X Devs Drop NVIDIA Auto-Config Support [Archive]

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phoronix

07-20-2008, 10:00 PM

Phoronix: X Devs Drop NVIDIA Auto-Config Support

Sparking a heated Sunday afternoon debate, NVIDIA's Aaron Plattner had commited a trivial change to the X Server that resulted in several key open-source X developers becoming disgruntled. Ultimately, this NVIDIA-spawned patch ended up being recalled just hours later. This aim of this patch was quite simple...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjYwMw

deanjo

07-20-2008, 11:07 PM

It'd work out nice for a new user who wishes to use the binary NVIDIA driver to play games or use Compiz, but does it teach them anything about free software (http://www.phoronix.com/forums/../scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYwMw#)?Ya it does teach something, it teaches that some FOSS developers don't give a crap about end users and can be petty to the point one wonders if they are adults.

StringCheesian

07-20-2008, 11:30 PM

A more general solution is needed: They should just make a place in some config file where you can specify driver priority. That way distros can decide whether to make it prefer nvidia over nv or not.

hubick

07-21-2008, 12:57 AM

I'm behind the X devs on this one. It seems they agree with the attitude of the Kernel developers and the community at large. If you value convenience over Freedom, use Windows or Mac OS X. On the other hand, if you value Freedom and control over your own computer, use GNU/Linux. If you are willing to sacrifice your Freedom and accept distro's shipping binary drivers enabled by default, then you don't even deserve the privilege of being a GNU/Linux user.

Melcar

07-21-2008, 01:30 AM

I have been getting more and more aware about the system wide instabilities these binary drivers can cause, particularly on an up-to-date environment, so I can now further understand why the aversion to such drivers. However, I do not think the kernel and X developer's "strong-arm" tactics are of much help either.

deanjo

07-21-2008, 01:35 AM

I'm behind the X devs on this one. It seems they agree with the attitude of the Kernel developers and the community at large. If you value convenience over Freedom, use Windows or Mac OS X. On the other hand, if you value Freedom and control over your own computer, use GNU/Linux. If you are willing to sacrifice your Freedom and accept distro's shipping binary drivers enabled by default, then you don't even deserve the privilege of being a GNU/Linux user.

Freedom? What happened to freedom of choice? The freedom of flexibility? The freedom of options? Freedom is absence of interference from an individual by the use of coercion or aggression, what the Xorg devs are practicing there is totalitarian rule. It's no longer "free as in speech".

hubick

07-21-2008, 02:04 AM

Freedom? What happened to freedom of choice? The freedom of flexibility? The freedom of options?

Choice? Flexibility? Options? Fine, make the fglrx binary driver work with my Fedora 9 kernel and X.org! Oh wait, you can't, because it's proprietary unfree crap, and we are beholden on our corporate overlords to bestow a new binary blob down upon us from the heavens.

You are so short sighted you are willing to pay for lift tickets so you can ski down the slippery slope of proprietary unfree crap right back in to the arms of the vendors controlling what you can and can't do. The rest of us can see where this path leads.

StringCheesian

07-21-2008, 02:38 AM

Choice? Flexibility? Options? Fine, make the fglrx binary driver work with my Fedora 9 kernel and X.org! Oh wait, you can't, because it's proprietary unfree crap, and we are beholden on our corporate overlords to bestow a new binary blob down upon us from the heavens.

You are so short sighted you are willing to pay for lift tickets so you can ski down the slippery slope of proprietary unfree crap right back in to the arms of the vendors controlling what you can and can't do. The rest of us can see where this path leads.

Wouldn't it be nice if everybody could have it their own way? Both proprietary driver lovers and haters, neither forcing their way on the other...

Sure, the nVidia guy was wrong to try to force a preference for the binary driver on everyone. But doing the reverse is just as bad. I don't want a preference against the binary driver forced on me.

