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New Failsafe Graphics Mode For Ubuntu
ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."
Linux gets Safe Mode!
I guess that's an advance.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is great, but should have been done a long time ago! I have heard several people say they "tried ubuntu but it wouldn't work"... I determined the graphics failure to be an issue 100% of the time.
Get a web developer
Although I personally do not care about that feature, I view it as a positive step towards mass adoption of Linux. I have to admit it scares me a bit although. Once mass adopted, we won't have the satisfaction to know we are running a better OS anymore ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
As silly as it sounds, I've come across so many new Linux users who have messed up their display settings in some way, been unable to use the command line to fix it and have just resorted to giving up or reinstalling, neither is really an ideal option.
Whilst to the average Slashdotter this may sound silly, I'd bet it's one of the biggest things that puts your average Joe off Linux through the years. Being able to easier recover from broken Linux installs will, imo go a long way to keeping people using Linux rather than the current situation where quite a few try, but many give up. Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows. This is however why I'd say Ubuntu has been making such headway in attracting new users to Linux because they do seem to understand what problems exactly that up until now have been putting many new users off Linux.
This is very good, I'm sure a lot of users would like to have the choice of selecting these in a graphical mode, which with they may be more familiar. Many users familiar with Windows/OSX will automatically be more familiar with Ubuntu because of this feature. It's important to have as many options available on CLI and GUI at the same time.
I remember that back in the day YaST (SuSE's Yet Another Setup Tool) used to be incredibly handy because the CLI and GUI for the tool, which controlled almost all configurable options of the Linux distro, would behave almost exactly the same. The CLI used curses for display, and I believe the GUI was QT-based. They functioned pretty much identically. Personally, I have no problem just editing a text file. But, if you are a linux newbie and you poke around in the GUI and mess something up, then suddenly you can't start X, you feel a little bit safer knowing that there's a tool you can use to revert your settings that works exactly the same on the CLI as it does in the GUI, so you can access the program in almost any situation, even from a remote terminal.
Twinstiq, game news
Being able to get a console and edit xorg.conf will probably always be with us, but it should never be the primary means of configuration for a desktop machine. I see this as a major step forward for Ubuntu in reaching it's target audience. I use many distros, but I generally choose Ubuntu for desktop systems because I really don't have the motivation to do all that by hand just for a lousy desktop. It's also for people like my dad: he can follow instructions and install an OS, but he's not touching a config file.
"I do a grep for shit, bollocks, and tits before checking in code. I'm professional..." -RECURSIVE_META_JOKE, reddit.com
Linux has always had "safe mode". You boot single user from the command line.
..... I guess you could consider it "safe mode" for X.org. But not for "Linux".
This is more "easy GUI re-configuration of X.org when X.org blows up".
Well
Although I've haven't had *nix installed on any of my home computers yet, I'm very happy indeed that Windows XP looks to be the last MS OS I will ever use.
Changing to Linux is now something I'm thinking about on at least a weekly basis, and the upcoming version Ubuntu seems very likely to make me leave Windows. (Except for a small gaming partition).
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
Xandros and other distros have had this for years.
This has been a problem I've run into a lot as a Linux novice, and newly converted user to Ubuntu 7.04. I really wish that someone would make dual/multi display configuration much more intuitive. In Windows even the n00best of n00bs can easily configure a dual monitor setup. In the various Linux flavors I've tried it is not that simple. Seems like the system display configuration utility and the video drivers I install for nVidia/ATI cards just want to fight each other over who gets to control that second monitor, instead of just working like it does in Windows. Like I said, total novice here so I don't know if its an issue with the distro's themselves, or the third party drivers by nVidia/ATI, all I know is it is annoying, and one of the major caveats preventing me from totally embracing the penguin.
The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.
An error screen that appears in a crash, maybe a nice calming blue one... ;-)
I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.
Personally, I find it far, Far, FAR, FAR easier to recover a damaged Linux box than a damaged Windows box. But that is primarily because the damaged Windows boxes that I get have major Registry issues.
As long as you can get an Ubuntu box to boot to the command line, it is "easy" to fix. "Easy" is in quotes because it takes a little bit of knowledge. But not much. I'm running Gutsy Gibbon at home and even with 2 problems (it is still alpha) I've been able to recover my system without rebooting in less than 5 minutes.
The magic is in APT and the repositories. As long as I can connect to the repositories and run APT, I can remove the problem or re-install over it.
