Re: Re: lack of XFree information as a LOTD stopper

Hi Keld,


On Wednesday 26 March 2003 11:10 pm, [email protected] wrote:
> Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 22:26:38 +0100
> From: Keld =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F8rn?= Simonsen <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [forum] lack of XFree information as a LOTD stopper
> Reply-To: [email protected]
>
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 12:30:08PM +0000, Gustavo Homem wrote:
> > 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 second that the problems that Gustavo raises are important user
> issues, that we could handle better.

Thanks. I second you too :-)

>
> Ine idea I had, was that we should enhance the availablility of new
> drivers, so that at the install time of major Linux distributions
> the installer would query over the network if there was an updated
> drivar available for the graphics card. I think this is what MS
> windows does, and current technologies with Mandrake urpmi, Redhat
> up2date and Debian apt-get etc allows this. Of cause - everything needs
> to get organized and somebody has to do the work...

I don't think this is too good. It can also break things that were stable and 
tested in the distro. That kind of automatic procedure is indeed much MsLike, 
and that sometimes also means problems. It's better if the user looks for an 
updated driver herself, it she feels the need for that :-), but if it ain't 
broke, don't fix it, even if there is an upgrade

(ex: I am not updating my mdk 8.2 box, where finally after trying all kinds of 
drivers my r128 works for Xv, 3D and tv grabbing at the same time...it took 
me years to have the 3 things workgin and I don't even wanna hear about 
driver upgrades).


>
> What could be done is either actively work together with each of the
> major Linux distribution providers, to get new drivers into their
> updates stream, or to make our own package availablilty store -
> benefits of either way of doing it could be investigated.

If the XFree developers released publicly any driver updates for the latest 
XFree version, I am sure the distros would package them to the updates 
sections, at least if they were to fix important stuff. Even without 
packaging, updating a driver is trivial, so, the point is whether or those 
updates can be released.

Best regards
Gustavo


>
> Best regards
> keld

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