So why not just make it configurable? Let each distro/user decide for themselves.

nukem

07-21-2008, 02:40 AM

I agree with the developers. When a user uses X he or she probably will assume that any graphical related issue is caused by the X server. When filing a bug report or just trying to blame someone it will always be the X guys. If a distro by default installs binary blobs which have problems with newer version of X the x.org guys take all the heat for nvidia or ATI problems.

The other issue is with the recent advances in FOSS drivers both on the Intel and ATI front NVIDIA is the only one not officially supporting a FOSS driver. Why allow them to have a special exception?

Personally I think the best solution would be that when X detects multiple drivers for something it asks the user which one to use and gives the pros and cons of each.

deanjo

07-21-2008, 02:56 AM

Choice? Flexibility? Options? Fine, make the fglrx binary driver work with my Fedora 9 kernel and X.org! Oh wait, you can't, because it's proprietary unfree crap, and we are beholden on our corporate overlords to bestow a new binary blob down upon us from the heavens.

Oh wait, it has NOTHING to do with X system because of their unwillingness to help accommodate anybody that does not see 100% their way even though they are given the solutions in a open manner to make such accommodations. Thank you for proving my point. It's a good thing you bought ATI, I mean hey you can always run RadeonHD without issues can't you?

You are so short sighted you are willing to pay for lift tickets so you can ski down the slippery slope of proprietary unfree crap right back in to the arms of the vendors controlling what you can and can't do. The rest of us can see where this path leads.

I can see both sides of the equation, unfortunately the blinders are firmly upon you.

doclivingston

07-21-2008, 03:57 AM

So why not just make it configurable? Let each distro/user decide for themselves.

Because the argument was about which driver to prefer when there was no configuration? If the user has told X which driver to use it will use that one, but when they haven't there will need to be a default.

I'd say that regardless of any open-source versus binary-blob arguments, a driver shipped with X itself should have a higher priority than one that isn't. So similarly, I would expect the "nv" driver to be preferred over the "nouveau" driver, until Nouveau is shipped with X.

yoshi314

07-21-2008, 03:59 AM

nvidia has made a lot of workarounds around xorg-server to have their drivers work the way nvidia wants. that was just one of them.

i think it's only natural that xorg team considered nvidia's behavior a bit too invasive, and perhaps dangerous for people running unstable X snapshots. still there could be more reasonable solution to the problem, but unfortunately nothing good comes to mind.

I mean hey you can always run RadeonHD without issues can't you?haven't tried radeonhd, but xf86-video-ati works like a charm for me, thank you. i tried fglrx yesterday and my pc totally locks up after 2 minutes of watching video (regardless of resolution/codec/format/player).

StringCheesian

07-21-2008, 04:00 AM

Because the argument was about which driver to prefer when there was no configuration? If the user has told X which driver to use it will use that one, but when they haven't there will need to be a default.

Right, and I'm saying make the default configurable so that each distro can be different. Maybe Sabayon might prefer nvidia in the absence of xorg.conf, while Debian might prefer nv in the absence of xorg.conf. Like that.

Zhick

07-21-2008, 04:31 AM

I'd say that regardless of any open-source versus binary-blob arguments, a driver shipped with X itself should have a higher priority than one that isn't. So similarly, I would expect the "nv" driver to be preferred over the "nouveau" driver, until Nouveau is shipped with X.

100% Agree.

Right, and I'm saying make the default configurable so that each distro can be different. Maybe Sabayon might prefer nvidia in the absence of xorg.conf, while Debian might prefer nv in the absence of xorg.conf. Like that.
Reply With Quote
The default is already configurable: After all Xorg is FOSS and thus every distro is free to apply nVidias patch if they want to. That's the better way to do it anyway, since Git users probably don't want to use nvidia because of the ABI changes (as was mentioned in the mailinglist-discussion).

Coppertop

07-21-2008, 06:23 AM

I'm behind the X devs on this one. It seems they agree with the attitude of the Kernel developers and the community at large. If you value convenience over Freedom, use Windows or Mac OS X.

