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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.
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.
the driver will not be enabled by default, but they will be still present in ubuntu
01110100011010000110100101110011001000000110110101 10010101110011011100110110000101100111011001010010 00000110100101110011001000000110000100100000011000 10011010010110111001100001011100100111100100100000 01100010011011000110111101100010001000000111010001 10100001100001011101000010000001111001011011110111 01010010000001110011011010000110111101110101011011 00011001000010000001101101011011110110010000100000 01110100011011110010000000101011001101010010000001 11011101101001011101000110100001101111011101010111 01000010000001100001011100110110101101101001011011 10011001110010000001110001011101010110010101110011 0111010001101001011011110110111001110011
.. 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--
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.
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.
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.)
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:
...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!
. odp (yes, server's mime-type is probably wrong, you have to save it first)
- 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.
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
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.
/. for the full story - RTFA!
Lesson learned (again): Don't rely on
Lemon curry???
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.
Well, that sux.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
for the next few releases I suggest nibbling nymphs, fighting phallus, and nasty necrophiliac.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
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."/ 1830240 : "Canonical and Linspire Make a Deal ... Ubuntu users will get access to proprietary software (DVD players, media codecs) via Linspire's ..."
referenced here: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/08
What will a potential user make out of this while asking himself whether things will work for him?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
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?
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.
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.
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....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
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.
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.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
No difference from Edgy, the binary drivers will still be available from the restricted repository.
... typical Slashdot staple.
Shoddy reporting and misleading title
:wq
I can read your message just fine, my reply:
1 11001001100110011001100110111001110100011100100010 00000111011001100110001000000110111000100000011100 10011000010111000001100101011011000110001101100111 01110010011100010010000001101111011101100110000101 10111001100101011011000010000001101111011110010110 00100110111100100000011001110111010101101110011001 11001000000110110001100010011010000010000001100110 01110101011000100110100001111001011100010010000001 11101001100010011100010010000001100111011000100010 00000010101100110101001000000110101001110110011001 11011101010110001001101000011001110010000001101110 01100110011110000111011001100001011101000010000001 10010001101000011100100110011001100111011101100110 00100110000101100110
0110011101110101011101100110011000100000011110100
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.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
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?
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Of course there is. They are not free software. I am unable to alter them to fix bugs or add new features.
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..
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
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.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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....
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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?
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
The opposite of progress is congress