Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 14, 2006 20:53 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com) by mspevack
Parent article: Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

FSF-approved OSes tend to die quickly and quietly. Given the project goals and small development team, I expect that gnewsense will suffer the same fate in about a year. So, if Feisty indeed goes binary-video-by-default then, yeah, I suppose I'll try to move back to Fedora.

Without networking, you're flat out stuck. I understand why a distro would choose to have binary-wireless-by-default. But binary-video-by-default? Especially when existing free drivers are slower at 3D but work fine? And all it takes is a few clicks in a package manager to fix it? That just doesn't make sense.

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Why a whole new distribution? bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 14, 2006 21:16 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

How about just using the package management system? Make all binary drivers depend on a metapackage called binary-drivers and make that conflict with another metapackage, an "antipackage" called no-binary-drivers?

apt-get install no-binary-drivers and Bob's your uncle -- no YAF*buntu needed.

apt-get install no-binary-drivers

Posted Nov 14, 2006 22:02 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Hmm, if you remove dpkg's common-sense particle, you could do "apt-get install binary-drivers no-binary-drivers".

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 14, 2006 21:17 UTC (Tue) by pbardet (subscriber, #22762) [Link]

I think a few click will work for you if you don't like the binary drivers that work for most other people... If you're techie enough to request open-source ony, you can do it yourself. Regular users like me will prefer the default setup that works best on my setup.

And it's not if you didn't have a choice... Fedora

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 14, 2006 21:44 UTC (Tue) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]

You know, that Debian started as an FSF-sponsored project and it is still here...

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 14, 2006 22:18 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

A lot of people have this misconception. I don't know where it comes from. Yes, Debian was sponsored by the FSF for one year starting in late 1994. However, it was started without the FSF in mid-1993 and has continued without them since 1996.

It's true that the ideals of the FSF and free software guide Debian's actions at every turn. But Debian has followed its own course. (And thank goodness! Without Debian, who would have fought the G"F"DL?)

I like Debian a lot. Heck I used it almost exclusively from 2000 to 2004. Alas, I've found it wholly unsuitable for a production environment. Unstable is too old, testing is too unstable. Give me a newish, rock solid Debian (hopefully one without chatty debconf), and I'll definitely try it again.

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 14, 2006 23:50 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

STABLE is too old, testing is too unstable.

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 15, 2006 14:38 UTC (Wed) by errare_est (guest, #14275) [Link]

and unstable is stable enough x)

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 15, 2006 5:44 UTC (Wed) by cleary (guest, #41669) [Link]

I've found Kanotix : http://www.kanotix.com : meets these requirements (at least for me).
Essentially it stabilises debian sid by applying it's own patches and fixes to the official sid release as packages. It's current, easy to maintain and has a great support network :)

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 16, 2006 1:54 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well you pretty much described Ubuntu also. (take Sid, patch the kernel, update desktop packages)

Me? I prefer Debian to just track Debian testing or unstable.

Testing is new enough for me. More stable then my experiances with Ubuntu or most other Linux distros have seemed to indicate.

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 17, 2006 21:44 UTC (Fri) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link]

<<< Well you pretty much described Ubuntu also. >>>

No, ubuntu freezes the sid pool to create a stabilized distro then works from that within each release version. Kanotix actually works live, in real time, with sid. You're not working with some subset of sid frozen, you are working directly in sid. I believe that Kanotix is pretty much the only distro do this, aside from of course Debian Sid itself.

Kanotix has done very well at this process, and often has had fixes out before they hit sid. Sid is unstable, and it takes work to keep desktops current and running. Kanotix makes that process easier.

As for sid being behind, sometimes in some cases, yes it's a few weeks behind as some major upgrade, say Xorg 7.0, 7.1, is tested in experimental, but usually it's pretty current. For example, I had kde 3.5.5 as my desktop before kde 3.5.5 was announced here on lwn.net. And often Kanotix has the newest kernels released more or less the same day they are announced here.

Aside from the ongoing issues Debian itself is having with Mozilla products, sid is pretty current. Filezilla linux 3.0 beta, for example, was in sid before it hit any other distro's package management system.

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 15, 2006 8:41 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

I think the current plan is _not_ to enable binary drivers for those ATI cards that have working 3D support. Have to keep eye on it, but that would mean basically that the binary driver is only enabled for X1300-X1950 cards.

NVIDIA does not have any working 3D open source driver... yet - see Nouveau, http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/

And if Nouveau becomes stable, it will be again the default driver, even if it does not support 100% of the NVIDIA binary driver performance. Or this's what I've heard from an ubuntu developer, and I think/hope that this is the general consensus there.