I value convenience over Freedom and that is why i use Linux (Ubuntu to be precise). So i don't see much sense in what you've wrote.

Also, actions like that keep Linux behind Windows. How can new users think of it as a user friendly OS if it chooses not only the completely unreasonable path of doing things (if I've installed the damn nvidia driver that means i want to use it - end of story, it's just logical thinking) but it acts simply against the user making it harder to do the basic things of today's world.

On the other hand, if you value Freedom and control over your own computer, use GNU/Linux.

Control over my computer? If we all believed in that the only Linux distro in use would be Slackware (or we'd be using LFS). I want my computer to work, I'm through with looking at an OS as a kind of toy that i sit and mess around with, because someone thought it'd be nice to use the FOSS driver instead the one I've installed and now i need to get under the hood. I have work to do and thus, when I have to make a new installation of Linux, I want it to be done fast and OOTB as much as possible.

Besides, it's not downloading and installing the driver against my will, it'll just use it because I've installed it. It's logical. And it's NOT taking away my freedom because I've already chosen to use the driver by installing it - now X would just make it easier for me to do so. What the X devs do however IS taking away my freedom of choice. It's like saying "we want you to use NV and thus you must do it. IF you want to do otherwise you have to go the harder path and mess with some options". Next time they'll shoot me in the head for "working against the great Free Software".

If you are willing to sacrifice your Freedom and accept distro's shipping binary drivers enabled by default, then you don't even deserve the privilege of being a GNU/Linux user.

Oh yeah, that's what i love the most. That's exactly the kind of talk that makes people confuse OpenSource with communism. Use Free Software and only Free Software or we won't like you.

You're forgetting that most of the users WANT THE JOB TO BE DONE. Period. They don't give a damn and they never will because their object of interest is not the operating system or the philosophy around it - it's their work. The graphics, essay or spreadsheet they need to have done for yesterday. And no crappy speeches will ever change that. And we need those users. Some of us even are those users, even if some time ago, before really starting to work, we were like "open source and my OS are my life". Without those users Linux will never gain a reasonable market share. Even Vista won't help because normal people, those who want everything to just work OOTB, will go for Mac OS X. You think that'd be good because they're not worth of Linux? Then think twice. That way Linux will remain the forgotten realm of operating systems forever - for geeks without all the world's big apps and trying not to stay behind. But no games, no photoshop, no macromedia or whatever else.

Nobody forces you to use the closed driver so don't force me to use the Free one. It's as simple as that.

Btw. Distros will not ship with binary drivers by default ever. Not until the law in some countries changes. And even then i guess they won't - they'd give you a choice on the installation or right after it. Something like the Ubuntu's codec installation stuff. Or the Ubuntu's Proprietary Driver Manager.

yoshi314

07-21-2008, 06:37 AM

If you are willing to sacrifice your Freedom and accept distro's shipping binary drivers enabled by default, then you don't even deserve the privilege of being a GNU/Linux user.another case of rms-izm. linux is about choice. if you want to use devices which need a blob of firmware, or proprietary drivers under linux - you're free to do so. actually, denying that choice is sacrificing users freedom.

i need firmware for my usb wireless adapter. i need firmware for realtime hardware mpeg2 encoder on my hvr-1300 card. does that make me "unworthy", even though i've been successfylly using linux exclusively for last 5 years?

personally i don't mind using binary drivers if i have to. but personally i prefer using open source alternatives, if there are any. that's probably because of my bad experience with fglrx :]

val-gaav

07-21-2008, 07:12 AM

I don't see a problem here the choice to use blobs is still there.

Doing it by the default is wrong, because as was said these drivers are not part of X, and are closed source. GNU/Linux and open source doesn't really work well with closed source drivers, because things here change and keeping up the compatibility for all cost is not the way it's done (it's the way MS does things)... and keeping bugs in the code for the sake of compatibility is not the way it should be done, right ?

