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MetalMusicAddict
November 9th, 2006, 07:02 AM
Currently is says "Pending Approval (https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/accelerated-x)" but it will change soon.

darkninja
November 9th, 2006, 07:55 AM
Well if all of these specs get done Feisty should be quite impressive indeed!

The binary driver information spec (https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/binary-driver-education) should warn users that the drivers they want to use are non-free, so hopefully licensing/freedom issues won't be a problem.

I'm really looking forward to the improved wireless support in Feisty too...

DoctorMO
November 9th, 2006, 11:31 AM
Yea you have to warn people about not just lieciencing but about securty implications and the resposibility for these drivers are not with anyone in the community so we can't help you should the drivers go wrong.

Although perhaps that will change in the future and parts will be open sourced.

B0rsuk
November 9th, 2006, 11:55 AM
ubuntu = windows
ubuntu community = windows community + macintosh-like arrogance

Most people will either not care that there's some more closed source code, or will be happy. What I dislike about Canonical is that in their effort to mimic they're repeating Microsoft/windows mistakes. And neglect traditional strenghts of linux.

Wait -- did I say 'not care' ? Obviosly, I meant 'won't even know, and wouldn't know the difference anyway'. It's a long way from simply not caring.

chaosgeisterchen
November 9th, 2006, 12:28 PM
Hm.. I quite like the step they're taking.

vayu
November 9th, 2006, 12:43 PM
ubuntu = windows
ubuntu community = windows community + macintosh-like arrogance

Most people will either not care that there's some more closed source code, or will be happy. What I dislike about Canonical is that in their effort to mimic they're repeating Microsoft/windows mistakes. And neglect traditional strenghts of linux.

Wait -- did I say 'not care' ? Obviosly, I meant 'won't even know, and wouldn't know the difference anyway'. It's a long way from simply not caring.

Those are hit and run statements. Please explain a little more about how and why you believe these things. (Otherwise they are attacks and do nothing to educate about your position)

frup
November 9th, 2006, 12:44 PM
I want everything free now. Keep Microsofts hands off of my linux baby. :P

ago
November 9th, 2006, 01:01 PM
I think that closed software should be VERY EASY to install (= a package in G-A-I), BUT when people try to install such packages, they should be shown a dialog, BEFORE the installation:

explaining that Ubuntu fosters open software/standards
encouraging the user to try available alternatives
listing the main alternatives
explaining what is the danger with the closed/binary software/format/codec they are trying to install.

If the user cliks "Proceed anyway" he/she should simply have the desired software installed and ready. It is his/her decision. What is important is that people make INFORMED decisions.

In such view, installing binary drivers by default is a BAD decision. Making it difficult to install arguable software is also a bad decision.

givré
November 9th, 2006, 01:04 PM
ubuntu = windows
ubuntu community = windows community + macintosh-like arrogance

Most people will either not care that there's some more closed source code, or will be happy. What I dislike about Canonical is that in their effort to mimic they're repeating Microsoft/windows mistakes. And neglect traditional strenghts of linux.

Wait -- did I say 'not care' ? Obviosly, I meant 'won't even know, and wouldn't know the difference anyway'. It's a long way from simply not caring.
Well, did you actually red the two related spec :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation
I think it's rather a good compromise, no?

prizrak
November 9th, 2006, 03:15 PM
ubuntu = windows
ubuntu community = windows community + macintosh-like arrogance

Most people will either not care that there's some more closed source code, or will be happy. What I dislike about Canonical is that in their effort to mimic they're repeating Microsoft/windows mistakes. And neglect traditional strenghts of linux.

Wait -- did I say 'not care' ? Obviosly, I meant 'won't even know, and wouldn't know the difference anyway'. It's a long way from simply not caring.

Curse Canonical for trying to give the users what they want! Those bastards want our hardware to work properly out of the box! HOW COULD THEY?!

What is a traditional strength of Linux that is being neglected? Not having a nice looking GUI?

daynah
November 9th, 2006, 03:28 PM
Now does "ship by default" mean... when you install ubuntu off the cd, presto chango your computer will have those drivers?

Or will it mean that during the installation process, you'll have an extra little screen saying, "You can sell your soul to Satan to make life convient. Y/N?" (Oh I'm clickin' Y baby!)

