs. (Look at the iPhone/Prada thing for another example of Apple's false claims of leadership.)

I made no such implication. I stated the the Linux equivalents to Aqua and Aero, which the OSS community touts as being just as good - if not better - aren't even close.

(I must say I find it hilarious to be called an Apple fanboy, however, good work.)

Neither is "I don't want to buy a supported Linux computer." or "I can't get Linux to work on my Windows PC hardware."

But I *do* have hardware that's supposed to be supported by Linux, and I *can* get it working on my hardware, it's just unreliable (the compositing part, that is - Linux in general is ok).

The best thing you can say about compositing window managers and the like on Linux at the moment, is that they're reasonable proof-of-concept demos.

Re:apples and oranges

[strider44]

You might as well look things up before being a smart-arse just to make sure you're right!

Anyway, the first breach into 3D effects for the desktop was in Luminocity, the testbed for Metacity, the Gnome window drawer. This was in testing and wasn't planned as such to go straight into Gnome. It introduced a few algorithms you may be familiar with in Beryl now, the least being the wobbly windows. It had a few problems, the greatest being that you needed to heavily hack the X-Server to get it to work, and X.Org hadn't yet forked off from XFree so politics prevented it from happening as fast as it should have. When David Reveman released XGL they finally had something to work with so Compiz was introduced. At first it was only on XGL but with some work from nVidia and Red Hat full support for opengl rendering was placed in the X.Org server through a X surface to texture extension.

There was a bit of a dispute with Compiz. The main maintainer wanted it to be as stable as possible so didn't want new features. This was a bit of a problem since Compiz was heavily dependent on Gnome (specifically gconf) and wasn't very flexible at all. In the end Beryl was forked and went ahead at lightening speed.

Beryl itself has been getting both more stable since it's worked out as much of its featureset as possible, giving the base for some pretty nice plugins. It is a *lot* more impressive than either Vista or Mac OS-X's offerings since it offers a fully 3D accelerated environment with fully scriptable and pluginable animations and effects. Examples of these effects include pretty much everything from Mac OSX including Expose (OSS isn't known for shrinking from stealing a good idea), wobbly windows, custom opening, closing, minimising and shading animations (including bursting into flames, beaming it up/down, the genie effect, windows folding up, zooming in and coming from the side. It can be extended to make whatever you can think of.), multiple desktops mapped to different objects, pure translucency, and even pure pointless eyecandy like the "water effect", which simply makes ripples go from your mouse when you press a button.

Beryl is usually simply installed with your package manager. It requires compatible 3D accelerated hardware and drivers though. The official nvidia and OSS ati drivers support the required extension, though I'm not sure if the official ATI driver does. The OSS ati driver doesn't support the latest radeon cards, so basically with nVidia you're fine, with ATI you might not be.

Beryl is pretty stable, at least stable enough to run on a standard desktop computer, but not recommended for running on anything critical. Linux users have pretty high standards for "stable".

Re:apples and oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

But apparently they didn't like them a few years ago, despite the systems being capable ? [...] That's when OS X's first 3D-accelerated version hit, and it was targeting machines that were already available.

OS X isn't "3D accelerated" to this day, it just uses OpenGL for some texture operations (and that has also only started working on their low-end systems fairly recently). Furthermore, you want hardware accelerated drawing or full 2D/3D mixes, you have to use standard OpenGL on the shipping version of OS X. The only thing that's "extreme" about Quartz at this point is the misleading marketing.

Furthermore, cheap, deployed hardware hasn't been capable of doing full 3D acceleration of desktop operations at full resolutions until maybe a couple of years ago.

I stated the the Linux equivalents to Aqua and Aero, which the OSS community touts as being just as good - if not better - aren't even close. [...] The best thing you can say about compositing window managers and the like on Linux at the moment, is that they're reasonable proof-of-concept demos.

Well, and you are wrong, because you keep comparing apples and oranges: neither OS X nor Vista have Beryl/Compiz or the underlying compositing architecture. Vista has the equivalent of XGL/AIGLX and some Beryl/Compiz functionality, but OS X doesn't even have that.

Overall, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove anyway. I mean, OpenGL acceleration is not an innovation, using OpenGL for desktop rendering isn't, and neither are hardware desktop acceleration, translucency, or 3D transitions. Apple didn't invent or pioneer any of those, and neither did Microsoft. So, they are finally getting around to making that the default choice on their systems, big deal. What exactly is it you're trying to prove?

Re:How "up to date" do they need to be for a deskt

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on what you run, clearly you're not interested in even moderately advanced 3D some are and they need drivers. Don't hold Linux back because of your use case.

Is this different from Edgy?

[pyite69]

I remember it was fairly easy to add the restricted drivers. If this is no longer available, there will be a lot of people not upgrading.

Re:Is this different from Edgy?

[Etyenne]

No difference from Edgy, the binary drivers will still be available from the restricted repository.

Shoddy reporting and misleading title ... typical Slashdot staple.

Confused

[RAMMS EIN]

The scoop is somewhat confusing. Proprietary video drivers will not be included, because software for the 3D desktop isn't quite ready yet? I can see how software not being stable is a reason for not including it in the distribution. If it was the drivers that weren't ready yet, I could see how one would also not include the 3D desktop software, which, after all, depends on the drivers. However, video card drivers do not depend on 3D desktop software, and there is plenty of software that can make use of the proprietary drivers, without 3D desktop software being there. In other words, if 3D desktop software not being ready is the reason for not including proprietary video drivers, it's a bad reason.

Re:Confused

[markshuttle]

The issues is not one of dependencies, it is one of necessity. We would not enable proprietary drivers just for fun (they are already *there* just not used by default). We will only enable them if there is some free software functionality that is important and in turn depends on them. The closest we have to that is Compiz or Beryl (TuxRacer is fun but doesn't count as essential) and neither of these is yet ready to be included in Ubuntu by default. Therefor, there is no free software component of Ubuntu that depends on the drivers, therefor we don't enable them by default.

Re:Confused

[MooUK]

You've got it somewhat backwards there. Because the 3D desktop software is not considered ready for inclusion in the core of ubuntu, the previous plans to include the proprietary drivers by default where necessary to make said 3d desktop software work are no longer necessary. Therefore, as normal with previous versions, the free drivers will be used by default except where only proprietary drivers will work at all.

Simplified: The thing that required the proprietary drivers is no longer used, so they are no longer required.

(Just to confuse things a bit, the free ATI drivers are the only ones supporting the 3d desktop software; the proprietary ATI drivers are necessary for the most recent cards but do NOT support Compix/AIGLX/etc. It's the other way round for nvidia; the nv driver only supports normal use and you need the proprietary nvidia driver for proper functionality. The new nouveau driver should change this. And as for the hugely common Intel chips - they have fully working free drivers anyways.)

Re:Confused

[TheAwfulTruth]

That's pretty self centered of Unbuntu to include the drivers only for their own purposes. As if a 3d desktop that were the ONLY reason for including them? Like no one ever plans to run a 3d app? Yes I know you can install them yourself, why not have that functionality out of the box even though the desktop doesn't need it? That's called "Thinking of the user".

Are the users interests really at heart here? I find that most Linux distros, well, maybe all of them, are VERY self centered this way. They are produced to be self consistant only. This is very bad news for the power user but not programmer types that want to work with Linux...

PowerPC

[RAMMS EIN]

They say that they're downgrading PowerPC support now, and that problems with the PowerPC port will not delay releases, but this isn't actually new. Dapper had some issues with at least certain PowerPC notebooks, and these did not delay the Dapper release, even though they were known well in advance. I don't know whether to be sad that PowerPC officially isn't supported anymore, or happy that it has been officially acknowledged that this is the case.

Re:PowerPC

[Psykechan]

Since they are focusing on including binary drivers from nVidia with the distro and that company has no desire to produce any PowerPC support, Canonical pretty much has no choice than to not support PowerPC as well.

To me, it's sad on a few levels. I still use PowerPC and lament another distro stoping support and also because Canonical is taking the perceived easier path and kowtowing to the video card manufacturer's "inability" to release information on their hardware.

Linux means different things to different people. Ubuntu is looking to be the premere free-as-in-beer desktop OS replacement for MS Windows. Unfortunately this doesn't directly help me. I'll still recommend Ubuntu to my less tech-savvy friends for the time being but I'm personally moving on.

"Fighting Phallus" won't work...

[StressGuy]

they don't begin with the same letter, it would have to be "Pickled Phallus", "Periwinkle Phallus", or perhaps, "Pee-wee Phallus".

On the other hand, if you are that enamored with the letter "F", you could have "Fluffy Fur-burg{CENSORED}"

Re:aic7xxx Driver?

