lack of XFree information as a LOTD stopper

Hello,

I would like to take advantage of this new public forum to express my concerns 
about something that's been bugging me for a long time. That is, the lack of 
useful information on the XFree website. I don't want to seem to hard on my 
complains, and I am perfectly aware that this project is made of volunteers, 
but linux is growing very fast and XFree plays a central role, no one can 
deny it. Unfortunately, it turns out to be one of the bottlenecks for this 
linux growth. While the resources are finite, there are things that could be 
done to partially solve the problem.

Let's imagine the following situations:

a) I am a new linux user and want to buy a well supported video card for   
video and gaming. I definitely don't want something that freezes my box every 
15 min or something that lacks important features. What should I buy ?

Comment: This is basic information. The user should be able to make a safe 		
pick, but  she can't ! You will argue say that there are documents regarding 
the drivers, but which drivers are really stable and full featured ?

I am lead to believe that, just by reading the documentation in the website, a 
user in situation a) could be misleaded, and might well be go buy a not so 
well supported video card by mistake. (However, the developers know which 
drivers work well, which ones don't and which ones are untested because they 
can't access that hardware).

And, you know what follows....troubleshooting, google searches, "get X from 
CVS or wait many months", "linux sucks",back to windoes etc....and this would 
be so easy to avoid.

I know this because I have seen these problems too many times.

I also think that the documentation is a bit misorganized: driver status 
documents, driver specific pages, extra "information for XXXX user" pages . 
Why not describe a driver at only one place ?

(http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/4.3.0/)

Also, why not have some links to the ati and nvidia binary drivers ?

b) I am a "IT professional" who wants to save money by installing linux 
desktops on a company. I might have to buy new PCs, and I need the users to 
have stable drivers, with at least video capabilities (we don't need 3D 
here). What should I use ?

Comment: Here, we would need to know which drivers are really stable, and have 
a working (really working) XVideo support. Is this possible ?

b.1) I am linux oriented dude, who wants the same as in b) but choosing from a 
vendor that somehow helped the XFree86 project. Which ones do actually help ?

Comment: Recently, in a discussion with a kind XFree developer on #xfree86, I 
got to know that ATI was working with XFree, that nvidia was maintaining 
their  own drivers on XFree86 along with their binaries on their site, that  
well known laptop video card manufacturers had never released any 
specifications, that lots of things were reverse engineered, that some papers 
with specs appeared god knows how, etc....But usually it is not easy to 
obtain this kind of information. Why doesn't xfree reward the ones who help, 
by sugesting their products or showing their logos ? Wouldn't that be fair ? 
I would be glad to buy from those vendors.

c) I have a laptop, which card driver has all kinds of strange phenomena, 
video blue window, garbage left on the screen, etc... How do I solve this ?

Comment: There isn't a trouble shooting base for XFree. Sometimes the solution 
can be found via google in a lost message, hidden in local LUG mailing list 
somewhere in this planet. Sometimes, many times, the solution is as easy as 
adding one option the XF86Config. But how is a user supposed to know what to 
add ? Not all users, specially the new ones, are used to this kind of 
digging, and this lack of information scares people away from linux.

This could easily be avoided if the XFree project could accept feedback from 
the users and write it down in the driver documentation pages, and if  the 
developers put a bit more effort on suggesting which options can solve which 
problems. 

Of course, the project doesn't have enough resources to produces exhaustive 
documentation. But, can we at least have an up to date list of 
_known_to_work_very_well_for_everything_with_the_current_release video cards 
?

Something like http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/, the alsa card matrix 
would be fine too.

Best regards
Gustavo



-- 
Teacher: Have you ever been punished before ?
Student: No, only afterwards.