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: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:2008-03-08
It does not matter who's fault it is, or even if it was the right choice (which it probably was - with the downside of "bad marketing" done by those who want nVidia proprietary drivers on day 1).
For most people this is a non-issue. For those who are being held back, give it a few weeks and nVidia will catch up. You do not need to upgrade on day 1. That is sometimes the price of using closed source software.
The Fedora community made the right choice for Fedora.
If nVidia drivers are so important that they are needed on day 1, try pressuring them into releasing specs (like AMD) or code (like Intel).
Member since:2006-10-29
well ... there was only 3 choices.
rebase the entire release on the older xorg (and redo the entire test process) OR release the tested version, OR delay the release.
if you understand the effort to rebase, you would see that it is not really an option. After rebasing, you would need to rebuild many other packages and you would need to start the whole alpha, beta, rc test processes again for the entire distro. Since this process is a 3 or more month process, that is not going to happen.
The fact of the matter is, if you use binary proprietary drivers you will have these problems ... SURELY you don't think that linux development should be driven by proprietary graphics drivers.
Besides, the drivers that are released WORK for most nvidia cards, you just do not have accelerated 3D. That is going to effect SOME users where it is really a requirement, but not a large percentage.
The way the development process works, you basically make some assumptions 3 months (or so) ahead .. and a rebase of a major element (like X, GNOME, KDE) is going to render much (probably most) of the test process worthless ... since releases are happening every 6 months, basically a rebase is going to result in skipping the whole release (a delay of 3 or more months means you might as well just release at the NEXT 6 month time ... especially if something like RHEL depends on the release). At least that is my take.
Also realize that fedora 9 (and 6 and 3) are the main basis for RHEL ... so all the RHEL 6 that has taken place right now will be based on fedora 9 too. Makes this release fairly critical and the versions of the major components also very important.
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