[Stumbles]

That would no doubt be a problem with your distro. Though I have never had any issues with the aic7xxx driver. And it has always worked for me as far back as, well way back.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Hal_Porter]

For those who haven't read it yet, David Airlied's LCA 2007 talk is a really good and entertaining piece: http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied/talks/lca07/nouveau. odp (yes, server's mime-type is probably wrong, you have to save it first)

If you don't have Open Office, you can convert it here

http://media-convert.com/convert/index.php

this link might work

http://www.media-convert.com/convert/?xid=jzkoos

Only on Slashdot...

[StressGuy]

can a string of 0's and 1's get modded as funny...every day...it gets a little closer to the day I'm sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch yelling at kids to get off my lawn....

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Slashamatic]

Many years ago, I worked for a manufacturer and wrote a graphics driver. This was a long time ago and on ancient hardware, so I won't name names. If I write a disk driver, the thing is fairly basic and the hardware exposes basic functionality, which most people can get right. A graphics processor, particularly with 3D shading support is *exceptionally* complex. To get it running properly, you not only have to know how it works but what doesn' and usually for several different variation of a chip mask. We didn't make the graphics chip but were able to get some documentation on the known issues when signing our corporate life away in NDAs.

The end result is a composite of software, microcode and hardware that sort-of works. Trying to do the same with open source is exceptionally difficult because it means you have to know the problems so that you can workaround them. Manufacturers really don't like people (especially their competitors) finding out about those issues, hence the NDA.

Email those companies!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who care about having free software / open source drivers, email ATI or NVIDIA. Maybe if enough of us can email them telling them that having open source drivers (or at least hardware specs to enable their development) would be a deciding factor in our purchase. I'm hoping that with the somewhat recent acquisition of ATI by AMD that maybe we'll get lucky. If not, those of us who care about such things, will have to go for the Intel driver.

Maybe if the free software, or open source arguments don't work, an economic incentive will.

http://support.ati.com/ics/survey/survey.asp?deptI D=894&surveyID=508&type=web - ATI's feedback page.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/feedback_temp.html - NVIDIA's feedback page, although unfortunately still under construction.

Re: "ati" == "radeon"

[MrvFD]

Actually, "radeon" and "ati" are the exactly same driver. The confusion has arised from the fact that "ati" driver has, recently fixed in GIT though, had problems auto-detecting some recent Radeons and thus failing to give the control to the real driver (radeon). This has people led to think that they would somehow be different drivers, or that the "ati" does not support their card at all but "radeon" does.

Re: "ati" == "radeon"

[Grey Ninja]

Ah, I see. I've always wondered about that actually. =) They've behaved differently for me in the past, and you refer to them by different names, which confused me. Thanks for clearing that up for me. =)

So it is.

[aug24]

I don't know which is sadder... that he posted it, that you worked it out or that I trust /.ers so little that I had to do it too to check you weren't winding me up.

Justin.

Re:So it is.

[moranar]

I didn't "work it out", I just had a link handy to the binary - text translator. Same as that, I have the awesoma powa of Rot13 to help me when I read ASR.

And no, I never take anything I read here for granted either.

Re:So it is.

[aug24]

I wasted three whole minutes of my life in Excel. I'll know in future that someone out there must have decided this should be available on a web site and has spent many many minutes doing so.

J.

Re:So it is.

[wrook]

No the saddest part is that people modded it up to +5 without asking any questions.

some kind of movie/music

[oliverthered]

Like DeCss and Mp3 support not coming as default, and no wizards for installing firmware for wifi cards etc....
I thought Ubuntu was supposed to be easy to use, It's about time someone put up an illegal distribution of Linux with everything included (firmware etc...)

Several things I would like to point out...

[Pecisk]

Extracted from announcement message here https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/ 2007-February/000098.html:

      * There is a clear need for wider testing of open source software under
          development in this area, including both desktop tools and video drivers.

and
      * However, some of the relevant software necessary to implement this
          proposal is not yet considered mature enough to deploy in the default
          Ubuntu configuration.

And also Ubuntu plans to support Nouveau, which is great news (still, we have rather long way to usable driver, so don't hold your breath yet).

Also maybe I have to point out that Ubuntu drops official support for PowerPC platform, which is not so great, but not so bad either, because community have done much more effort to it than they. In result, everyone wins - Cannonical has more resources to get right PC version, which, I think, matters more now.

Users have a choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Blobs are anathema to free software. As it stands, you can use binary drivers if you choose to but these aren't included in the initial install.

The first thing most Windows users add to a fresh install is probably the official drivers for their graphics card because those shipped with the card are always a few revisions behind. Also NVidia OEM card vendors typically add their own poorly written and unwanted taskbar apps (you don't get that choice with ATI).

Sounds to me like you're a troll, does Windows even ship with ATI or NVidia drivers?

Bad idea

[petrus4]

There's no genuinely sane reason for this, and all it does is greatly inconvenience total newbs...the exact group Ubuntu ostensibly is meant to target.

Ubuntu needs to find a way to continue development work while not allowing zealots to have influence...because it will only hurt the distribution in the long term.

I've been reading recently about how there are plans to scrap music DRM entirely, which I knew was going to happen all along, once the companies figured out how unpopular it was. The zealots think they're right about a lot of the Doomsday predictions they make...but the reality is that they virtually never are.

If the music industry ends up deciding to scrap DRM on its' own, that will be a tremendous opportunity for us to tell the FSF and the fanatical element of the Debian Project to STFU once and for all...I say we take it.

Re:Bad idea

[i_should_be_working]

First of all, if you'd RTFA, or even the summary, or even other posts above yours, you'd have seen that they made this decision because proprietary drivers aren't reliable enough to install by default. How the crap is that not a sane reason?

If the music industry ends up deciding to scrap DRM on its' own, that will be a tremendous opportunity for us to tell the FSF and the fanatical element of the Debian Project to STFU once and for all...I say we take it.

That makes absolutely no sense. The FSF doesn't make Doomsday predictions just to piss companies off or because they are pessimistic. They make those predictions so that people will get off their asses and do something about the situation before the Doomsday prediction becomes a reality. If DRM is scrapped it's a win for anybody against DRM, especially the FSF who have been telling people about the flaws of DRM since the beginning.

Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

that will be a tremendous opportunity for us to tell the FSF and the fanatical element of the Debian Project to STFU once and for all.

Hey, guys you were right all along so STFU because being right is wrong is my personal postmodern fantasy world view. Doctors say that smoking causes cancer and some smokers die of lung cancer, a tremendous opportunity to tell doctors to STFU once and for all. There's no sane reason not to.

Re:aic7xxx Driver?

[ajs318]

Yeah, I had a problem with that one on Debian. I just downloaded a new daily build of the netinstall disk and that did work.

Another way to do it -- and I've had to do this before as well -- is to install a temporary IDE drive, install enough of a system to build yourself a new kernel with the drivers you need, then use that to bootstrap your installation onto the SCSI drive. I found a tool which created a LiveCD based on my kernel build environment, can't for the life of me remember where though.

A bit of wholesome dirt on your hands is a sign you're learning .....

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[duffbeer703]

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with binary drivers.

The problem is that those drivers need to be changed for most kernel releases. In the meantime, I can install drivers for the circa-2000 NVidia GeForce 1 DDR on an XP SP2 box with no problem at all. The kernel people need to support a stable driver interface and sidestep the whole issue.

what you see, is all you get?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm running ubuntu on an asus a8n-sli with an asus n7600 vid card and on install max rez is 1024*768

i'm sorry, but that's like selling a car with a five gallon gas tank

Re:what you see, is all you get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 5 gallons doesn't sound that bad, that's almost 20 litres, my Volkswagen Gol has a 50 litre capacity and lasts quite a bit (two weeks or so?), since it uses gasoline, we don't use it to go outside the city, we have a Clio 2 (diesel) for that.

Re: I can.

[nbritton]

I can read your message just fine, my reply:

01100111011101010111011001100110001000000111101001 11001001100110011001100110111001110100011100100010 00000111011001100110001000000110111000100000011100 10011000010111000001100101011011000110001101100111 01110010011100010010000001101111011101100110000101 10111001100101011011000010000001101111011110010110 00100110111100100000011001110111010101101110011001 11001000000110110001100010011010000010000001100110 01110101011000100110100001111001011100010010000001 11101001100010011100010010000001100111011000100010 00000010101100110101001000000110101001110110011001 11011101010110001001101000011001110010000001101110 01100110011110000111011001100001011101000010000001 10010001101000011100100110011001100111011101100110 00100110000101100110

Nope, just a consistant look and feel

[charnov]

No, I guess the only thing they have a is a consistant look and feel maintaned across most if not all applications and parts of the OS. Oh, that and a stable ABI so drivers have a single target.

Re:Nope, just a consistant look and feel

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in the case of Vista, six stable targets.

Re:Nope, just a consistant look and feel

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither Windows nor OSX has a consistant look and feel across all apps. Certainly there are plenty of app that like to use skins so they look different on Windows and I remember reviews of Mac OSX (probably the last major release) where people were complaining that Apple had only updated some of the apps to use the new look.