Cause... even though I want the drivers, I want the choice. That's slightly psychotic, I know but... That's just me.

EdThaSlayer
November 9th, 2006, 05:12 PM
This would be pretty good, it would mean they can add some nice fancy effects. Maybe they should have two different types of Ubuntu's, Ubuntu basic edition and Ubuntu fancy edition(or advanced edition). Maybe they should just keep it as default so people don't have to worry about their choice of Ubuntu!

zachtib
November 9th, 2006, 05:21 PM
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop with a GMA 950 video card specifically because of the open drivers for Intel cards. I assume this card will be 3d enabled and supported OOTB just as any ATI/Nvidia card?

chaosgeisterchen
November 9th, 2006, 05:28 PM
It will be. Intel and ATI cards up to the X800 are now OOTB 3D-capable.

zachtib
November 9th, 2006, 05:31 PM
It will be. Intel and ATI cards up to the X800 are now OOTB 3D-capable.
How is the performance on the GMA 950? I don't need anything particularly powerful, but if it can handle AIGLX+beryl/compiz smoothly, I'll be perfectly happy.

Sure, UT2007 would be nice to, but that's asking a bit much from an integrated card ;)

chaosgeisterchen
November 9th, 2006, 05:32 PM
I testet both with my own GMA950 (unfortunately the whole system is quite badly supported under Linux so I sticked to Windows XP on my notebook) and it worked like a charm. It slowed the system down noticeably, though.

shining
November 9th, 2006, 05:55 PM
What is a traditional strength of Linux that is being neglected? Not having a nice looking GUI?

Are you kidding?

DoctorMO
November 9th, 2006, 06:04 PM
He means open source, open source is being forgoten and it will get us in trouble because people are too quick to sell their freedoms for practical results instead of demanding open source drivers.

givré
November 9th, 2006, 06:13 PM
I don't think that's the case.
If people could start reading the spec before, that's could be great :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation
They'll install by default binary driver, what people usualy do after the install in any case.
But then the system will alert them by a notification that there are using a non supported driver, and that they should prefer hardware that come with open source driver :


To make this computer’s ______ work properly, Ubuntu is using driver software that cannot be supported.

You can avoid this problem with your next computer, by choosing hardware from more cooperative manufacturers.

To learn more later, open the Device Manager. ( Learn More... ) (( OK ))

It's probably not the best compromise, but it's not a bad one.

MetalMusicAddict
November 9th, 2006, 06:24 PM
givré is completely right. Im actually at UDS/MV now. All of this is so open its crazy. If you cant be here you can listen in. There really have been sound reasons for all the decisions going on.

Me throwing the Metal sign (http://static.flickr.com/116/291346715_a6ad42eca3.jpg?v=0). ;)

Kindred
November 9th, 2006, 06:43 PM
Wow.. that's really a shame if true...

ago
November 9th, 2006, 07:25 PM
They'll install by default binary driver, what people usualy do after the install in any case.
But then the system will alert them by a notification that there are using a non supported driver, and that they should prefer hardware that come with open source driver

They should do exactly the opposite: install by default FOSS drivers and alert the user that binary drivers are available and they can install them if they so wish, but explaing well what the implications are.

kanem
November 9th, 2006, 07:50 PM
givré is completely right. Im actually at UDS/MV now. All of this is so open its crazy. If you cant be here you can listen in. There really have been sound reasons for all the decisions going on.

Me throwing the Metal sign (http://static.flickr.com/116/291346715_a6ad42eca3.jpg?v=0). ;)

Is this what metal heads look like nowadays? I must be stuck in the 80's. I expected more.. well.. metal. And leather. And the guy across from you? Man, you guys don't look like nerds at all! You're giving us a bad name.

jc87
November 9th, 2006, 07:56 PM
Both NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers will be installed by default, on Ubuntu Feisty

What about GPL violation concerns?