As more people become familiar with Ubuntu (and Debian and Debian-based distributions) the "fear" of Linux will vanish. It's just so much EASIER than Windows. (unless your hardware isn't supported but that's a different issue)
I remember Jeff Waugh (Gnome guy, also worked at Canonical) had mentioned at last year's Ohio Linux Fest there had been talk about this for years but everyone was always busy working on other stuff. Glad to see they finally are getting it out.
X11 brought a standard means of controlled extensions to the X protocol. So called "X extensions". So the need for a new protocol revision number for anything other than marketing purposes would be quite miniscule, though these days much of the drawing on your desktop is happening through an extension (e.g. X composite, render, glx ...) rather than core X.
The only thing that would merit it would be a fundamental change to the rendering model necessitating a core protocol change, and really, X's rendering model is quite reasonable (though individual implementations are sometimes lacking in implementation terms in some areas - X.org (and XFree86 before it) have shockingly slow nested subwindow support, for no good reason- in the end, people like Trolltech (Qt) have made a decision, and moved away from subwindows, because it's faster for them to emulate them than use native subwindows. Which is pretty dumb, since X had subwindows specifically to make toolkit implementors lives mh easier (then again, MacOSX native GUI doesn't support native subwindows, and Qt being crossplatform they had to implement an emulation anyway). But you don't need to change the protocol to improve that, just fix X.org to Not Suck).
This is clearly a great example of the agile developers of the OSS community. Only months after Microsoft announces similar features in the upcoming Windows version customized for the home user, the OSS movement has once again beat them to it, and implemented features only mentioned with vague release dates by the huge Seattle-based software company. Way to go, guys!
Ok, I'm sure others have too, but I filed a bug report on this problem a LOOOONG time ago. It's taken them quite a long time to get around to fixing this, a rather significant usability problem.
You might not have heard, but these days the X.Org Foundation is the one running the show and making the reference implementation (latest being X11R7.2 as of now). If you've used a desktop-oriented distribution of Linux within the last five years, chances are that it came equipped with it as the default choice.
In any case, I'm not exactly sure about what cause would be served by changing the base protocol.
A Windows user boots Ubuntu on a new laptop, say, and gets a low-res 'safe mode' telling them that there's no specific support for their video hardware ("Ubuntu failed to start the windowing system because it was unable to properly configure your hardware").
Out of the box Xorg supports more video cards than Windows does. It also supports the use of generic drivers for standards compliant cards, such as VESA.
They can't download a driver package and update.
Of course they can. ATI and nVidia, the two biggest graphics card vendors provide Linux driver packages you can download. In fact, Ubuntu has a utility that will do this automatically for you.
They can't use a driver off a CD that came with the machine, because there aren't any.
Generally it's the same with Windows. My last computer, a Compaq, didn't come with any CD. The only option was to create a "restore" CD/DVD which amounted to little more than a disk image. Say I want to install a different version of Windows than what the machine was imaged with, where are the drivers?
None of your arguments against X hold water, and of course if you actually put some thought into it, you'd be able to come up with some simple reasons why failsafe mode is useful. What if your X has the right drivers, but the auto detect failed or something you did borked the configuration? With failsafe mode you can revert back to a correct driver setting and recover your desktop rather quickly and painlessly.
You cite Windows as "the superior way," but don't you even realize that Windows has a graphics safe mode for exactly the same reason as Ubuntu has now? If anything Ubuntu is mimicking something Windows has done for over a decade. If the feature were as useless as you claim, why hasn't Microsoft removed that feature by now, and why do I have so much first hand experience utilizing it at home and work?
The gui is called synaptic. It's so awesome compared to anything on the MSwindows side of things, it's hard to describe to someone who just uses MSWindows. But I'll give it a try:
Synaptic contains a list of repositories. Each repository is a website that has a group of applications for the OS. Synaptic comes with some default repositories and has an easy way for the user to add new ones using a GUI interface (or a text interface).
You run synaptic and it will give you a list of all possible programs to install on the OS. Everything. You click on a program to install. If it requires other applications to be installed, it will warn you that it will also install the other applications.
The magic comes when a new version of any application (ie: Firefox) comes out that you already have installed. The OS knows that there is a new version because the repositories will have a version number higher than the version installed on your system. The OS will put a little star in the corner of the screen. Click on it will bring up synaptic with the option to install the newer version.