In any case, my KDE desktop looks pretty consistant across all the apps I use. Granted I use mostly KDE apps, plus a handful of GTK2 apps with a couple of hacks (namely Gtk-Qt-theme-engine and kgtk-wrapper) which allow the GTK apps to look almost the same as the KDE apps and use the KDE file selector.

Re: Nope, just a consistant look and feel

[Dolda2000]

No, I guess the only thing they have a is a consistant look and feel maintaned across most if not all applications and parts of the OS.

You know, I just don't really think that sounds appropriate to say about the vendor that releases both Windows Vista and Office 2007...

The real indicator - 3DMark07

[Anonymous Coward]

1998-08 3DMark 99
1999-02 DirectX 6.1
1999-03 3DMark 99 MAX
1999-07 DirectX 7.x
1999-12 3DMark2000
2000-07 DirectX 8.0
2001-03 3DMark2001
2001-11 DirectX 8.1
2002-02 3DMark2001SE
2002-12 DirectX 9.0
2003-02 3DMark03
2003-03 DirectX 9.0a
2003-08 DirectX 9.0b
2004-07 3DMark05
2004-12 DirectX 9.0c (RC0)
2005-12 DirectX 9.0c
2006-01 3DMark06 [No DirectX 10 capability]
2007-01 DirectX 10.0
2007-XX 3DMark07

Apparently, 3DMark07 is not coming out until _after_ the summer... What does this tell us? Hrrrmmmm.

1. Windows' DirectX sets the agenda
2. nVidia/AMD follows
3. Proprietary Linux drivers are maltreated and won't be performing as well as Windows-drivers.

No 3d drivers :: DRM...

[SaidinUnleashed]

To me, at least, this arguement mirrors the DRM arguement. The RMS-minded software "purists" are trying to take away my right to have fully-functioning 3d capabilities on my Linux computers, much the same as the *IAA are trying to take away my rights to play my media on whatever device I wish. Both the FSF-purists and the *IAA argue legal semantics, while users are left wanting functionality. At the core, both arguements are nothing more than ego-boosting power moves for the FSF and *IAA and their ilk.

Both the FSF and the *IAA should stop trying to use bully tactics to get others to follow their ideals, and instead denomstrate the benefits of going their way. For the *IAA, this means tossing the entire DRM scheme, and offering good entertainment, in easily usable formats, encoded at very high quality. This also means that they will actually have to find talent so that people feel they are truly getting something for their money. For the FSF, this means encouraging the release of hardware specs, the development of viable alternatives to binary-blob drivers, such as the open radeon 3d driver (although even that is nowhere near truely viable, yet, although I believe it will be soon), and continuing to tell the benefits of open-sourcedness.

The F/OSS movement is an ideal, and ideals can NOT be forced upon society. They must become accepted practices in order to spread, and the only way for an idea to become accepted is to continue telling people about it.

Re:No 3d drivers :: DRM...

[Anonymous Coward]

Noone's trying to take away your right to anything. If you want the NVidia 3d driver or DRM in your kernel, compile it in. The GPL would prevent redistribution but you have no right to redistribute anyway unless you comply with the license terms.

Nobody is forcing you to use F/OSS either, alternatives exist.

Re:No 3d drivers :: DRM...

[arevos]

To me, at least, this arguement mirrors the DRM arguement. The RMS-minded software "purists" are trying to take away my right to have fully-functioning 3d capabilities on my Linux computers, much the same as the *IAA are trying to take away my rights to play my media on whatever device I wish. Please explain how software purists are taking away this right.

Both the FSF and the *IAA should stop trying to use bully tactics to get others to follow their ideals... For the FSF, this means encouraging the release of hardware specs, the development of viable alternatives to binary-blob drivers, such as the open radeon 3d driver (although even that is nowhere near truely viable, yet, although I believe it will be soon), and continuing to tell the benefits of open-sourcedness. So encouraging the release of hardware specs, developing viable alternatives and telling people about the benefits of open source count as "bully tactics"?

Re:No 3d drivers :: DRM...

[SaidinUnleashed]

>> Please explain how software purists are taking away this right.

>> So encouraging the release of hardware specs, developing viable alternatives and telling people about the benefits of open source count as "bully tactics"?

No, but saying that the distribution of non-GPL code that is not derived from any sort of GPL code, such as the binary blob of the nvidia driver, is against the terms of the GPL, and is thus illegal to distrubte (remember, kids, licenses are binding legal agreements), and so trying to force distribution developters to conform to this precept and not distribute them (the binary drivers) /is/ a bully tactic.

nVidia has said that the blob contains no GPL code, and is used in every operating system they support along with a translation layer similar to the GPL part of the Linux driver. The part that interfaces with the kernel (and is derived from the kernel, which is GPL code) is licensed under the GPL. This satisfies the terms of the GPL. The blob is not derived from GPL code, and so does not have to be licensed under the GPL.

Saying that this does not satisfy the license would be like saying that you can not use Firefox to browse sites that run Microsoft's IIS, because IIS is not licensed under the GPL, and thus can not legally communicate with Firefox in any way specifically because it is not GPL.

The GPL does NOT say that you are not to redistribute programs or code licensed under it along with other, non-GPL code, meaning you can distribute GPL licensed stuff along with whatever you wish, as long as the rules are followed for the GPL licensed code (source code available, copy of the GPL included, share changes in code, etc). The license DOES say that if you use code from or derived from a GPL licensed codebase in a non-GPL licensed project or product, that you have to ask the author for permission to distribute it. Linus, being the de facto leader and BDFL of the Linux project, has most definitely given the nod for such things to be redistributed by whomever wants to. So, even if the blob /does/ contain GPL licensed code, it's /still/ okay to redistribute it, because the original author says it is okay.

This should mean the end of the arguement in respect to the legality of redistribution of binary blobs with the Linux kernel. Period.

Re:No 3d drivers :: DRM...

[arevos]

No, but saying that the distribution of non-GPL code that is not derived from any sort of GPL code, such as the binary blob of the nvidia driver, is against the terms of the GPL, and is thus illegal to distrubte (remember, kids, licenses are binding legal agreements), and so trying to force distribution developters to conform to this precept and not distribute them (the binary drivers) /is/ a bully tactic. And who, exactly, is forcing distribution developers not to distribute them? It can't be the FSF, because they don't retain copyright over the Linux source. Linus and the majority of the kernel hackers have repeatedly dismissed ideas that NVidia might be violating the license. So actually, no-one's forcing anyone to do anything. Indeed, many Linux distros do distribute the NVidia binary blob, including Ubuntu. It's not in a default install, but it does exist in the official Universe repository.

nVidia has said that the blob contains no GPL code, and is used in every operating system they support along with a translation layer similar to the GPL part of the Linux driver. The part that interfaces with the kernel (and is derived from the kernel, which is GPL code) is licensed under the GPL. This satisfies the terms of the GPL. The blob is not derived from GPL code, and so does not have to be licensed under the GPL. It's a grey area. It depends whether the binary blob provided by NVidia counts as a "derivative work" of the Linux kernel. The people actually holding the copyright on the kernel seem to think not, so NVidia is safe to do what it wants, and likewise Linux distributes are free (from a legal perspective, at least) to do as they please.

Everyone is dropping PowerPC

[mr_da3m0n]

Why is every single distro not wanting to properly support PowerPC anymore? If you followed debian-ppc as of lately, you'll notice they're having issues as well.

SuSE supports PowerPC, but only for zSeries. Incidentially, the zSeries media install and runs fine on my dual G5, with everything being supported.

Why is everyone dropping support for it? It seems like it still remains a major platform, no?

OK, you're allowed to say "sux" then!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you tried, it's then their fault.

I just want to know...

[DiamondGeezer]

...if the next version will be called "Gay Giraffe"

Re:I just want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Maybe the one after could be titled "Hetero Hippo".

Re:I just want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

nope... it's likely to be 'camp capybara', apparently...

Re:I just want to know...

[inviolet]

"Ubuntu's next release, Feisty Fawn, is due out in April [...]

I just want to know ... if the next version will be called "Gay Giraffe"

Yeah, I was thinking something similar. It makes one wonder if the Ubuntu guys want to fail in the market. Here's a tip, guys: don't let the geeks choose the product names or even the code names.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Peter La Casse]

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with binary drivers.

Except, as your parent poster says, that they suck so much? Re-read that list of complaints. Logging out crashes the system. Yikes.

Mandriva?

[Linegod]

So Mandriva can do it, but Ubuntu can't, and now all the arguments are 'why Linux can't do it'?

Since when did Ubuntu become the only Linux? Does everyone fall for marketing that easily?

Re:Mandriva?

[dodongo]

The issue is not that Ubuntu can't include the proprietary drivers. They do include the proprietary drivers, they just do not come installed by default.

And it's not that Ubuntu can't enable compositing, if that's what you're referring to -- it's just not enabled by default.