As far as i know binary drivers are usually considered NOT derivated works because are not shipped by default with the kernel, but are added by the user itself having no "redistribution" and the GPL having no effect that way, but if are shipped by default then can happen the same story of Kororaa live-cd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kororaa#Kororaa_XGL_Live_CD_and_the_GPL

MetalMusicAddict
November 9th, 2006, 09:16 PM
Is this what metal heads look like nowadays? I must be stuck in the 80's. I expected more.. well.. metal. And leather. And the guy across from you? Man, you guys don't look like nerds at all! You're giving us a bad name.

Well my leather is at home. :) As far as the guy in front of me goes... most of the people here are geeky (nerds with social and fashion skills), not nerds. :)


New info LINK (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX).

As far as people who dont like it goes... get more involved in Ubuntu. YOU CAN affect change.

luca.b
November 10th, 2006, 08:54 AM
Both NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers will be installed by default, on Ubuntu Feisty

What about GPL violation concerns?


Someone may have said this already, but the "restricted" modules don't exist in complete form in the DEB. They're linked with the kernel at run time, when you boot, so there is no violation as they don't redistribute them linked with the kernel.

ago
November 10th, 2006, 09:50 AM
They should do exactly the opposite: install by default FOSS drivers and alert the user that binary drivers are available and they can install them if they so wish, but explaing well what the implications are.

What they are planning to do is to install the drivers and then suggest you to buy supported hardware next time... Which is not as bad as the original post implied, but a second best never the less...

see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation


We include several proprietary drivers in Ubuntu by default (it is possible to install without them). We would like to do more to educate users to avoid hardware that requires such drivers in order to work with Linux. We propose a notification on login which will lead users to further information, including recommending certified hardware that does not have this problem.

kripkenstein
November 10th, 2006, 10:56 AM
Someone may have said this already, but the "restricted" modules don't exist in complete form in the DEB. They're linked with the kernel at run time, when you boot, so there is no violation as they don't redistribute them linked with the kernel.

The Kororaa final word is here (http://kororaa.org/static.php?page=gpl). Basically, even they eventually decided to remove the binary drivers, because of GPL concerns, both legal and ethical.

It would be really strange for Ubuntu to decide that NVidia/ATI binary drivers are ok both legally and ethically. This goes against the beliefs of Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE (and even Kororaa), etc., i.e. the 'free' distributions. It would put Ubuntu closer to the 'less-free' distributions like Linspire, Mepis, etc.

Is that what Canonical intend for Ubuntu? Is that what the Ubuntu community want?

Personally, I vote for installing the free drivers, then asking the user after installation, if they want the binary ones.

prizrak
November 10th, 2006, 03:18 PM
He means open source, open source is being forgoten and it will get us in trouble because people are too quick to sell their freedoms for practical results instead of demanding open source drivers.

Open source is not being forgotten. Ubuntu tries to include FOSS solutions where they will work but if they won't work then proprietary has to be there. The simple truth is that neither nVidia nor ATI will ever do FOSS 3D, in their case the software makes all the difference as hardware is pretty much the same. Also Ubuntu is a desktop distro, so they try to give the customer what he/she wants. Also open source isn't always the best solution. For instance I have a tablet that is now completely on Windows because while the drivers for the tablet are there, it lacks any necessary software (at least I didn't find it) that would allow me to calibrate the tablet. An OS has to be useable first and ideological second. Those who have an issue with closed drivers being a part of the install have other options.


It would be really strange for Ubuntu to decide that NVidia/ATI binary drivers are ok both legally and ethically. This goes against the beliefs of Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE (and even Kororaa), etc., i.e. the 'free' distributions. It would put Ubuntu closer to the 'less-free' distributions like Linspire, Mepis, etc.
Ubuntu is not Debian and Debian is crazy, they wouldn't put the Firefox icon in because they didn't like the license for it.
Fedora and OpenSuSE are completely different beasts, both of them are basically free beta testing for RHEL and SLED. So yes neither will include non-free stuff in their free distro's as they need some kind of a differentiation. Also unlike RHEL and SLED, Ubuntu isn't charging you for the added functionality that neither OpenSuSE or Fedora have.


Personally, I vote for installing the free drivers, then asking the user after installation, if they want the binary ones.
There are two problems with this, and you would know it if you read the spec.
1) It would be impossible to get all the pretty compositing stuff without the binary drivers enabled by default. This basically means that you need to know how to turn it on.
2) There have been countless complaints on the forum about Ubuntu being dependant on high speed internet for just about anything. Installing drivers by default remedies that issue.

