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Which, last I heard, is still worse than the binary blob and at least on my card doesn't offer 3D acceleration.

Shortsighted, short term and selfish. I want a driver that works now, doesn't have rough edges, long term viability be damned.

Yes, Ubuntu does deliver the short term solution. What the Fedora project is aiming at is complete independence from the whims of NVidia. Long term we don't want to be dependent on when NVidia deigns to update their driver for the new X-server. We don't want to be dependent on NVidia to support new technology like KMS. Long term we don't want to depend on NVidia for support for our older videocards. Using Nouveau as the default solves that problem long term.

End users can support this by being patient and looking long term. Yes, now it's rough, but when we get through the rough patch, we have good and lasting support. It used to be that that was what it meant being a Linux user and part of the community. We were all along for the ride to ever better software, even if it gets hairy here and there.

The current "I want it all and I want it now!" sense of entitlement won't lead to a sustainable Freedom Software platform. Short term inclusion of closed bits and bobs doesn't solve the long term problem of being free of these shackling dependencies.

No. He praised the open-source driver which is YET to be as good as the binary blob. In fact, I understand very well the necessity and the usefulness of having an open-source nVIDIA driver. I mentioned "on my card" because someone would otherwise come with the Universal It WorksForMe Argument.

Not that you'd understand, but most users ARE shortsighted, short term and selfish. Yes, I'm able to put up with even broken drivers if needed, but the average guy will think Linux sucks and move back to Windows cause his drivers work!


"I want the one with better gee-bees." Yes, that's gonna work so well for them.


It doesn't, but it offers a USABLE desktop. That's what people don't get and that's why even now I have to jump through hoops to install basic playback support in Fedora. Ubuntu? It's one click away. As they say, it just works.

Edited 2010-09-15 12:06 UTC

A company is by definition selfish. "
But a company that collaborates (RedHat) is less selfish than a company that doesn't (Canonical). The point here is that RedHat could be more evil by not collaborating, Canonical doesn't really have any steps up in evilness.


Which, last I heard, is still worse than the binary blob and at least on my card doesn't offer 3D acceleration. "
That's NVIDIA's fault, not RedHat's. Fedora is trying to help their users in a collaborative/free way, while giving the users the option to use NVIDIA by using a 3rd party repository. Ubuntu is hardly helping the situation at all. IOW Fedora is part of the solution, Ubuntu is not.

At some point the open driver would work just fine, in part thanks to Fedora, and then Ubuntu will jump the bandwagon claiming that they are giving their users the best experience... but in reality they hardly did anything.


Yes, because things like LVM make so much sense to the home user! "
So do partitions. The user don't have to ever see them. Just say "automatic" and Fedora will pick a sensible default that would not affect your experience at all if you don't know what a partition or a volume is.


Yet Software Center is the easiest front-end. People like big buttons and fluffy clouds. "
Ubuntu is going to move to PackageKit, that's a fact you can see in their notes. If they don't like the UI they can change it, or they can make "Software Center" use PackageKit's backed. You see, it was designed to fit the needs of everyone.

Ubuntu could repay the favor by improving PackageKit's UI; i.e. contributing, but I guess that would be too much to ask.


Why doesn't pacman work in Ubuntu? There, I suppose Arch is a selfish and evil distribution! "
You are punching yourself; pacman does work in Ubuntu, just like in any other distribution, I've used it in Fedora; it doesn't conflict with the system's package manager. But you chose a very bad example anyway, because by definition the package management system is the single most important thing that defines a distribution; you wouldn't want to change that unless you are creating your own distro.

"Evil is generally accepted to be defined as the intention of causing harm or destruction while threatening or deliberately violating morality."

Did Canonical burn your computer or something? Killed your cat?


What I'm saying is, Ubuntu is providing a driver that WORKS. Users don't care about experimental, half-working drivers, trust me.


They will be giving their users the best experience. How's that not true?

It's like saying Windows doesn't give people the best experience because Microsoft didn't work on the nVIDIA/ATI drivers.


I am tempted to try this, but I don't have a 2nd hard drive to spare. I'm farily confident Fedora's installer is a bit more cryptic than Ubuntu's.


Good. That means they are using the most sensible solution and not jumping on the ITLLWORKLATER projects that pop up every year or so.


Why aren't you trying to improve the frontends? Oh, wait, it's easier to call out Canonical.

Again, it's GPL. They can take it, modify it, and even sell it. All without being required to contribute back.


Oh, it doesn't? Hey, let's use my distro's package manager to remo-- darn it.