You don't seem to know why that card isn't working

[Anonymous Coward]

And its because NVidia have a close blob. If it doesn't work in Debian, the devs there don't know why because NVidia won't tell them the code.

Tell NVidia. Not Debian.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[init100]

Give only green stripes and a complete hang if using _both_ DVI and VGA outputs at the same time (oh my god, we never though that could happen!).

Don't you understand? All Linux guys are poor and none of them can afford dual displays, so why care about implementing it in the driver. If they would become rich enough to afford buying a second monitor, they'd quickly buy Vista too. Everybody knows that nobody in their right mind uses Linux unless they can't afford to buy Windows.</sarcasm>

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[cortana]

Of course there is. They are not free software. I am unable to alter them to fix bugs or add new features.

Way to support commercial driver development.

[handmedowns]

You know.. its fucking hard enough to get ANY vendor to support the linux platform with drivers and the video card vendors have been the best about this.. and now you all bitch about not letting any non-free drivers into Ubuntu and the likes? If I were Nvidia or ATI, I'd just say "Fine, we'll just cut that out of our development budget and let the liberal weenies hack it themselves..". THIS IS NOT COOL..

What will other hardware vendors say in the future? I sure as hell wouldn't bother if I was one.. its a thankless position to be in..

Re:Way to support commercial driver development.

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about, users are free to run whatever they want. Linus even allows an open kernel module to link against a userspace blob which would not be allowed under a strict interpretation of the GPL. The freedom to redistribute use and modify software is what the GPL (and Linux) is all about. If you don't like it, use another OS.

I honestly don't care enough about 3D drivers to compromise my freedom. If you object to the principles of free software do us all a favor and don't use it.

Re:Way to support commercial driver development.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does using binary drivers from Nvidia or ATI compromise your freedom again? Especially when theres no open driver that does what they can do with their binary driver? If I use an OS to perform certain functions, and there is no open equivalent driver to do a very common task such as 3d acceleration, then that OS is incomplete.

Freedom is allowing the people who WANT to use those closed drivers use them, as much as it is supporting those who don't. Get a clue.

Re: What's Wrong With CSH

[compact_support]

Apparently some people have some issues with the language.

Take with a grain of salt.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[dpilot]

I don't doubt the complexity of graphics drivers. But I'd guess that many people thing their job is just soooo complex, and no doubt many of them say that with considerable merit.

One interpretation of what you've just said is that graphics chips have a goodly share of bugs, the workarounds are in the drivers, and they're sufficiently embarrassed about it that they keep it all secret.

Imagine if CPU makers worked the same way.

You're both wrong.

[chuhwi]

The OP is wrong because there is no "The Community". However, you are also wrong if you believe Ubuntu, whose creators have certain ideological principles, has some obligation to you to include proprietary drivers. Moreover, considering the way companies tend to deprecate (and refuse to update proprietary drivers for) old cards, I'd say that linux actually has better hardware support than windows (consider how many graphics cards and printers won't work with xp or Vista!). Linux just lacks support for the most recent cards. Moreover, proprietary drivers create support problems and can make the system unstable.

In short, you are free to install the drivers yourself on an Ubuntu system or to use a different distribution. Just don't think that the people who dedicate their own time to improving linux owe you anything.

Re:You're both wrong.

[jopet]

I thought there is no need to point out that this is not about somebody owing anything to anybody. It is about what is or would be reasonable to make Linux successful. As I said, it is sad to see how Linux does not have the popularity it could have because some fundamentalists think they will make earth a better and free place with their idea of what Linux should be. Something that is not going to happen and something that will just hinder Linux to become an alternative to Linux.

You are provably wrong though when it comes to hardware support under Linux in comparison to Windows (unfortunately). I have worked a lot with Linux and much less with XP, but already the hardware I use is much easier and better supported under XP. Many common and less common kinds of hardware (FAX/scanner/Printer combos, many wlan cards, many GDI printers, special hardware, certain scanners, certain graphic tablets and all even more exitic hardware) is only very limited and buggy or not at all supported under Linux. This is in *addition* to the usual lag-behind (e.g. Edgy not installing from the PATA DVD drive connected to my newer Intel Mobo).

Some people want Linux to be a vehicle for their political and world views, but most just do not want to suffer the quasi-monopoly of Windows. Again, this is not about anybody owing anything, it is expressing the sadness that with the attitude voiced here, Linux is very unlikely to become relevant as a mainstream - OS.

In the end, it is about me, being sad that with this kind of strategy, my favorite OS has no chance to get more mainstream, to get taught in my childrens' school, to get used in my friends' companies etc.

Re:You're both wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a computer consultant, I install linux server to replace old NT4 server or simple Workgroup sharing in small offices, I have Ubuntu installed on one of my (desktop) home computer... and I just bought a Vista Home Premium for $300CDN. The sad thing is I would not pay 50$ for Ubuntu, as I believe it's not worth that much.

For the last 10 years, "the next year" was supposed to be the year of Linux on the Desktop. Yet, it is still an insignificant OS. Something is wrong. I still hope for an open source OS that could work on a desktop, but I'm beginning to think it will never be Linux.

Re:You're both wrong.

[chromatic]

Some people want Linux to be a vehicle for their political and world views...

We call those people the developers of Linux and much of the code found in a GNU/Linux system. You can tell because of the licenses they've chosen under which to distribute their code.

Unlike with proprietary software, you are free to use the software without agreeing with the philosophical view of its developers. However, you may wish to review their philosophies before telling developers what they should and shouldn't do.

ubuntu is going backwards in usability

[smash]

OK, background - been a linux user since 1996. I've done the "compiling all my apps from source" shit back in the mid-late 90s with slackware. And by that I mean manually downloading/compiling dependencies, not the "emerge foo" shit that apparently makes gentoo users so 'leet.

My first experience with ubuntu was 5.10. It installed fine, apt-get install nvidia got my video sorted, and it played MP3s, etc out of the box. Excellent.

6.06, didn't play MP3s out of the box, and i spent some time (half-assed) rooting around to get my favourite MP3 playing app in KDE to work to no avail. 6.10 shipped with a broken installer that required script hacking to even get it to install on my machine.

Yes, I could have fixed it, but that's not the point. The point is, I couldn't be bothered, and I'm a fairly experienced linux admin - the distribution is, after all supposed to be the "so easy, your grandma could do it" distro. If i have to fuck with it to get it to work i may as well go back to something like slackware/freebsd (which is surprisingly easy to set up these days really).

Now they're removing support for closed drivers? Way to go....

Re:ubuntu is going backwards in usability

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>Yes, I could have fixed it, but that's not the point. The point is, I couldn't be bothered, and I'm a fairly experienced linux admin - the distribution is, after all supposed to be the "so easy, your grandma could do it" distro. If i have to fuck with it to get it to work i may as well go back to something like slackware/freebsd (which is surprisingly easy to set up these days really). Now they're removing support for closed drivers? Way to go....

From TFA: "the decision to exclude proprietary drivers for now should satisfy at least some members of the Ubuntu Community."

Really, why would I want my fucking video card to work? It's better to be pure? I decided to try Dapper Drake and then Edgy Eft. I had serious headaches with both, although I did get both configured. I couldn't get either to even install on my stepson's machine, which is a pretty vanilla box. Back to Mandriva for me. It loaded first time and found every card on his box too.

For other architectures ?

[DrYak]

The kernel people need to support a stable driver interface and sidestep the whole issue.

And what should the users do when the want to use other platforms ?

- If the constructor only release drivers for 1 platform and not other, like back when ATI released drivers for Intel-compatible processors, and Mac PowerBooks came with PowerPC CPUs and R300-based GPU ? You couldn't get 3D acceleration for them until R300 project reverse engeneered them.
- Same for new sub-architectures : when 64bits started to appear, most constructors only provided 32bits drivers. You were either stuck to 2D or not using the full potential of your CPU.
- If I want to use some less frequent OS, like what should I do to use latest ATI/nVidia GFX cards on OpenSolaris ?
etc...

No constructor will ever consider doing any work for these unusual platforms. They only concentrate their effort on the most widespread platforms : i.e. Windows for 32bit x86, and sometimes Linux x86 because it's starting to get popular enough to be considered.

If you rely on proprietary BLOBs, you're limited to what the constructor has decided to consider economically viable.
If you rely on libre-software, even if it isn't as good as the BLOBs, you give people the freedom to do whatever they want with the hardware they bought. Be it fixing bugs on old no-more-supported-by-constructor hardware, securing exploitable-flaws, porting the code to new unusual platforms, etc...

As a indicator, have a look on Windows XP 64 bits. As it has a rather installed-base, very few vendor bothered to port their code to it EVEN if it's a microsoft OS. On the other hand, lots of libre-software got ported, be it applications (like 7z) or drivers (like drivers for 3DFX voodoo cards).

I wonder if....