Make no mistake Ubuntu is competing with SLED, Mandriva, RHEL, Vista and OS X. It is not competing against Debian and Fedora, so it has to have provide things that others do. I don't understand why people are so against it, in my experience the FOSS NV drivers aren't even usable in regular 2D (artifacts and static) and ATI ones don't have GPU throttling (real bad for battery life on laptops). In fact there isn't a single full open driver that can do 3D that is required by compositing. Even the new Intel video driver includes a binary blob for certain things.

kripkenstein
November 10th, 2006, 03:53 PM
There are two problems with this, and you would know it if you read the spec.
First off, I did read the spec :)


1) It would be impossible to get all the pretty compositing stuff without the binary drivers enabled by default. This basically means that you need to know how to turn it on.

If the user is asked after installation whether they want binary drivers (which is what I suggested), then they can also be asked at the same time whether they want AIGLX, Beryl, etc. This gives everyone the option for those things, but keeps the default Ubuntu 'free'.


2) There have been countless complaints on the forum about Ubuntu being dependant on high speed internet for just about anything. Installing drivers by default remedies that issue.
I never said it should be downloaded separately. I agree, Ubuntu should not require internet access to install. What I said was that the user should be ASKED after installation whether to use the binary drivers - which could be on the same CD.

jc87
November 10th, 2006, 04:07 PM
Ubuntu is not Debian and Debian is crazy, they wouldn't put the Firefox icon in because they didn't like the license for it.

They are not crazy, the Firefox trademark license restricts the code use (in debian case critical patching), so they decided they are going to use Firefox just with a different name, in my personal opinion the crazy ones are the Mozilla guys for making Debian community life hard.

deanlinkous
November 10th, 2006, 04:51 PM
Firefox IS free software. Debian is not crazy and neither is mozilla. They both have very good reasons for what occured.

Fedora doesn't include non-free stuff because it is committed to free.

AFAIK the intel drivers are open source so I have no idea what you mean there. I have seen XGL on intel and it was fine. I do wonder about the eye candy on other cards and stuff. I am going to try some stuff on my onboard via and I think I have a onboard sis also. I also have a older nvidia I will try. Of course, personally I think the eye candy is fluff.

I think Ubuntu is moving more and more in the Linspire direction and less and less in the free direction. Is that really where Ubuntu should go? I always thought that Ubuntu was a community based distro of *mostly* free software, none of those that you mention claim to be that. If Ubuntu is going that route then they need their enterprise (RHEL/SLED/Linspire) edition and they need a community (fedora/opensuse/freespire) edition.

Part of the Ubuntu philosophy (yes Ubuntu has that too not just the FSF) is and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. How does including proprietary stuff follow this philosophy?

kripkenstein
November 10th, 2006, 05:09 PM
Hey, MetalMusicAddict (creator of this thread), I had a thought - how about adding a poll? I am wondering how the community feel about this issue.

My suggestion for the wording:

Should Ubuntu set up binary NVidia/ATI drivers during installation?

1) Yes, Ubuntu should install binary drivers by default
2) Partially, Ubuntu should give the option to install the binary drivers during installation or right after it
3) No, Ubuntu should keep things as they are now: binary drivers are in a non-free repo

deanlinkous
November 10th, 2006, 05:24 PM
How about making it a bit more generic.
1) binary installed by default
2) open source by default
3) ask which drivers a user wants
4) keep them out of the distro

givré
November 10th, 2006, 05:26 PM
Hey, MetalMusicAddict (creator of this thread), I had a thought - how about adding a poll? I am wondering how the community feel about this issue.

My suggestion for the wording:

Should Ubuntu set up binary NVidia/ATI drivers during installation?

1) Yes, Ubuntu should install binary drivers by default
2) Partially, Ubuntu should give the option to install the binary drivers during installation or right after it
3) No, Ubuntu should keep things as they are now: binary drivers are in a non-free repo
kripkenstein, you should start right now ;).

And a note for everybody, if you could calm down a bit, that's could be great.
This things should not turn into a battle of persons.