Think of it as a Windows Update that does not send information about your system to any website, and which can update any program installed on your system (including OS files and files not distributed by Microsoft), regardless of who makes it. (repositories are available for proprietary products such as Opera and Google Earth).
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Done already. In fact, Linux has many of them: apt-get, yum, emerge, and more! It's a veritable cornucopia of unified program installation methods.
Loose lips lose spit.
I want to re-iterate some of what's been said here. Just to be clear, I'm no *nix n00b. I learned on VMS and IBM VM/CMS then moved to a mixed VMS, Ultrix, HP-UX and SunOS/Solaris environment in 1991. I started using redhat in 1995, switched to Suse in 2002, and to Ubuntu in 2007. I work as an engineer and do some software development. At home I have a Windows box which gets used for work and acts as a file and print server (since it's the more powerful machine). Beside it is a linux box that likewise gets used for dev work and cross compiling code. I am capable of dealing with problems that may arise on either the Windows or *nix platform.
In my kitchen is a laptop. It's running Ubuntu. It's the machine my non-techy wife uses. She has been using linux since 2002 and I would guess she represents a "typical" user. Present her with a GUI, dialog boxes, a clear and user friendly interface and she's fine; put her in front of a shell prompt and she's lost.
Features like this "Failsafe Graphics Mode" are critical if we expect more widespread adoption of linux. This is where Microsoft and Apple have done a very good job of making it easy for a typical person with limited or no technical background to configure and use the machines. A previous poster suggested that linux has always had a failsafe mode; but, booting into single user mode and dumping someone at a shell prompt is not good enough. At that point most people would give up. We have to work to make the platform as user friendly as possible if we expect it to be adopted. linux needs more of these user friendly interfaces for diagnosing problems and configuring hardware. That laptop my wife uses, in order to get the wifi interface to work I had to drop back to a command prompt to troubleshoot the problem, then edit a couple of configuration files to make it work. (and for the record, it's a Ralink 2500 based card made by Asus, which is supposed to be well supported) That's just unacceptable to most users. Let's try to keep the typical end user in mind when we design these projects. I think the folks working on Ubuntu are setting a fine example.
FBSD has defaulted to a VESA mode for some time now i thought. Not that its 100% but it covers 99% of what is still running ( and that you would want to try running X on ).
Sure its nice, but doesnt seem 'earth shaking'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Another cool thing about using synaptic and repositories: When Ubuntu came out with version 7.04, users of version 6.10 got a notice via synaptic, stating that a new version of the OS was available. If the user chose to upgrade to the new version, the only thing that was changed was the version of the OS listed in the list of repositories in synaptic. Then synaptic just did it's usual business and downloaded all the new files. A single reboot later, and the entire OS and all applications were upgraded. All at once.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Welcome to the 1990's and the VESA support in just about every graphics card in existance that never got used until around 2000, and only now at the mid-to-end of the decade we get a VESA safe mode.
Probably because the original GP post proposed moving from X11 to X12 to fix usability problems, but the '11' actually refers to the version of the low level client-server communications protocol, which has little to do with usability.
I still don't understand why you keep referring to changing the protocol in the first place.
Because the protocol version number is "11", and the name "X11" includes the protocol version number. The X Window System (or just "X" for short) has been stable on version 11 of the protocol for a long time now.
The name "X12" implies a change in the protocol that is so serious that no existing X software will know how to talk to it (because all existing X software is X11 software).
They keep on changing the release revision; we are up to 7.2 now, as in "X11R7.2".
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Take in computers that need repair, fix them using my bench and give the tower back to the customer knowing their system would automatically adjust itself to their display and input devices when they went home from win95b on. The fact that I STILL can't do that with Linux/X today is just pathetic.
The X.org guys are in fact working on that. The fact that we can't do it today is just legacy fallout from the poor way that the Xfree86 guys used to run things.
A short (and not polite) summary of the history of X:
-- X invented at a university. Runs quickly through version numbers but stabilises at 11.
-- X not generally available for free for years.
-- Some guys make a free version of X for the 386, and call it "Xfree86".
-- Xfree86 becomes the standard X for free OSes.
-- Xfree86 project management becomes an obvious problem.
-- Talented X developer Keith Packard starts talking to people about ways to improve Xfree86 project management.
-- Xfree86 lead developers accuse Keith Packard of trying to "subvert" Xfree86 management, and kick Keith Packard out of Xfree86. Keith Packard goes to X.org.
-- Xfree86 lead developers go completely insane, and change the licence for X to include onerous new "advertising" requirements.