[Dcnjoe60]

I wonder if this article were titled something like "Ubuntu chooses stability over eye-candy" if there would be so many negative comments. Essentially, isn't that what they have decided? The 3D desktop stuff isn't stable enough for everyday use, so they aren't going to make it the default. Since the 3D desktop isn't the default, the requirement to use the proprietary drivers goes away. We all know that the open source drivers, while not as fast, cause fewer problems than the proprietary ones, even for newbies (although they don't do games, etc.). Besides, as others have pointed out, the proprietary drivers are still in the repositories.

It seems that with all of the emphasis on flashy desktops, Ubuntu should be receiving kudos for holding up system stability as a top priority.

YES!

[cortana]

Feel free to use my letter as a starting point for your own: http://robots.org.uk/nvidia.shtml

Yes, Intel rocks for that.

[Grendel Drago]

Thank you for mentioning the Intel drivers. Always good to see what they're up to; makes me glad that my laptop happened to come with Intel video (915GM chipset).

No.

[cortana]

Everything is moving to i386 and amd64. Now that Apple no longer produces ppc machines, is there an easy way for a regular user to get their hands on one?

Re:No.

[mr_da3m0n]

Pegasos? Kurobox? IBM fucking zSeries?

I mean, alone for the sake of the IBM zSeries servers?

Re:No.

[cortana]

None of these are something I would run Ubuntu on. I would run Debian on them. :)

Re:No.

[Markus_UW]

Or AIX, perhaps...

ATI proprietary drivers

[metamatic]

The situation is even more interesting considering that the proprietary ATI drivers [...] don't support Composite with AIGLX, the default in Ubuntu and X.org, while the reverse-engineered open source driver does.

Oh, it's worse than that. On the FireGL T2, the ATI drivers don't even work properly; Second Life fails with a ton of texture allocation errors, and eventually the system locks up. The open source drivers at least work, even if they're slow.

(*Makes mental note to avoid ATI crap in future machines.*)

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is of poor quality.

Re:Easy

[bky1701]

I hate this line, but it fits. Buy a mac. Or BeOS.

Linux is what it is not to spite that it is open/free but BECAUSE it is open/free. If you don't like that, go somewhere else.

Off your meds?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem with the FSF's perspective is that, apart from anything else, it absolutely stinks of fear.

Many comments in this discussion have the distinct aroma of fear, yours particularly.

He thinks that if people are not completely uncompromising and unquestioning in their adoption of his perspective, that we are all doomed to a situation of total corporate fascism; it's a case of giving corporations way too much credit, and everyone else not nearly enough.

I congratulate you on that spectacular bitterness.

The man is nowhere near the visionary people claim he is...he's a blind, bigoted, autocratic moron, and his followers generally are worse. I see more evidence of that every day.

Thank you, I'm sure those of us who think he's right will take your idiosyncratic bigotry under advisement.

The thing that really sucks recently in particular is that if music DRM *is* abandoned, the FSF are just sufficiently delusional that they might actually try and take credit for it, rather than realising that they were actually grossly ignorant and stupid all along for ever thinking that DRM was going to be a viable means of controlling technology.

The FSF were ignorant for being 100% correct?

Vote With Your Dollars

[Laven]

http://wtogami.livejournal.com/13663.html (copied from my blog)
On the surface this summary made this look like good news for freedom and the community. But reading the actual linux.com article and technical board decision... they are only refraining from enabling the closed drivers by default.

Ubuntu continues to ship closed source proprietary drivers in potential violation of the GPL.

This is trading long-term liberty for short-term convenience.

The price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. Fortunately in this case however, there is a reasonably comfortable choice. What if Free and Open Source Software communities voted with their dollars and bought video hardware that had libre drivers?

Today with Intel video, you have the convenience of working video out-of-the-box with full 3D acceleration with upstream X.org and kernel support. Perhaps if more people voted with their dollars, the other hardware vendors would take FOSS software more seriously and become a more honest partner in order to compete.

Think about it.

Warren Togami,
Fedora Project

p.s.
Note also the recent news of Intel finally releasing an IPW3945 driver suitable for the upstream kernel, by offloading the regulatory daemon into firmware. Good job Intel. As long as you continue to be a honest partner in the FOSS community, you have my dollar.

I'm soon buying a new laptop with Intel 950 video and IPW3945.

Re:Vote With Your Dollars

[westlake]

What if Free and Open Source Software communities voted with their dollars and bought video hardware that had libre drivers?

What if everyone else votes with their dollars for the proprietary solution?

The solution that outperforms Intel at every turn. Linux gets mediocre on-board video. OSX and Vista 99% of installs above entry level.

Re:Vote With Your Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

I decided to stop voting for Intel because it stopped giving the D945GNT spec, specifically the graphics portion. I haven't checked the other part of the chipset. It's late, but I feel I have to say it.

"Ubuntu" must mean "Ironic" in another language

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimmerman told Linux.com that although the software required for Composite support is not ready for prime-time and therefore will not be included in Feisty, Ubuntu hasn't given up entirely on including video drivers in future releases.

In other Feisty Fawn news, the Board also decided to downgrade support for Power PC due to a lack of funding."

Irony is how nobody sees causality between those statements.

If you continuously make decisions which marginalize you, don't be surprised (or angry) when end up marginalized.

Double standard?

[Bizzeh]

if microsoft did this in windows, it would be evil, and would get them an anti trust case, but ubuntu do it, and its fiar and just....

smells like a bit of a double standard here.

Re: I can.

[jmyers]

Thats a rotten thing to say!

Ask NVidia not Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, NVidia have all the info.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Now that Apple no longer produces ppc machines, is there an easy
>way for a regular user to get their hands on one?

Sure there is, it's the same way I've gotten all my PPC machines.

Craigslist, ebay, Goodwill.

Sheesh, you'd think "new" was the only way to get a computer...

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Rich0]

In the meantime, I can install drivers for the circa-2000 NVidia GeForce 1 DDR on an XP SP2 box with no problem at all. The kernel people need to support a stable driver interface and sidestep the whole issue.

And good luck when Vista comes out...

A stable driver interface only goes so far, and at some point people will complain when new releases break it. By not bothering to aim for one the linux kernel team spares themselves quite a bit of grief. And all the drivers that matter are open-source anyway. Note that "matter" is in the eyes of the people doing the work writing the kernel...

And nobody benefits from nvidia's code in their binary blobs. By making things difficult for them the linux team encourages them at others to open-source their code, so that all can benefit. The pain just hasn't gotten quite bad enough for nvidia. If somebody else comes along with an open-source competitor they'll feel a bit more pain.

And even if nvidia never gives up with their blobs, it doesn't hurt the linux kernel team at all, so avoiding a binary interface is a win-win for them.

Linux, power, and the consumer market.

[Spaceman40]

% sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/6.10
% dpkg -i *deb

Wow, and you people wonder why Linux hasn't taken hold for the average consumer. Sure it isn't difficult to type that line, but it looks confusing and intimidating to the average person.

I was talking to my wife about this last night. After a couple of years using Linux, I'm typing this stuff all the time without thinking. I've got a nice one-liner I use to kill processes based on a regular expression, for example:

% ps aux | awk '/pattern/ { print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

This makes perfect sense to me (and most likely to the general Unix public), but would be scary as all else to a pure Windows user.

While I understand that the learning curve may frighten people away, it's not as great a barrier as the application base. People completely new to computers can handle Ubuntu just as well (or as poorly) as Windows or OSX. It's the experience with one that spoils you to the others.

(A digression: Who cares about Linux "succeeding" in the "desktop market?" We're not selling anything, and we use it because we like it (see Apple Jacks). If it takes off, great -- means more applications will be developed for us. If not, it's still got more power than anything else. The requisite car analogy: "The Formula-1 race car will never take off in the consumer market, because it gets terrible gas mileage.")

Re:Linux, power, and the consumer market.

[Anonymous Coward]

% ps aux | awk '/pattern/ { print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

What's wrong with using killall? That is "killall -9 pattern" would do the same as your line of code, plus it is quicker to type and easier to understand. Well, that is unless you like using four programs where one will do the trick. ;)

Re:Linux, power, and the consumer market.

[Spaceman40]

I use it for killing all my FastCGI scripts, which could be named different things, or be run by different interpreters. I name them all with a ".fcgi" extension, though, so a regex will match.

Other than that I try to stick to killall or pkill, yes :)

Re:Linux, power, and the consumer market.

[westlake]

If it takes off, great -- means more applications will be developed for us. If not, it's still got more power than anything else.

Power has no meaning unless it can be applied to some purpose.

Re:Linux, power, and the consumer market.

[Spaceman40]

Power has no meaning unless it can be applied to some purpose.

True, and the purpose to which Linux enthusiasts apply it is development, generally using the GNU tools, which make up most of the average distro.

Yeah, dirt-easy...