Thanks.

givré
November 10th, 2006, 05:30 PM
Don't forget :

binary drivers by default with notification on the badness of binary driver, which is the spec actually discuss, by The community (and not by some bad guys from the dark side of ubuntu : canonical :mrgreen: ) (don't think that forum community = ubuntu community )

Put also a link to the spec :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation

And say to people to READ the spec before replying.

prizrak
November 10th, 2006, 08:18 PM
First off, I did read the spec :)

If the user is asked after installation whether they want binary drivers (which is what I suggested), then they can also be asked at the same time whether they want AIGLX, Beryl, etc. This gives everyone the option for those things, but keeps the default Ubuntu 'free'.

I never said it should be downloaded separately. I agree, Ubuntu should not require internet access to install. What I said was that the user should be ASKED after installation whether to use the binary drivers - which could be on the same CD.
Oh, then I misunderstood you. That is reasonable, considering that with AIGLX there isn't anything to change in the xorg.conf and the nVidia driver has it's own config utility that runs at the end of the install it should be workable. My guess is Ubuntu devs are just trying to make their life easier. I guess it's really the old opt-in vs opt-out debate. Those who care about that sort of thing can uninstall the binary driver and replace it with the FOSS one (unless Canonical makes it a dependancy which I REALLY hope against). You are proposing and opt-in policy where you would have to confirm the binary driver install. I guess since more people care about functionality vs ideological purity they decided to go with opt-out.

prizrak
November 10th, 2006, 08:38 PM
They are not crazy, the Firefox trademark license restricts the code use (in debian case critical patching), so they decided they are going to use Firefox just with a different name, in my personal opinion the crazy ones are the Mozilla guys for making Debian community life hard.
Ubuntu managed to work it out somehow why couldn't Debian? My personal guess is that Ubuntu will just send w/e mods they do back to Mozilla and that would not violate the license.

AFAIK the intel drivers are open source so I have no idea what you mean there.
The Intel drivers are open source that is correct. However from what I have heard about the latest video chipset that has been released (955 I think) is that it contains a small binary blob that deals with certain video functions that Intel cannot open up because they do not hold the rights to them. Obviously don't take this as the absolute and final truth this is just what I heard.

I have seen XGL on intel and it was fine.
Yes it works, and pretty well. I have an 855GM on here and both XGL and AIGLX work just fine. It's not as smooth and fast as my 6200 Go but it's very usable.

I think Ubuntu is moving more and more in the Linspire direction and less and less in the free direction. Is that really where Ubuntu should go? I always thought that Ubuntu was a community based distro of *mostly* free software, none of those that you mention claim to be that. If Ubuntu is going that route then they need their enterprise (RHEL/SLED/Linspire) edition and they need a community (fedora/opensuse/freespire) edition.
It's still mostly libre software. The only thing is that the ATI and nVidia cards will get binary drivers. I'm sure the reason it is done is because the vast majority of people will install them anyway. I don't see people complaining about the Atheros (madwifi) drivers being included in Ubuntu out of the box and those are restricted (AFAIK). Ubuntu will never have an enterprise version, it is part of the philosophy.

I think alot of people misunderstand what Ubuntu is about. It is commited to FOSS but only if it doesn't compromise functionality. It is after all a desktop Linux distro that aims to replace or at least provide a viable alternative to Windows. In some cases it means using closed source.

WARNING: Personal and likely unpopular opinion ahead.
Drivers are not software and should not be covered by GPL or anything like that. Drivers are only there to provide the interface for the kernel so that the hardware can operate, in most cases there is very little need to deal with the drivers. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think of drivers in the same way I think of firmware in devices such as TV's and routers. Unless something is horribly wrong with it, there is no need to touch it. Generally whether a driver is open or not makes little difference. However there is an exception and that is the networking drivers. I ran across an article from a bit back where a Mac was hacked through a vulnerability in the wireless driver, the card used wasn't an airport one and could be used on a "PC". A bug in a network driver is actually a significant security flaw that is very hard to defend against most other drivers however don't communicate with the outside world so the bugs are less problematic.

.t.
November 10th, 2006, 09:35 PM
I'm in two minds about this. One that I'm pro freedom, and anti most anything that restricts the same. The second is that I, and many other users, value usability, and feels that the drivers should be included.