Anyway the more accepted the blobs are the more Windows alike will Linux be (with all the compatibility/stability problems)... so I guess blobs should be tolerated to some extent but not encouraged.

val-gaav

07-21-2008, 07:19 AM

Btw. Distros will not ship with binary drivers by default ever. Not until the law in some countries changes. And even then i guess they won't - they'd give you a choice on the installation or right after it. Something like the Ubuntu's codec installation stuff. Or the Ubuntu's Proprietary Driver Manager.
I think the issue here is the kernel license and not the law in some countries.

Vadi

07-21-2008, 08:13 AM

If you value convenience over Freedom, use Windows or Mac OS X.

Wow, thanks, dude. I'm not allowed to use this OS because I value convenience over 'Freedom'.

You know what? Quite a lot of people do the game, too. Say bye-bye to your better driver dreams if they all follow your instructions.

Yeah, same old thing, linux is for l33t haxxors who can tinker with their xorg.conf allll day long 'till they finally get it right, then be overjously happy, and proclaim to the world how their OS is better! But noooo, you can't use it. Even if it's free. It's not for you.

remm

07-21-2008, 08:29 AM

NV trying to forcefeed their stupid driver ... Honestly, this does it for me. I'll buy another NVidia card when pigs fly.

Coppertop

07-21-2008, 08:44 AM

NV trying to forcefeed their stupid driver ... Honestly, this does it for me. I'll buy another NVidia card when pigs fly.

Who tries to force you to what? Read things twice before you write something like that. The nvidia's patch would make your X use nvidia binary driver ONLY IF you have it installed. If you don't - it won't download and install it for you, it won't stop your X from working or anything like that. Is it really so hard to understand? Or do I miss something here? Maybe some of you install drivers just for fun, and not in order to use them?

Vadi

07-21-2008, 09:21 AM

Why would you have their driver installed if you're against it?

You're making no sense.

deanjo

07-21-2008, 10:08 AM

since Git users probably don't want to use nvidia because of the ABI changes (as was mentioned in the mailinglist-discussion).

As also mentioned in the mailing list

This is not the problem you're making it out to be. If the server ABI
isn't supported, loading the driver will fail and the server will fall
back automatically.

Crunchy

07-21-2008, 10:09 AM

Some people are saying "nVidia's patch", I wasn't aware it was submitted by an nVidia dev? I'm assuming it was an X.org dev that wrote the patch but others forced it to be removed.

As some others have pointed out it would only default to nVidia driver if it was installed. This makes sense to me as the open source versions are not usable if you require 3D but it probably can be left up to the distro to sort out.

deanjo

07-21-2008, 10:12 AM

It also looks like the distro's are getting behind it. Stefan Dirsch from opensuse already replied.
On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 04:43:15PM -0700, Aaron Plattner wrote:
> Driver autoconfiguration doesn't impose anything on anybody. It simply
> tries to choose the correct default for the most people.

... which in this case makes perfect sense to me. At the time you've
installed the NVIDIA driver you've messed up your system anyway by
replacing GLX extension and libGL at least. So there's no use in
trying to use nv driver any more. But as usual this is all about
politics, and not about chosing the most appropriate driver the user
would expect to get.

Thanks for the patch, Aaron. I appreciate it. I assume most Linux
distributions will apply it. Silently, probably.

Best regards,
Stefan

Vadi

07-21-2008, 10:21 AM

Some people are saying "nVidia's patch", I wasn't aware it was submitted by an nVidia dev? I'm assuming it was an X.org dev that wrote the patch but others forced it to be removed.

No, nVidia does contribute directly to the X.org and that was their patch. Which is actually quite good for the consumers if you, um, reason logically.