-- The whole Free Software world, more or less simultaneously, abandons Xfree86, and X.org becomes the new standard X.
-- Xfree86 is now completely irrelevant.
-- X.org guys (including Keith Packard) revamp X to make it easier to work on, revamp dev protocols to make it easier to get things done, and start making cool stuff happen.
Feel free to look up X11, Xfree86, etc. on Wikipedia if you want to know more.
yes.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I do it all the time. I never even noticed, since the binary drivers and their kernel modules get upgraded along with the kernel itself with the upgrade manager.
Oh unless you are talking about compiling your own kernel, then you will have to recompile the nvidia kernel module... Of course, if you want to compile your own kernel, then you can surely live with the consequences. For everyone else, there's no issue, since the update manager updates the kernel and the only thing the user needs to do it reboot afterwards
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I'm not aware of any such drivers on Ubuntu. Are you talking about the non .deb NVidia provided driver package? You shouldn't be using that. Ubuntu includes drivers.
That's what I always used to call Ubuntu. Being a die-hard linux user/sysadmin for going on 10 years now, and a rabid Debian and Slackware fan - I always scoffed at Ubuntu. I felt like it was "dumbed down".
Seeing the positive effect Ubuntu has had in spreading more mainstream use of linux, I've changed my ways. This is just another step further in helping more people to step away from Windows and discover something better. I agree that X11 problems account for the majority of failed end-user attempts at trying linux out.
Since Feisty came out, I've been able to quickly install a GNU/Linux distro on several machines (family members, friends) and have them up and running, and the users happily working on a friendly OS. All of them have stayed with Ubuntu. No Ubuntu/XP dual booting, just straight up scrapping Windows and going full ahead with Ubuntu. Most of them (my wife included) have said "I will never go back to Windows again".
Every time a user says "I will never go back to Windows again", an angel gets its wings.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
The graphical installers ALWAYS try to use an ergonomic refresh rate
that drive my old Genuine IBM VGA monitors bananas.
The installer should be written for 640x480, 60 Hz, PERIOD.
And authors of said installers should test them at 640x480.
There's nothing that makes me want to microwave an Ubuntu CD faster
than a dialog box with the buttons off the bottom of the screen.
--Gene
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.
And the problem with your perception is that you think that the linux command line mentality is better for the average joe user. I don't disagree that if you know what you're doing, it is much easier to fix a broken Linux than it is to fix a broken Windows. But the key here is that most people don't know what they're doing. Parts of the design of Windows are aimed at users that don't know what they're doing so that their PC will at least be somewhat functional for them with all of the familiar interfaces even if something bad happens.
You see, the command line or text messages with a black background mean nothing to the user. For all purposes, if they don't see something that resembles their desktop, they think their computer is broken. They also don't care if they have to type in one command to fix it because to them, learning that the command line exists and that you can even enter text commands is too much to deal with. If you can't expect failure in your software and implement necessary messages and functionality to recover to a close but not quite mode expected by the user, it doesn't mean a damn thing because they will end up calling the nearest geek to fix it. And when they do that, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to fix or even if you can't fix it. They've already lost time waiting for your service and your service is only seen as a backup effort. If geeks were not available, they probably would have considered their computer broken and the only way to fix it would be to purchase a new one.
The people at Ubuntu are doing more for linux and open source software adoption than anyone else has. Take a hint and learn something about understanding other (non-techy) user's viewpoints. If all open source developers could actually understand those users, then linux might eventually be ready for the desktop.
If you hit Ctrl+Alt+F# (F1, F2, etc) you can get into a command line, then login and use sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf to edit your configuration file. Of course, users should never be expected to do such a thing, but it's at least nice to know that you can.
IBM "Genuine VGA" monitors? You're USING them!?!?
Dude, if they still work, save them in your cellar! They will soon be collectors items and you can make a fortune!
But if you are trying to work with them, it's obvious that the only reason you don't microwave your install CD is that you are so cheap you make Scrooge look lavish. I can spend $5-$10 at the local thrift store to get SVGA, 1280x1024 monitors, 15 inch. If you're still using IBM VGA monitors and you expect everything else to work on them, you are [unrealistic/indescribable/retarded/virgin].
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You're so right. After all, Apple's use of non-standard interfaces like PCI, USB, FireWire, AGP and others means that Apple can easily account for anything you've plugged into your Mac. There's only a couple of possible options for PCI slots, surely?