I still feel that the companies in question should open up the specs to their hardware like Intel and Creative do.

MetalMusicAddict
November 10th, 2006, 11:49 PM
Im not sure I want to get in the middle of a poll. I just saw other mentions of this before I posted the thread and wanted the info in a single thread.

shining
November 11th, 2006, 01:14 AM
Ubuntu managed to work it out somehow why couldn't Debian? My personal guess is that Ubuntu will just send w/e mods they do back to Mozilla and that would not violate the license.


Since Ubuntu and Debian applied nearly the same modification on firefox, I don't think this makes sense.
I believe an agreement was made between Ubuntu and Mozilla, but I've no idea what that is. I believe the only major thing that changed since this agreement was that the official firefox icons was restored.

From one comment on Mark Shuttleworth blog (http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/79) :


Personally I don’t see why this whole discussion needs to be so heated. Ubuntu is willing to include the non-free Firefox logo, so Mozilla is willing to let Ubuntu use the FF name. Debian is not willing to include the non-free Firefox logo, so Mozilla isn’t willing to let it use the FF name. That’s it. End of story.




The Intel drivers are open source that is correct. However from what I have heard about the latest video chipset that has been released (955 I think) is that it contains a small binary blob that deals with certain video functions that Intel cannot open up because they do not hold the rights to them. Obviously don't take this as the absolute and final truth this is just what I heard.


The last announcements made were about 965 chipset.
There is indeed a small binary blob (for 965 chipset only, or also for previous chipsets, I don't know), but I believe it's for a pointless feature that no one cares about:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115536806403908&w=2



WARNING: Personal and likely unpopular opinion ahead.
Drivers are not software and should not be covered by GPL or anything like that. Drivers are only there to provide the interface for the kernel so that the hardware can operate, in most cases there is very little need to deal with the drivers. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think of drivers in the same way I think of firmware in devices such as TV's and routers. Unless something is horribly wrong with it, there is no need to touch it. Generally whether a driver is open or not makes little difference. However there is an exception and that is the networking drivers. I ran across an article from a bit back where a Mac was hacked through a vulnerability in the wireless driver, the card used wasn't an airport one and could be used on a "PC". A bug in a network driver is actually a significant security flaw that is very hard to defend against most other drivers however don't communicate with the outside world so the bugs are less problematic.

Just confirming the "likely unpopular" :)

deanlinkous
November 11th, 2006, 01:34 AM
Great info shining!

I *sort of* consider it more important that drivers are open/free than software. I have a choice to use that software or another piece of software but as far as drivers go I have no choice but to use that software or else my hardware is worthless.

Mozilla said do this or else you need to do this. Debian said, okay we will do the latter. Everyone happy.Whats so crazy or a big deal. I prefer not to have something from a corporation anyway.

ago
November 11th, 2006, 01:53 AM
Hey, MetalMusicAddict (creator of this thread), I had a thought - how about adding a poll? I am wondering how the community feel about this issue.

My suggestion for the wording:

Should Ubuntu set up binary NVidia/ATI drivers during installation?

1) Yes, Ubuntu should install binary drivers by default
2) Partially, Ubuntu should give the option to install the binary drivers during installation or right after it
3) No, Ubuntu should keep things as they are now: binary drivers are in a non-free repo

I was thinking the same think. Considering the actual specs though the poll should be:

Install binary drivers by default and inform the user that next time they should try to get hardware with open drivers
Install open source drivers by default and inform the user that binary drivers are available, explaining why they are not installed by default (click to install).

I do not think other more extreme alternatives are going to be considered anyway (install binary without asking, keep binary out of the distro).

prizrak
November 11th, 2006, 05:27 AM
Great info shining!

I *sort of* consider it more important that drivers are open/free than software. I have a choice to use that software or another piece of software but as far as drivers go I have no choice but to use that software or else my hardware is worthless.

Mozilla said do this or else you need to do this. Debian said, okay we will do the latter. Everyone happy.Whats so crazy or a big deal. I prefer not to have something from a corporation anyway.