Kano

07-21-2008, 10:30 AM

Well I would not overrate this patch. It is ok, when the X server would choose nvidia, but as it needs the nvidia kernel module and it is not 100% sure that this is there the xserver would fail - nv would still show a picture. Also the nvidia installer can already write a suitable config file it is highly unlikely that somebody removes it. Thats too special case for me, not really important. I highly doubt that there are so many user questions for that rare case...

Melcar

07-21-2008, 10:34 AM

It also looks like the distro's are getting behind it. Stefan Dirsch from opensuse already replied.

It's no surprise really. Most distros always look for ways to increase their user base. It's the kernel and X guys that are really anal about this sort of things. I for one don't really care, as long as preference is given to the open source stuff.

stan

07-21-2008, 12:12 PM

deanjo

07-21-2008, 01:12 PM

The X.org developers are right to reject NVIDIA's unscrupulous tactics. When NVIDIA's blob crashes, as it often does, less knowledgeable users will think it's X.org's fault. The X.org developers are just trying to protect themselves and the users from this hassle. If the user has to modify the xorg.conf file and change the driver names by hand, they'll have a clue that they're using an unsupported blob.

OK so your saying the fact that they still have to go out of their way and still download and install the driver is not enough already but they should also be forced to drop to cli, scratching their heads instead of still having a failsafe fallback to troubleshoot the issue? That makes no sense at all. The only ones doing unscrupulous tactics are the xorg devs. It's not like nvidia is dropping the blob in xorg nor is it automatically magically installing it. If it is there, it will use it, again the user had to download and install it on their own. If the binary fails or does not see the nvidia blob then it reverts to nv. If anything it will lower the bug reports because it would eliminate people posting "I have no display, something is broken."

Ex-Cyber

07-21-2008, 01:38 PM

I'm kind of ambivalent about this. I can understand the stated concerns of the X.org folks as far as they go, but they seem trivial compared to the problems of shipping the nv driver at all.

StringCheesian

07-21-2008, 02:11 PM

The X.org developers are right to reject NVIDIA's unscrupulous tactics. When NVIDIA's blob crashes, as it often does, less knowledgeable users will think it's X.org's fault. The X.org developers are just trying to protect themselves and the users from this hassle. If the user has to modify the xorg.conf file and change the driver names by hand, they'll have a clue that they're using an unsupported blob.

Distros can't ship with a binary blob - it violates the GPL. So the only way the blob gets installed is if the user does it. In which case, the user should be well aware and shouldn't need any clues.

The fact is there will always be nVidia blob bugs mistaken for Xorg bugs, no matter how strongly reminded users are that they are using an unsupported blob. Making the blob a bit inconvenient to setup will not change that in the slightest.

Vadi

07-21-2008, 02:53 PM

SarahKH

07-21-2008, 08:02 PM

NV trying to forcefeed their stupid driver ... Honestly, this does it for me. I'll buy another NVidia card when pigs fly.

This is also my opinion on Nvidia cards as well. To be fair to them, they were one of the first companies to put out a half-decent driver for their products in Linux.

But what I don't get is the whole "proprietry is evil" rubbish. Freedom to choose the best tool for the job is also important, which is often subjective I admit. Sometimes, Windows *IS* the best choice *YOU*, sometimes a binary blob is the right choice for you. Hell the little EEE I'm using now is running an Atheros card, featuring the binary blob that is the HAL libraries. My big machine runs the Nvidia drivers.

Is the fuss that Nvidia submitted a bad patch and it was rejected or that Nvidia would like Xorg to autodetect if someone has gone out of their way and put the binary blob on their system? Or that Nvidia are not showing any intention of following AMD/ATi, Intel and VIA's lead?

Personally a bad patch is meh. Detecting the binary driver and using it (without breaking the whole of X in the process) would be nice. Not following the lead of others is IMHO silly, but hey they can do what they want on that front.

