A week ago, the Fedora Project released Fedora 9 into the world. Fedora 9 comes with GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0.3, Xfce 4.2.2, PackageKit, Firefox 3.0 beta 5, a 2.6.25-based Linux kernel, and much more. As always, the intertubes have been flooded with reviews, so we figured we would summarise a few of them.
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Member since:2005-11-12
Nicely said. Most organizations don't produce software for unreleased betas. That is the only thing I miss with Fedora 9. I think it would have been better to release Fedora 9 with a final version of X that way Nvidia drivers would more likely be ready for it. Other than that, after disabling SELinux everything works great.
Member since:2008-03-08
That is a strawman.
Why would proprietary driver vendors support a release that is not being used? Fedora is a leading edge distro and there will always be some proprietary drivers that do not keep up with libraries within Fedora. This time it is nVidia. Last time it was AMD - even though X Server 1.4 had been released two months prior.
They have no financial incentive to support an unused product.
Now that Fedora is using X server 1.5 and it is stable if not final, nVidia will eventually support it.
What matters is that Fedora supports free software only and the drivers within the distribution work. Fedora should not have to wait for proprietary vendors to get their act together.
fwiw, X server 1.5 was originally planned to be released in March. When it looked like it was gonna miss that deadline, members of the Fedora community (Specifically Adam Jackson) stepped up to drive the xorg development cycle. It is those same individuals who decided that it was stable enough for production use in Fedora 9. The hard work of these individuals should be much applauded.
If proprietary drivers are too important to leave out for an individual, Fedora does not need to be downloaded and installed on day 1. Wait a few weeks and there will eventually be solutions. Or somehow support the free driver efforts.
In the case of nVidia products, "nouveau" should eventually be an acceptable alternative for most situations (maybe even eventually gaming. Probably a long way off for that). Give it a try.
/End rant
Member since:2008-05-20
Nvidia is not to blame here. Nvidia is not distro specific. Xorg missed there release date. At that point Fedora unfortunately pushed ahead and released a pre-release version of Xorg for use. In this case they were a little too bleeding edge because like it or not users depend on the nvidia binary drivers to operate there machines. Fedora unfortunately caused a portion of there userbase to not be able to use Fedora 9 until Xorg 1.5 is released with this decision.
Member since:2005-07-06
Why shouldn't they at least have alphas in the wings for people willing to test them? It's no mystery what's coming down the pipes, there's little excuse not to run with it.
And as I said, it's not really a criticism of Fedora, but it is an issue
Edited 2008-05-20 12:26 UTC
Member since:2008-03-08
Member since:2006-09-22
AFAIK, the latest 173.X.X.X beta does work with X 1.5, you just have to --ignoreABI and avoid commands like glxgears and nvidia-settings.
And I completely understand the fact that, if no body ships X 1.5 it will never get support, but I'm afraid I can't use my desktop at 800x600 without 3d support.
Member since:2006-11-13
They do for MS Windows! So why not for Linux based products. Many companies like ATI and nVidia start creating drivers while the next Windows version is still in development stages. That way, when the product goes live, the drivers are there!
Why does everybody treat Linux base software as second rate software compared to Windows???
Edited 2008-05-20 22:12 UTC
Member since:2008-05-20
Surely this is obvious? The massive difference in user-base sizes is obviously what determines where the bulk of any companies resources are going to be allocated, so yes, when it comes to user-base and thus $, many companies, especially one such as NVidia which focuses heavily on the 3D gaming market which is historically stronger on Windows, would consider Linux second rate.
Member since:
2006-09-22
Why should nVIdia support software which isn't released yet?