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

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 10:58 UTC (Tue) by arjan (subscriber, #36785)
In reply to: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules by warmcat1
Parent article: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

there is another angle as well; and that is the chicken-and-egg one. NVidia won't release a 7.1 driver until a major distro uses 7.1. And if the major distros won't go to 7.1 until nvidia supports it... nothing ever changes and progress is harmed.

Progress is harmed for the majority of users; last market share numbers that were on theregister.net were something like "intel 40%, nvidia 20% ati 20%". Both Intel and ATI users gain from 7.1 with better suppoprt for their hardware, much better support in fact.

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X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 15, 2006 11:14 UTC (Tue) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link]

Yes, fair enough. But in this particular situation it is not the stasis of "nothing ever changes": nobody argues against xorg 7.1 in FC6. FC6 is very close, many (most?) FC5 people will be updating in the next month or two. Any delay in exposing xorg 7.1 to mass usage on Fedora is therefore very limited.

Stepping between FCn versions is in the hands of the user and he knows he can expect strong differences (eg, FC1 -> FC2 == 2.4 -> 2.6 ). Such a user might receive the result of nVidia binary breakage with a shrug and use nv or vesa until the new binary release, because he knows he can expect 'excitement' of the good or the bad kind from updating to a new release. It seems a good place to bring in a large core component update regardless of the binary question. The fact that an FC5 user can actually use the development repo xorg packages to get the new stuff if they really needed it (as I do) makes it even less objectionable to the FC5 user.