TBQFH my next laptop will probably have an Intel gfx system in it due to their increased Linux support but that's just me.

hmmm

07-22-2008, 12:47 AM

Hell the little EEE I'm using now is running an Atheros card, featuring the binary blob that is the HAL libraries.

was speaking to the deb-eeepc devs today on irc - apparently ath5k with eee support should hit 2.6.27, 2.6.26 contain acpi n uvc merges :)

Joe Sixpack

07-22-2008, 01:28 PM

It also looks like the distro's are getting behind it. Stefan Dirsch from opensuse already replied.

Come on man, it's SUSE. SUSE has always been the most commercial and the most proprietary. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but let's be realistic and consider the source.

They were the first distro to ship Flash, Java, and Adobe, the only one at the time with closed-source configuration tools (YAST2), and the only one of the big boys that didn't offer their OS for free (SUSE was only available for download as a LiveCD until version 9.0 I think)

Again, nothing is wrong with that, as that's what their user base expects them to do. I'm merely stating that SUSE isn't exactly the best supporting argument. They've always been the most commercial and the most "Windows Like" of the majors. Their main focus has always been giving the users what they want at any cost. Hell they'd ship the OS with a virus if they thought it would get them more users.

Vadi

07-22-2008, 02:10 PM

Isn't more people on Linux a good thing for you? Better hardware and software support?

some-guy

07-22-2008, 02:38 PM

Come on man, it's SUSE. SUSE has always been the most commercial and the most proprietary. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but let's be realistic and consider the source.

They were the first distro to ship Flash, Java, and Adobe, the only one at the time with closed-source configuration tools (YAST2), and the only one of the big boys that didn't offer their OS for free (SUSE was only available for download as a LiveCD until version 9.0 I think)

Again, nothing is wrong with that, as that's what their user base expects them to do. I'm merely stating that SUSE isn't exactly the best supporting argument. They've always been the most commercial and the most "Windows Like" of the majors. Their main focus has always been giving the users what they want at any cost. Hell they'd ship the OS with a virus if they thought it would get them more users.
um, that was all before Novell bought it, now it's completely free (except the trademarks, obviously)

I think this is a good thing, because most distros do manually make a xorg.conf with their own tool, and the faults of the Nvidia driver shouldn't be placed on the X devs.

This situation barely has to do with OSS fanaticism, it's about the X devs getting bug reports and complaints that aren't their fault

Joe Sixpack

07-22-2008, 02:48 PM

um, that was all before Novell bought it, now it's completely free (except the trademarks, obviously)

I think this is a good thing, because most distros do manually make a xorg.conf with their own tool, and the faults of the Nvidia driver shouldn't be placed on the X devs.

It was before Novell bought it, but openSUSE 11 still shipped an unofficial version of glibc, GCC 4.3, and KDE 4. I think I may have wandered off a tad, but my point was their philosophy about end user appeal at any cost, and that philosophy still exists. Again, nothing wrong with that at all - I was merely saying that if you had to guess which distro would be in favor of such a patch, SUSE would be the most obvious guess.

This situation barely has to do with OSS fanaticism, it's about the X devs getting bug reports and complaints that aren't their fault

I agree 100%, and I understood that from the beginning. The point a lot of Linux users don't seem to get is it isn't about including a certain feature/extension/plugin/patch, it's about the responsibility of said feature, and the perception of fault from the end user.

Vadi

07-22-2008, 03:06 PM

So to avoid bug complaints, they made the end-users life more harder.

Yes, we'll have less end-users, hence less bug reports. GENIUS.

some-guy

07-22-2008, 03:07 PM

Joe Sixpack

07-22-2008, 03:13 PM

So to avoid bug complaints, they made the end-users life more harder.

Yes, we'll have less end-users, hence less bug reports. GENIUS.

Can I ask a question? Exactly how does this make the end users life any more difficult? Most Linux users who aren't tech savvy or don't care for a lot of tinkering will just use easier distros like openSUSE, UBuntu, Sabayon, or Linux Mint, which handle the proprietary driver installation anyways. If you're using Slackware, Gentoo, Fedora or something like that, I doubt you're adverse to configuring your installation.

