X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules [LWN.net]

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 14, 2006 19:50 UTC (Mon) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975)
Parent article: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Much as I agree with the conclusion of the article, in fact there is the consideration that upgrading xorg may well bust some existing and working FC5 installs that are going to nightly yum the update. Of course the update would likely enable many more users to run better, for example this Samsung Q35 laptop only has working non-vesa video because it is running development repo xorg packages.

What is the meaning of FCn? It really has to mean that the set of packages that make it up are largely fixed in stone, it would suit many users that it meant that you will only get security updates. I have friends and family on Fedora boxes that I manage for them remotely and if they sucked down a new xorg it runs the risk of causing me more trouble than it would bring them benefit.

If FCn is "stable" and development is "CVS", might be interesting to offer instead "CVS snapshot" sets of development packages that work well for adventurous FCn users, libc versions and so on allowing. This big debate could then have been lessened by being able to point FC5 folks to the new xorg if they wanted it, even by something like fedoa-adventurous.repo if they want to buy into newer stuff with less risk than mainlining development.

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Wrong distro for stability, then

Posted Aug 15, 2006 6:19 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (1 responses)

But if you really want this, you (or at least the friends&family computers you help manage) should really be running RHEL, CentOS or other "enterprise" distribution, which has a policy of doing only bug and security fixes after each major release. I'm running CentOS on a couple of computers on which the emphasis is on getting mundane work done with minimal need to worry about the platform "living" too much under my feet, and so far it has worked well. But this obviously is a boring solution :-).

Wrong distro for stability, then

Posted Aug 15, 2006 7:38 UTC (Tue) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link]

> at least the friends&family computers you
> help manage) should really be running RHEL,
> CentOS

Yes good advice, I have several servers on CentOS for the same reason. But Fedora's having the latest stuff (the RHEL/CentOS are still on 2.6.9) is not just appealing to the need for shiny things: many recent laptops and so on won't work well or at all on 2.6.9 and the level of xorg drivers in the "really stable" branches of The Redhat Way.

Fedora is the right answer I think. The question about issuing xorg 7.1 to FC5 was a difficult one, after all Fedora "doesn't support" binary drivers so it didn't have to not break those folks. But OTOH there is a ceaseless thumping of the Ubuntu drums coming from the jungle day and night and many people who currently need their binary drivers for a working desktop would certainly considered this beyond the limit.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 10:05 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (2 responses)

No, this upgrade, had it happened, should _not_ have busted any existing working FC5 installs that use the nVidia binary driver. In a correctly installed system the driver is installed as an RPM with dependencies to a specific X.org version, so X.org wouldn't be updated until the binary driver was available. I don't know if the nVidia drivers provided by the various repos out there have correctly implemented dependencies, but if not, then they should be fixed, and this would not be an issue.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 10:37 UTC (Tue) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link] (1 responses)

Newsflash - not everyone is using livna RPMs. Even for those that are, if the new kernel got installed and was used next boot, the last I heard the livna scripts send you to vesa. Okay so that is better than text mode, but it still breaks 3D, xv and so on for those users.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 14:50 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]

If you're not using RPMs like those from Livnia, your system will break _every_time_ you upgrade your kernel, anyway. I'm not saying that one _shouldn't_ use non-packaged drivers, but if you do, you _will_ have to manually check and work around dependencies.