[giorgosts]

You do that and you have no video, perhaps no 3d also ,

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.co m/drivers/linux/linux_8.33.6.html#183417

or no xv on tv-out http://folk.uio.no/henger/htpc/ati-pal-tvout.jpg

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=309

system FREEZES on 3d,

--locked-userpages={on|off}

Enable/disable locked user pages. Disable this option if the system

hangs when running fgl_glxgears.

User page lock is no longer available on AGP system now

The decision not to include the fglrx crapware is indeed the right one

Re: I can.

[Anonymous Coward]

01001001 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101111 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101111 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110101 01110000 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110011 01100001 01101001 01100100 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110101 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101111 01110000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01110100 01110101 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110101 01110011 01100101 01100110 01110101 01101100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100111 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101110 01100001 01101000 00101110 00101110 00101110

twice

[clashdot]

Oh well,

001100000-0110001-00110000-00110001-001.1 00010011-.00000011-000-0.00110001.0-011000-00.0110 -0010-01100 01.-00110.000-0011000100.110-0010.0.1.10001.001100 01.0-01.10.0.00001.1000100110001-001100010011-00 00001100-01001.10000001100010011-000.00011.0.00000 1.10001-0011000.0001.100.0000.110-00000 1100000011--0000001100-000011-000-10-01100010011-0 000001-10-00000-11-0-0-000-01100010-0110001.00 11000.00011000-1001100010.011000.0001-100010..0110 00100.1100-01-001100-010011000.0001-1-0001001100 010011000-10011000-00011000100.11-000000110001001- 10000-00110001.0011000.100-110000001-10001001100-0 100110 00000-110000.0-0110000.001100-01001.1-000100.11000 00-01.10-000001100010011-00-000011000.0 00110-0-000011.00000-0110-0010011000-00011000-0001 100000-011000-000110.000001-100000-01100010011 0001-00110-0000011000000110--000001100-00-001100-0 -1001100000-01-1000100-110-00100110001001-1000 0001-10-00-1001100000011000-00011000000110-00000-1 10001001-10000001100000-0-1100000-01100-000011 0000--0011000000.1100010.0-1100010-01100000.011000 1-00110001001100000011-0000001100000011000100- 110001001100000011000-000110001001100000-011000100 11000000110-00100110001001100-00001100000011 00-0000110000001100-01001100000011-000100110001001 1000100-11000000110000001100-0100110001001100 00001-10001001100010011000-1-001100000011000100110 000-0011000000110000001-100000011000100110-000 001100000011000-00011000000110000-0011000000110001 001100-01001100000011000-100110000001100000011-000 00 011000000110-0010011000100110-00000110000001100000 0-110000001100-0100110000001100-010011000100110001 -0 011000000110001001-100010011000000-110000001100010 011-000100110000001100-00001100010-011000000110001 0-01 1000000110000001100-0100110000001100000-0110000001 100000011-000000110000001100010-011000100110001001 100-00 001100010011000-1001100010011000-00011000100110001 00-11000100110000001-10000001100010011-000000 1100000011-000100110001001100000011000100110000001 1000000110001001100000011000100110001001100010 0110000001100010011000000110000001100000011000.100 110001001100010011000000.1100010011000000110000001 100000011000.100110001001100000011000.000110001001 1000000110001001100000011000100110001001100000 011000100110001001.100010011000.000110000001100000 0110.001001100000011000000110000001100000011000 0001100000011000100110001001100010011000000110000. 001100010011000100110000001100010011000100110 00000110001001100010011000100110001001100000011000 10011000100110000001100010011000100110000001 1000100110000001100010.011000100.11000000110000001 100.010011000000110001001100.000011000100110001001 1 00010011000000110001001100000011000000110000001100 01001100010011000000110001001100000011000000110000 0 01100000011.00010011000.10011000000110001001100000 011000.00011000100110000001100010011000100110000.0 0110 001001100010011000100110000001100000011000100.1100 01001100000011000000.1100010011000.100110001001100 00 00110000001100.010011000000.1100000011000.00011000 00011.0000001.10000001100010011..00010011000.-000 1100.010011000.10.0110001001.100000011.00000011000 10.011000100110.0000011-0000001-10001001-.1000-0 001100010-01100000-0110001001100-010011000.100110- 00000-110001001100-010011000100-110000001-100000-0 11000100-11000000110-00100-110001-001100010-011000 0-0011-000000110000001-1000.1001100-000011.0001001 -1 0.00100110.0010011-00000.0110000-001100.0000110001 .001100000-01100010011000100-1100010-0110000

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[duffbeer703]

A stable driver interface only goes so far, and at some point people will complain when new releases break it.

So to avoid release management problems with a driver interface, the solution is not to have one? Ok...

And even if nvidia never gives up with their blobs, it doesn't hurt the linux kernel team at all, so avoiding a binary interface is a win-win for them.

That is precisely the problem... the linux kernel team isn't the stakeholder here -- the user community is. Because the kernel team doesn't feel like implementing something that would benefit the community, CAD and Engineering software won't get moved to linux, games won't be moved to linux and other 3d applications will never move to linux.

Also consider that NVidia and ATI may not be releasing quality open source drivers for reasons other than a lack of desire. Both companies undoubtedly license technology from others, and those licenses don't allow for source distribution. That's one reason why Solaris took so long to open up. Re-inventing the wheel is expensive, particularly if the licensed code is difficult to implement -- which is probably why its was licensed to begin with!

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Billly Gates]

That argument is a whole new set of worms and is highly political.

THe hardcore gnu zealots and Linus do not want a driver interface as it would encourage proprietary drivers. Why write opensource drivers or give their specs away then?

To me its the only way as the hardware vendors cross license technology from other companies and these other companies would have to approve of the opening of the drivers. Also these other companies are IP firms and they are afraid people will rip off their technology if an open source driver exists. Last, the FCC requires all wifi cards to come with close source drivers so terrorists wont use them to disrupt communications.

I am in favor of a standard driver interface that could be ported between architectures and platforms and the linux kernel team almost split over this issue last year. Vendors want this and as a user I want drivers and understand some may have to be closed source.

To me its fustrating as the problem is political and not technical. Supporting old stuff is not fun but required in the business world, regardless of what Linus wants to do.

No, no, no.

[jotaeleemeese]

An end user can cut and paste a command like the one explained earlier.

He does not need to know what it does or to do any debugging.

Re:No, no, no.

[Senjutsu]

And when it fails? How is your cargo cult approach to CLI usage going to help the user figure out what went wrong and how to fix it?

Re:No, no, no.

[Ginger Unicorn]

That's irrelevant. Imagine they went in to a gui software installer, and clicked "install nvidia drivers", and that didn't work. How would it being a GUI make it easier to figure out how to fix it than if it were a CLI?

When a computer goes wrong in an unexpected way, it doesnt matter if you were pasting text into a CLI or clicking a button on a GUI. You still have a mystery on your hands. In either situation, you use Google or IRC or a Forum to get some clues/some help.

Pasting a command into a CLI not inherently more likely to go wrong that clicking a button in a GUI. Composing your own commands is the thing that carries more risk, certainly if you dont understand what you are doing.

This is the distinction that people fail to make when having this argument.

Dream on.

[jotaeleemeese]

Linux is not the de facto desktop standard (yet) for marketing reasons and monopolic practices.

It has nothing to do with the fucking CLI being difficult or not.

Any computer literate person should be able to type the command and hit enter.

As if the Windows way was more natural and the cryptic dialogs where any better.

Re:Dream on.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Linux is not the de facto desktop standard (yet) for marketing reasons and monopolic practices.

Partly right. Marketing and monopolistic practices have contributed to the current situation, but do not make the mistake of thinking that they are the only reasons.

>> It has nothing to do with the fucking CLI being difficult or not.

Again, there is no single reason, but a CLI is certainly not a selling point to the average user. You certainly wouldn't see it touted by any marketing department as a "must-have" feature.

>> Any computer literate person should be able to type the command and hit enter.

You're right, they can.

But whether or not they know what to type, and if not, where to find information on what to type, and whether or not they want to put up with a myriad of other highly technical factors such as software versions and dependancies is another story.

>> As if the Windows way was more natural and the cryptic dialogs where any better.

You're probably right. But people have chosen to use windows for entirely different reasons, and until the *nix geeks out there realise that making this OS mainstream requires skills outside of their own, the *nix concept will always be runner-up.

AC out.

Supporting evidence

[Just Some Guy]

Oh, and I'm not the only one who had that problem. The new 97xx drivers have officially obsoleted my card, and by extension, my entire system.

Linux in general has two paths it can take

[The Orange Mage]

NOTE: The following is over simplified. Path One: Continue squandering in its free software jihad, ignoring reality, and getting nowhere on making Ubuntu user friendly. Path Two: Drop the damn jihad and make things work easier for non-geeks. The whole aversion to anything proprietary shows where the community's concern is, and it's not at making Linux easier to use or making it more accessible to normal desktop users.

