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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
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.. 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--
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.
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
Well, that sux.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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?
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.
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
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.
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".