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.

misleading title

[Verunks]

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

...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--

Re:nope, you can't read this

[moranar]

The binary says [nickciske.com]:

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

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!

Re:misleading title

[strider44]

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

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 [debian.org]

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: "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: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: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.

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

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.