Are there any plans to get ati driver 6.10 into F10? I'm getting pretty lousy results with 6.9 in F10 on my RV370, but promising results with 6.10 and Xorg server 1.5.99. It doesn't work with 1.5.3 though it installs without any rpm/dependency issues. Anything on the wiki about current Xorg plans?

I compared radeon.xinf from 6.9 and 6.10 and found a few important cards that 6.10 supports, but 6.9 does not:

* configure xorg-x11-drv-radeonhd to get their hardware running * switch to rawhide to get it running * rebuild the srpm from rawhide to get it running. * switch to another distro that has more up2date drivers * wait till F11 comes out But those options are all bad IMHO. Especially the option "wait till F11 comes out", because letting users out in the cold without drivers for up multiple month sounds stupid to me when those drivers exist already -- especially as new graphic card series come out every 6 to 12 months, which means we'll run into the same problem quite soon again.

* Fedora in most areas is good for new hardware, as you get new drivers (hplip, gutenprint, sane,...) and even new kernels as regular update, which improves hardware support (especially for current hardware) over time. But Fedora not only would be "good for new hardware", it could have "fantastic support for new hardware" if support for other new hardware (like the big bunch of the Radeon HD 4xxx series) also could find it's way into the stable distro.

How to keep existing people happy while at the same time get drivers for new hardware out to the users as soon as possible, to make sure that they can run Linux/Fedora(¹)?

On Sat, 2009-01-24 at 19:23 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: > * bugs OTOH happen and they need to get fixed sooner or later anyway, > as they otherwise will bite the user with the next or overnext Fedora > release, as Fedora users have to update to it sooner or later anyway if > they want to get security fixes for their distro. > > Please note that above description for the second point leaves out a lot > of details; discussing those here IMHO doesn't make much sense, hence > I'll try to keep away from discussing that point more, because the real > question simply is: > > How to keep existing people happy while at the same time get drivers for > new hardware out to the users as soon as possible, to make sure that > they can run Linux/Fedora(¹)?

Well there are really two types of users. Those that want to run experimental builds of software and help in the bug finding and fixing of our software, and those that don't.

various sound issues on intel recently). Upstream isn't perfect, and if I had to choose between supporting new people, or keeping existing people unbroken, I'll choose on the side of existing people every time.

That said, it's a tough topic, because regressions tend to really annoy people, they feel "WTF, this always worked, WhyTF is it no longer working now?", even though from a purely practical point of view, unfixed bugs (and not working on some hardware is practically speaking a bug, even though technically it's a missing feature) are much worse because there's no working build to revert to.

Yes that is what I've done too (revert back to F-9 Xorg), even though I've been actively working with airlied (congrats with your kid once more) to get things in shape for F-10 and I believe we are in ok shape wrt 2d in F-10 3d is simply not usable in F-10, and since I maintain many games in Fedora I need working 3d.

Although there's now a single intel driver, for some of the older chipsets (intel 845G) that *did* have acceleration + 3d under the old i810 driver F9, it's now terribly broken

On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 09:03 +0100, Hans de Goede wrote: > Callum Lerwick wrote: >> On Sat, 2009-01-24 at 23:17 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote: >>> That said, it's a tough topic, because regressions tend to really annoy >>> people, they feel "WTF, this always worked, WhyTF is it no longer working >>> now?", even though from a purely practical point of view, unfixed bugs (and >>> not working on some hardware is practically speaking a bug, even though >>> technically it's a missing feature) are much worse because there's no >>> working build to revert to. >> Your logic is flawed. People with not yet supported hardware, can find >> supported hardware, or live with workarounds like VESA. You can not make >> progress by accepting regressions. At best, you are spinning your wheels >> in place, at worst you are taking one step forward and two steps back. >> Regression means just that, you are regressing. Fedora is about >> progress, not regress. The linux kernel has a rather strict >> no-regressions policy, for good reason: >> >> http://lwn.net/Articles/261713/ >> >> I wish Xorg and Fedora as a whole, would adopt a similar policy. I'm >> very unhappy with how the Xorg update went in F10. Just when we started >> getting reliable, usable open source OpenGL, F10 came along and broke >> *everything*: >> >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=474977 >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=441665 >> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg00435.html >> >> Not a single one of my machines works out of the box like they did in >> F9, they all need work-arounds. But OpenGL support has been quite >> thoroughly broken. This has pretty well fucked any ability to get back >> to working on Second Life: >> >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=233946 >> >> I have Shit To Do, and it looks like I'm going to have to revert my >> entire Xorg back to F9 to do it. >> > Yes that is what I've done too (revert back to F-9 Xorg), even though I've been > actively working with airlied (congrats with your kid once more) to get things > in shape for F-10 and I believe we are in ok shape wrt 2d in F-10 3d is simply > not usable in F-10, and since I maintain many games in Fedora I need working 3d. > Didn't I fix the 3D already so it didn't crash for those apps (in 7.2.0-15)? or is it just slow?

Callum Lerwick wrote: > I have Shit To Do, and it looks like I'm going to have to revert my > entire Xorg back to F9 to do it. At least you have that option. If only the old version was available, there would be no such option.

But it's not like I requested a update to 6.10 immediately. It's just that the mail I replied to sounded a bit like "6.10 for F10 is unlikely in general". That's *IMHO* bad. Mainly for two reasons: * regular users will go and install the fglrx drivers, as those offer support for the 4xxxx series; that is something most of us don't want users to do, hence we should offer them a better solution * Fedora in most areas is good for new hardware, as you get new drivers (hplip, gutenprint, sane,...) and even new kernels as regular update, which improves hardware support (especially for current hardware) over time. But Fedora not only would be "good for new hardware", it could have "fantastic support for new hardware" if support for other new hardware (like the big bunch of the Radeon HD 4xxx series) also could find it's way into the stable distro.