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.

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.

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,

[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,

[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:

[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,

[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,

[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,

[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:

[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: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:

[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

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:

[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 ab

Re:

[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

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,

[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,

[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,

[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,

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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 sam

Re:

[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 ?

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:

[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).

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...)

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.

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:

[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: "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:

[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. =)

Re:

[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

Re:

[Grey Ninja]

Actually, in the original post [ubuntu.com], 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:

[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.

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:

[ardor]

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

Re:

[strider44]

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

Re:

[rjshields]

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

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 installatio

Re:

[Dunbal]

it will be exactly like edgy.


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

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 [nickciske.com]:

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

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:

[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 [rot13.com] to help me when I read ASR.

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

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.

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: 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

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

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 [skynet.ie] (yes, server's mime-type is probably wrong, you have to save it first)

Re:

[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 d

Re:

[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.

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:

[cortana]

Of course there is. They are not free software [gnu.org]. I am unable to alter them to fix bugs or add new features.

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, m

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).

Re:

[Dunbal]

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

You must be new here...

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" ?

[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.

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 a

Re:

[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 now

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.

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.

No more PPC support?

[nurb432]

Well, that sux.

Re:

[nurb432]

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

These names kill me.....

[Chineseyes]

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

Re:

[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.

"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:

[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.

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 [slashdot.org] : "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.

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:

[byolinux]

Proprietary drivers are against the spirit of the community.

Re:

[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 suppo

Re:

[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

Re:

[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

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:

[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 An

Re:

[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 shou

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:

[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:

[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 d

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:

[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:

[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

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:

[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

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:

[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 differ

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 [ubuntu.com]:

* 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 d

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

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?

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:

[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:

[ajs318]

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

LFS [linuxfromscratch.org].