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

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 14, 2006 21:01 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules by tjc
Parent article: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

That's to bad.

I bought hardwares specificly because of Free software support and I want to try out AIGLX, but I don't have the time or the willingness to upgrade to 7.1 on my own from source.

It's a good thing I am using Debian unstable, then eh? At least I know they are a bit more millitant about Free software and all that. Maybe Debian will start to beat out Ubuntu or FC now?

Hoes what for politics?

It's all a bit irritating.

to post comments

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 14, 2006 21:14 UTC (Mon) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link]

> I bought hardwares specificly because of
> Free software support and I want to try
> out AIGLX, but I don't have the time or
> the willingness to upgrade to 7.1 on my
> own from source.

You should try the relevant packages from development repo. Just temporarily enable fedora-development.repo and start with, eg

yum install xorg-x11-*

see what the requires situation wants you to do. You can always go back to the FC5 ones by hand in a console if it doesn't work out.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 14, 2006 22:35 UTC (Mon) by palapa (guest, #612) [Link] (2 responses)

debian unstable is still using xorg 7.0.22 (same as testing)

X.org in Debian

Posted Aug 17, 2006 8:35 UTC (Thu) by Wummel (guest, #7591) [Link]

X.org 7.1 packages will first (and partially have already) enter the experimental branch. Debian releases for a roughly a dozen different architectures, and porting the X.org beast to these is not easy. If you are interested in the progress of this effort, you can join the debian-x mailing list.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 17, 2006 9:50 UTC (Thu) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

GIven that Debian (hopes to) get freezed soon, I see some reason not to change X version.
Anyway, I don't it as a "we won't break proprietary modules", as fglrx is already severely broken on 2.6.17 linux kernel (don't know for 2.6.16 which is currently in etch)

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 14:22 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (2 responses)

I bought hardwares specificly because of Free software support [snip]

So did I. But I'm not too concerned.

Historically, if a large distribution does the "wrong" thing, someone will fork it. Once upon a time, Red Hat refused to include KDE, so Mandrake was created. I wouldn't be suprised if someone does something similar with Fedora, creating a "we don't care about your proprietary drivers" version.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 20:51 UTC (Tue) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link] (1 responses)

Just wait! In 2 months FC6 will be out and it will have those drivers.

Then you'll have all your happiness.

Just a few months.

Or install FC6Test2 and work from there.

-sv

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 17, 2006 14:26 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Just wait! ... Just a few months.

You mean just this one time? I think this will become a regular occurance, if we are all going to hang about and wait for companies to update their proprietary drivers.