X Devs Drop NVIDIA Auto-Config Support

[some-guy]

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.

It looks like we both agree here, though I want to point out a few things.
All of the patches are in the src rpms and are mostly backported from newer versions (KDE4 is a good example(for those who don't know, opensuse backported many enhancements from KDE4.1 to KDE4.0))

SUSE wouldn't need it anyway, it uses SaX2

[Joe Sixpack]

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]

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.

[some-guy]

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.

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

[Joe Sixpack]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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_d...173.14.05.html

look at the bottom.