Well, I'm not really talking about hardware interfaces in and of themselves, but I'll skip your bitterly sarcastic tone and respond just the same: In terms of what's made to be Mac compatible? Yes, absolutely. You're *not* going to find people trying to make hardware without well-crafted and extensively tested drivers for the platform in question plug random pieces in and expect them to work flawlessly when it comes to the Mac. You *are* going to find people doing such with hardware they already have and/or works under some other OS doing such with the free *nix-style OSes. Couple this with the fact that the majority of Macs sold these days are *not* easy-to-upgrade towers, but compact all-in-ones, and the chances of some piece of hardware not getting properly detected on installation or post-software-upgrade becomes slim indeed.but we have to put up with you and your kind, who has never run a protein gel, read a DNA sequence, or solved a single biological problem of even the remotest significance for the good of humanity in the slightest inconsequential way; preaching the Gospel of how your Body works by your definitions spawned from everything you could glean from the National Enquirer and the Maury Povich show and the view out of the window of your single-wide mobile home, and delivered as if you were James Fucking Watson.
Speaking for 99.99999999 of humanity, go conduct a poll to back up those numbers and then get back to us, junior!
"Laziness is an optimisation protocol"
Again, what's 'foo'? There's no point in Grandma Josephine writing that down on her 3x5. What's the actual command?
Are you really so arrogant that you assume that the kind of user who's likely to bork their GUI and not know how to fix it from the command line also has a spare machine sitting right there where they can Google a solution?
Even if they do, according to you, the solution is "apt-get install --reinstall foo". Would you care to take this opportunity to provide one that might actually work, or are you more interested in demonstrating that you could do so, if it was in your idiom to actually help people rather than to just demonstrate your smug superiority?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
it's funny you should say that.
I'm a certified Linux admin. I'm one of "today's linux users".
I am not afraid of the command line. All my servers are installed without an X server.
What I am afraid of is a cryptic "no screens found" error from xorg. This happens way too often.
When you install display drivers, this can happen despite seemingly doing everything right.
I'm stunned it took this long to get failsafe X server support.
They're using their grammar skills there.
1) You're running an x86 PC with a VESA compliant graphics card, or any platform which has 'legacy VGA' registers mapped. What about PPC or something? It's frighteningly rare for the kernel framebuffer not to work on these platforms but there are some times where the X.org driver/autodetect or most commonly GDM doesn't quite configure your card correctly and hands you a garbage display. I never understood why X.org can't have a TRUE framebuffer console driver which simply inherits the mode the kernel gives it.
This isn't bulletproof it's just a band-aid.
2) Everyone loves GTK+ - well, I pretty much don't. Does this mean the Kubuntu guys have to install GTK now? Actually not, because there is a cute KDE app for it, but seriously.. why does everyone fawn over the GTK stuff and never show the Qt stuff?
In fact, it turns out this was a KDE app to start with. Quote;
Which just begs the question, why wasn't this news when the KDE app got written?
3) Everyone loves GDM, well, I don't. What's up with KDM these days? Does it handle it better? None of the developers are telling the success story on any project I'm watching right now, it's all "GDM breaks this" and "we have problems with that". So it worked on KDE before, but nobody thought to say "this is a great feature, now we port it to GTK"?
There are some very strange priorities in the software world these days.. bug reports flood the net and nobody talks about anything being finished..
I'm not sure why this couldn't be in X.org directly. xorg.conf is by far the greatest problem in making Linux a viable alternative on the desktop. Most of my xorg.conf was even autodetected with the configuration utility (could be done by X.org on startup)
Today my xorg.conf contains:
Paths to fonts (could be autodetected or stored in a standard font configuration, at second though, isn't there some other font configuration file already?)
Basic mouse and keyboard settings (could be set to a default inside X.org)
Screen and graphics card settings (Basically a name for both and some settings for nvidia)
Touchpad options
Modules to load (could be done dynamically)
that's simply the touchpad, nvidia and keyboard layout options that are important. Keyboard layout could be shared with the rest of the system (my console knows my keyboard layout, why is it then in xorg.conf?). The nvidia driver could store it's own settings and likewise the touchpad (oh, and user specific mouse settings please?). xorg.conf could exist only to override what you specifically didn't want as the autodetected values and a cached version of the autodetected values could be stored to speed up boot if no parameters changed. And please, give me live updating of these settings, restarting X is tiresome.
MS Windows has this option for ages...