Re:Linux in general has two paths it can take

[RPoet]

The whole aversion to anything proprietary shows where the community's concern is

You seem surprised to discover that the free software community concerns itself with free software?

Re:Linux in general has two paths it can take

[The Orange Mage]

The community I was referring to was the Linux community, but apparently they're the same thing? Well, that complicates things. moves back to square one. does not pass go. etc. etc.

OSS video drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had more problems with OSS drivers for nVidia cards than I really care for, from poor performance to a high degree of instability(including just not working at all, and/or sporadically) that was ultimately solved by installing nVidia released drivers for both their video cards and mb chipset.

Not accepting proprietary drivers will kill linux as anything other than a server OS, and then ONLY on VERY well supported hw platforms which will entirely eliminate nVidia and AMD/ATI based chipsets as well as a large percentage of other vendors chipsets. Lack of hw support is just too much of a deal breaker, and in the case of hardware I side completely with the hardware developers in NOT releasing all specifications of their hardware to 3rd parties without FULL NDAs and source access restrictions. After all developing hardware is still a much more expensive proposition as compared to merely cranking out software.

Re:OSS video drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

> Not accepting proprietary drivers will kill linux as
> anything other than a server OS

And your evidence for this is...?

> in the case of hardware I side completely with the hardware
> developers in NOT releasing all specifications of their hardware
> to 3rd parties without FULL NDAs and source access restrictions.
> After all developing hardware is still a much more expensive proposition
> as compared to merely cranking out software.

Nobody is asking for a full schematic and you don't need driver source code or specs to reverse engineer hardware.

Re:misleading title AND misleading summary

[Deagol]

You know... this topic pisses me off to no end. I have a modest nVidia GeForce FX 5200 video card (don't laugh -- it was a 2nd-hand upgrade from my aging G400 Max last year), but I run FreeBSD as my main desktop. Sure, they have a FreeBSD driver (it's even in ports) -- but I run the amd64 version of the OS. Sure, I could run 64-bit Linux and use their driver, but I jumped ship from Linux several years ago, and I just can't stomach the idea of going back.

So, I'm S.O.L. when it comes to 3D acceleration. Not just with nVidia. As far as I know, there are absolutely *no* video chipset makers out there that have released the specs for their acceleration stuff. Not that I was surprised that nVidia hasn't released the specs. However, I *was* totally surprised that there is simply no alternative for me. After much reading of rants on USENET and other forums, it appears that if you run 64-bit FreeBSD on your workstation, you simply cannot have 3D acceleration at this time. This, to me, speaks volumes about the sincerity of these vendors when they talk of supporting open operating systems, as it means that no truly open video hardware exists today. If Linux weren't the darling of the tech press, I doubt they'd support it at all, either.

To video card manufacturers: Open the specs! I'll run out today and purchase the first card that'll give me 3D acceleration for my chosen OS. Plus, I'll send a "You suck, I'm buying Foo Inc.'s hardware now!" letter to nVidia the same day.

To steer things back to the main topic, though, I applaud every time I hear of developers (like OpenBSD's Theo -- rough around the edges he may be) or a distro taking a stand against proprietary code/binaries and not including them. When I started down the open source path many years ago, I had to vet and replace some hardware to get support. As a result, I now run what is (my opinion, of course) much higher quality hardware than I used to ("real" modems vs winmodems, anyone?).

Re:You don't seem to know why that card isn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that but Honestly Ubuntu and Debian need to simply issue a "Nvidia not supported" statement to maybe get nvidias attention.

Letting users flounder simply angers them. The distros need to take a stand and say "we recommend AGAINST XXXX and YYYY because their driver has problems, use ZZZZZ instead."

Windows doesn't support 3d out of the box

[HermMunster]

Microsoft does not support 3d drivers out of the box. You have to use your CD that came with the video card or go and download the manufacturer's drivers from the internet.

Ubuntu, if I recall correctly, didn't support my video cards out of the box. In fact, I can only remember one distro that did. No big deal for me.

What needs to be done is a better mechanism for the human population to get the drivers from sites like nVidia and AMD in order to get the proper drivers installed.

BTW, I would never play the tuxracer game, lol. Let's get real. UT, DOOM, Enemy-Territory is important but tuxracer--makes me laugh.

I know Linux wants to be different from Windows and providing 3d drivers for Linux out of the box would be a great way to do so. Forcing compiles of the OS and other core components is NOT the way to make linux different--it's just stupid.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[duffbeer703]

It's nice to see someone on /. that is in touch with reality.

The thing that really annoys me with this issue is the selective enforcement of the whole "open drivers in the kernel" thing. They take these political stands on the one hand, and then on the other plenty of questionable drivers have made it in.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Kjella]

Last, the FCC requires all wifi cards to come with close source drivers so terrorists wont use them to disrupt communications.

Last in a pretty long line of bullshit. If you check out this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Open_So urce_Wireless_Drivers
There's actually several chips with company-supported open drivers. But hey, keep the FUD going.

How about it?

[FormOfActionBanana]

They both appear equally difficult to me.

CPU's do have bugs

[bill_mcgonigle]

Imagine if CPU makers worked the same way.

I'm sure you know this, but for others reading your post: CPU's do have bugs, the manufacturers publish errata as they find them, the kernel does CPU detection and either works around the bug or uploads a microcode patch for the bug, and everybody gets along swimmingly.

Re:CPU's do have bugs

[dpilot]

My point precisely, thanks.

It's a bit of the same argument posed for open vs closed source software. If you know your source code is going to be seen by everyone, you may be less likely to leave stupid crap in there, and put a bit more effort into keeping it clean an nice. Some might say that "clean and nice" has no value, but I've seen people argue, Linux among them, that code that looks bad often turns out to be, and he frequently flags bad-looking code, anticipating that the flag may help direct future bug-hunts.

GPUs never got the same religion, like CPUs. It's possible that in the long run, if they documented their hardware like CPUs did, and did the "clean and nice" thing, that their costs would actually drop with reduced spins, quality improvement, etc.

I've worked in memory design, and you gotta meet the spec, and you can't go to the memory market with errata.

Re:CPU's do have bugs

[bill_mcgonigle]

GPUs never got the same religion, like CPUs. It's possible that in the long run, if they documented their hardware like CPUs did, and did the "clean and nice" thing, that their costs would actually drop with reduced spins, quality improvement, etc.

My guess is they don't care about getting out a quality product, they care about getting out the next [insert buzz marketing here] card before [insert ATI or nVidia here] does, and if they have to ship a steaming pile of silicon... it won't affect their sales all that much.

I've worked in memory design, and you gotta meet the spec, and you can't go to the memory market with errata.

Hey isn't that what ECC is for? ;)

Re:CPU's do have bugs

[dpilot]

Perhaps there's a "marketing opportunity" here, though "almost barely good enough" seems to be a determined enemy.

Re:CPU's do have bugs

[bill_mcgonigle]

Perhaps there's a "marketing opportunity" here, though "almost barely good enough" seems to be a determined enemy.

Agreed, and if the option is paying $175 for a 5-year old Matrox card (that's the only option I know of), I hate to admit to taking the $40 nVidia, but I do, if it will suffice.

shenanegans

[Oriumpor]

Screen readers shine in a shell as do brail displays. This is a non-starter. The problem is with the condescending attitude and the expectation that *EVERYONE* who uses *nix should be able to perform CLI judo is the problem.

How many end users open up a command shell in Windows to do anything? Hell you can barely even install most graphics drivers in a command shell (and no I don't mean initiating the executable) as every time we rebuild our unattended windows installs means fussying through piles of doc on how the installers work.

The mastery of a system for the end user is not their goal when working on a computer. They are aiming at performing tasks, and using their computer as a tool for expediting real world tasks or for entertainment. Opening a black box and typing commands into it's innards is esoteric, unfriendly, and doesn't relate to much real world stuff. Configuration is a hassle to end users, and making it less of a hassle is the goal of a good UI developer. Ubuntu is supposed to be for real people, not just the unix trolls under the bridge. (And "just ./blah-command-version.sh $args" is a fsking unix troll.) The ideal being that the environment, the GUI displayed should contain all that the average user will need to perform their common tasks. And if someone has a Graphics adapter that isn't supported and requires CLI interaction to get working, it isn't ideal.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[shadow_slicer]

Actually grandparent is roughly correct (minus hyperbole). It is an FCC requirement that the end user not be able to modify the device to cause harmful interference. The actual phrasing is just that it be reasonably difficult...

In practice this means device manufacturers
1) use nonstandard antenna connectors so it is difficult to use an antenna that wasn't certified for operation with the device.
2) Limit power and other controls via one of the following methods
      a) Place limits in firmware (closed firmware)
      b) Place limits in the driver (closed driver)

Note that there are other solutions to this problem, but these are just the most common ones. The other options are mostly hardware, and since the restrictions vary for different markets (Europe and Japan), most companies find it cheaper to produce one hardware model and just change the limits in software.