The argument you're using sounds like FUD, and nothing more than a rally to get people complaining about something that probably won't even affect them either way.

Vadi

07-22-2008, 05:57 PM

some-guy

07-22-2008, 06:15 PM

Joe Sixpack

07-22-2008, 06:41 PM

Yes, it will - as all distros aren't perfect in the configuration. There can be times when the user fcks up their installation too, and the distro doesn't handle it. The X server, however, with this patch applied will get them their resolution back and desktop effects enabled.

This is yet another situation that sounds good on paper, but misleads lots of people into supporting an argument because they haven't put it in real world usage perspective.

In situations where the user messes up their installation, they would be tinkering manually, and as I stated earlier, probably proficient enough to figure it out themselves. If they are using an easy to use distro like openSUSE, Ubuntu, or Sabayon, then the end user can't manually install the proprietary drivers anyways. Proprietary drivers check the source before they build your driver, and those system have custom kernel sources - which is why they all provide the drivers for you. When your distro installs the driver, they could easily configure X then, making the patch "partially pointless".

nVidia and ATi drivers won't compile on anything other than vanilla sources, so your argument about end users trying to fix it themselves is completely invalid. Unless of course the user had compiled their own kernel while using SUSE. If they were capable of doing something like that, I strongly doubt they'd struggle with basic X configuration. It all boils down to what I said originally: Inexperienced users will choose a distro that'll handle the installation for them, and the people who don't use such a distro are probably confident enough to where they won't freak out when asked to edit a simple config file.

Further more, if distros aren't perfect in the configuration, that's a bug for them to fix, and not the X dev's problem.

Vadi

07-22-2008, 08:37 PM

So rather than the distro getting a bug report, the blame goes to X, sorry but, it's not gonna happen

Yeah really? An end-user will be able to find the X bugtracker?

Sorry dude, but they'll be barely able to find the distro one. Nevermind X.

deanjo

07-22-2008, 09:12 PM

It was before Novell bought it, but openSUSE 11 still shipped an unofficial version of glibc, GCC 4.3, and KDE 4. I think I may have wandered off a tad, but my point was their philosophy about end user appeal at any cost, and that philosophy still exists. Again, nothing wrong with that at all - I was merely saying that if you had to guess which distro would be in favor of such a patch, SUSE would be the most obvious guess.

I agree 100%, and I understood that from the beginning. The point a lot of Linux users don't seem to get is it isn't about including a certain feature/extension/plugin/patch, it's about the responsibility of said feature, and the perception of fault from the end user.

Which can all be easily avoided with a message saying "Nvidia binary failed, reverting to nv driver, submit bug to Nvidia" People that report bugs to Xorg tend to read the logs before sending them. The less savvy more then likely would post a bug in a forum for their distro before filling out a bugzilla report to xorg.

As far a opensuse being the leader in offering "just work solutions" Mandriva as well has a long history of doing the same as well. Previous versions had mp3, dvddecoder card support, wireless firmware etc. in their releases in the past.

some-guy

07-22-2008, 09:14 PM

Which can all be easily avoided with a message saying "Nvidia binary failed, reverting to nv driver, submit bug to Nvidia" People that report bugs to Xorg tend to read the logs before sending them. The less savvy more then likely would post a bug in a forum for their distro before filling out a bugzilla report to xorg.
Nvidia doesn't accept bug reports ;)

deanjo

07-22-2008, 09:22 PM

Nvidia doesn't accept bug reports ;)

Bullcrap. go to nvnews.net. Also you can send the bug reports directly to nvidia at linux-bugs@nvidia.com as per their own instructions when the blob comes across a issue as it notes in it's errors when the blob fails.

If the problem persists with the latest distribution kernel, then please contact your distributor and submit a bug report to linux-bugs@nvidia.com.

It's also very clearly mentioned on their driver download page.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_173.14.05.html

look at the bottom.