Re: I can.

[complete loony]

For the lazy; "this message is a encrypted binary blob that you should mod to +5 without asking questions" (it was also rot13'd)

Most people *do* use command line interfaces

[jesterzog]

So don't complain that most people don't use a CLI, most people don't use calculus either.

Most people do use a command line interface, just not to administer their computers. After all, Google uses a very well designed command line interface as its primary interface. (User types what they want, Google gives it to them.)

A command line interpreter for system administration that let the user type what they wanted, then helped the user narrow it down, could be very interesting. It might work much more nicely than a horrible hierarchy of menus to click and search through.

Re: "ati" == "radeon"

[PopeRatzo]

"compiz/aiglx" and "GIT"

Now I have two more things to google. See what kind of motivation a bad experience with Vista can generate?

Give the n00bs some credit

[Ikester8]

Using a CLI requires two things: the ability to read, and the ability to type (even if it's just hunt-and-peck typing).
If a user can't do that, they need to learn. There are too many users that shut off their brains when they sit in front of a computer and it needs to stop.

While I prefer doing Ubuntu things through Gnome-enabled synaptic, I agree with this post. While Ubuntu is more or less ready to go for most folks, when you want to do stuff beyond what Gnome allows you to do, you need to know a bit o'CLI. But with the Ubuntu Guides and the Envy script, most Ubuntu n00bs will be able to install the proprietary drivers themselves if they want them.

The fifth freedom at (good) work!

[aoliva]

http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/139#1

It's good to see Canonical following our advice, even if in such a limited way and not necessarily for the right reasons... A step in the right direction nevertheless.

Interestingly, we didn't know about Tom Clancy's fifth freedom when we wrote the editorial in the URL above. That's too bad, because it fits. Oh well...

Re: Twice + 1

[nbritton]

a = 303630
b = 303631

abaabaabaabaaaaaabbaabaaabbabaababbaabaaaababbaaaa baaaaaabaabaabaabaaaaaabbaaaababbaabaaabbaabaaabba abababbaabaaaabaaaaaabbbabaaabbabaaaabbaababaabaaa aaabbbabbbabbabbbbabbbaabaabbaabaaaabaaaaaabbaabab abbabbbaabbaaabbabbbaabaabbbbaababbbaaaaabbbabaaab baabababbaabaaaababbbaaabaaaaaaabbbabaaababbabaaba baab00

Hint: 3 steps after decompressing.

Zealots? In MY Linux?

[Wiseman1024]

Oh yes. Continue to give Microsoft an advantage like that. This bigotry can only be bad for Linux. Talk about being pragmatic (just an excuse): out of the box, Ubuntu will not support 3D acceleration (and I can bet the supplied drivers have poor 2D perfromance or features as well). You have to go through the process of installing the drivers yourself. Quite a step backwards. I can install my drivers. In fact, I make bread on this kind of stuff. But I don't want to waste my time just because some GPL zealots feel that I should waste my time. Then lusers will complain that Linux is a mess or that its graphics performance sucks, or that it doesn't have games, and the same zealots who removed their drivers quickly run to say YOU CAN PLAY QUAKE 3 LOL. With this attitude and stupid bigotry, you expect 2007, 2008, 2009, or 2016 to be the legendary year of the Linux desktop? Not a chance. The open source community, and a very specific part of it, needs to be pragmatic and quit being anal before that can happen. So under my eyes, Ubuntu just lost points.

Must be ATI

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm on a custom-built nvidia desktop. Custom kernel: Reiser4, amd64, all kinds of tweaks and custom hacks I've accumulated over the year. Gentoo, mix of stable and unstable, all kinds of custom overlays (equivalent of Debian/Ubuntu repos) and again, custom hacks and shell scripts. I have a home directory that I've carried around for years.

Last night, I installed the latest nvidia drivers and Beryl. All I had to do was install the most recent nvidia drivers and set Beryl as my window manager.

However, I did have a problem. My previous nvidia drivers ran with my existing xorg.conf, no problems, full resolution (1600x1200). These ones ran at 1280x1024 until I told it to stop trying to autodetect my LCD's native resolution. I can't figure out if this is nVidia's fault or my monitor's fault, though it does seem bizarre and annoying that the nVidia binary blob has absorbed stuff relating to the monitor and PCI express.

So, if anything is broken, it's not Beryl/Compiz stability at all that's the issue, it's the drivers. There are things that break -- for instance, XvMC looks REALLY broken when you try to drag it as a wobbly window, but what do you expect? And I doubt Ubuntu has XvMC enabled by default for anything, and I doubt they could, at this point.

Ironic, isn't it?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Intel has the best supported video card on Linux... but nVidia's Linux support is currently WAY better than their Windows support, even for 64-bit.

CLI + phone = love

[SanityInAnarchy]

Unix was designed to operate over slow serial lines. That's why commands are silent when they work, by the way.

I wager that between the two, it would probably be MUCH faster for me to walk someone through installing drivers on Linux. I mean, I could send them to a website, or I could say "Type wget http://mydomain.com/nvidia.sh", which I have temporarily redirected to the right file. Hell, I can probably force it to skip the license.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Slashamatic]

From my brief stint in this area, GPUs have a number of advertised features, some of which may work well and some require a lot of help from the driver. Generally speaking, a GPU is quite cutting edge and it simply can't cope with everything you could throw at it. My feeling is that the silicon goes out to market a lot earlier than the quivalent CPU with the expectation that the driver fixes the problems (usually at the expense of some performance).

It is my belief that an open driver would expose those flaws forcing the vendors to improve their mask quality levels. The problem is that fixing the silicon may increase time to market and unit costs.

Lastly I should emphasise that GPUs have changed a lot since I did drivers. I can only extrapolate from what I saw in the early days. However since the silicon is now much more complicated, I can only imagine the problems have increased accordingly.

Re: Twice + 1

[clashdot]

Oh, I didn't notice that you did. Sorry. (Well, we had to stop at some point, right?)

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[dpilot]

I don't deny that a bit. I simply wonder if they've taken this particular marketing model a bit too far out onto a limb. We're now about to the point where sometimes it seems that the only things a new GPU is good for in its first 6 months of release are market noise and benchmarking. If you want to use it for anything other than those initial availabilities, you generally "wait for the drivers to mature." Imagine instead taking those 6 months for another silicon rev, and get the thing fixed to where you aren't ashamed to document it. Once you're not fixing "haste-bugs" with drivers, I'll bet they'd would stabilize a heck of a lot quicker. The effective time to market might even improve, though the benchmarket noise wouldn't

I wonder how much of the vaunted complexity of GPU drivers is really graphical, and how much of the truly thorny stuff is working around chip bugs.

Ideals

[Gaki]

are like fences. Build one and you may feel more comfortable and more secure in where your boundaries are, but someone is ALWAYS on the other side. The more ideals you have, the more fences you build and the further away from the "common man" you are.

For crying out loud ... these are just device drivers. Is it going to kill everyone to just compromise? Axe the nv and nouveau projects and put those developers to work with nVidia on a global driver for their cards on Linux. Make it a closed-source driver that is sold, with half the proceeds going towards nVidia and half towards the Open Source community. Yes, form a partnership between the private concern and the public community, in other words, so that EVERYONE profits. I would gladly pay as much as $20 for a known-good nVidia driver that would allow me to take full advantage of the card's capabilities. Heck, many would pay five times that.

Some things are worth going to the mat over ... but device drivers just ain't it.

Re:Sorry, but ATI binary drivers just suck too muc

[Rich0]

Also consider that NVidia and ATI may not be releasing quality open source drivers for reasons other than a lack of desire. Both companies undoubtedly license technology from others, and those licenses don't allow for source distribution. That's one reason why Solaris took so long to open up. Re-inventing the wheel is expensive, particularly if the licensed code is difficult to implement -- which is probably why its was licensed to begin with!

Then they can just release the specs for their hardware and let somebody else worry about the drivers...

That is precisely the problem... the linux kernel team isn't the stakeholder here -- the user community is. Because the kernel team doesn't feel like implementing something that would benefit the community, CAD and Engineering software won't get moved to linux, games won't be moved to linux and other 3d applications will never move to linux.

Uh, linux already has proprietary 3D video drivers available for most popular cards. And yet this sort of software hasn't migrated. I think the issues are more complex than driver availability. If people are willing to use proprietary software they'll be willing to use propreitary drivers, and if people are willing to pay for software they'll be willing to pay for the cost to update the drivers for every kernel release if necessary.

The linux devs ARE a stakeholder. However, their interest is contrary to yours. You would like to minimize the cost to release proprietary software on linux. Others would like to MAXIMIZE it - which makes open source software far more competitive. If you don't like that philosophy then just use Vista, OS X, or whatever. There isn't any reason that linux has to take off on the desktop to be successful. I'd argue it already is.