You'd be surprised but Ubuntu is made by a corporation and so is your hardware. What is up with people viewing corporations as evil? Ask an MS employee how would he like MS to not exist anymore or getting eaten up by competitors. Tell him he has to work for someone else who doesn't care enough to build a day care center on campus so that he can be close to his kids even during work. Corporations employ more people in the world than any other organization combined and quite a bit of Linux developers are able to create free code because some evil corporation keeps them fed, clothed and inside a house/apartment.

I call Debian crazy in this case because they were so against including a copyrighted icon that they would actually change a very well known and popular name to something else. That feels too much like extremism to me, after all Mozilla doesn't stop anyone from using the code just the name/icon so who cares if the icon is copyrighted/trademarked? Debian and it's logo are also trademarked.

I think the issue at hand is that Canonical believes that in this particular case functionality is more important than ideology, especially considering that there is no real FLOSS alternative. (Please don't bring up the nv driver, it sux horribly)

deanlinkous
November 11th, 2006, 07:51 AM
Because corporations are corporations and will act in the best interest of their bottom line. It has been proven time and time again. (Sony root kit) I personally have never considered Ubuntu a corporation. THe home page says this "It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!" which does not sound like a corporation to me.

I see that no matter how many times that the debian/mozilla issue is explained some people still cannot grasp it. Research the debian issue a bit more, please.

If functionality is more important than ideology then they should say that in the Ubuntu philiosophy to make sure it is clear.

The nv driver may suck horribly for you but is fine for others. As stated I am more upset by the idea of proprietary drivers than I am proprietary software and when I use my nvidia card I assure you the free driver is what I use!

Some people do care about more than JUST functionality.

I hope there is a ignore feature to this forum...

kripkenstein
November 11th, 2006, 09:40 AM
The thread which inspired this poll is here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=296029).

It appears that the next Ubuntu release, Feisty Fawn, will ship with binary NVidia/ATI drivers by default (with some explanation for the user about the relevant issues); this will allow things like Beryl/Compiz to work without special setup. See the specs:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation

Please read the specs before voting :)

As you can see on Launchpad (https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/accelerated-x), this issue is marked priority "Essential", i.e. they are very serious about it (assuming, as it says in the spec, that they can reach appropriate agreements with the hardware vendors).

The purpose of this thread is to see how the Ubuntu community feels about enabling those binary drivers by default.

loell
November 11th, 2006, 09:44 AM
yes, it makes easier on the part of the user

muep
November 11th, 2006, 11:22 AM
It is a short term solution to install them as default, but it isn't good for the development of free drivers. It is a sign that proprietary driver are good enough. If we show that sign to Nvidia and ATi, we will never get good free drivers. Or this is what I fear.

I know it won't interest anybosy else much, but I will not use it if it has any proprietary software installed as default. That's why I chose Ubuntu at some point, but I may as well pick something more free from now on.

I still hope they change their minds.

Anyways, isn't there still the same problem that prevented Kororaa XGL livecd from shipping those binary drivers?

kripkenstein
November 11th, 2006, 11:30 AM
Anyways, isn't there still the same problem that prevented Kororaa XGL livecd from shipping those binary drivers?

There are legal questions here, yes. Kororaa eventually decided that they couldn't be sure about the legality of it, but the legal question combined with the ethical issue (that it supports non-free drivers), was enough to convince them to remove the binary drivers.

As far as I know, the legality has not been actually tested, as of yet.

3rdalbum
November 11th, 2006, 12:39 PM
The legality issue is about whether the drivers can be included in the kernel; it's all about the "derived work" clause. Kororaa's kernel had the non-free modules already installed

I always assumed that the new Mandriva One had, and Ubuntu 7.04 would have, the drivers included but NOT actually merged with the kernel on the CD. Merging would be done after installation to the hard drive.

My vote goes to asking the user. For people who don't care about Freedom, it will make it easier for them to get their Ubuntu set up correctly. For people who do care, they'll be able to keep their computer from being tainted. Even somebody who didn't previously care about Freedom might think twice, especially if the question dialog said "Canonical and the open-source community cannot provide security updates for this software".

Christmas
November 11th, 2006, 12:47 PM
I voted for the last option, "Users should be given a choice about this during installation". I think that in some situations open-source can't be the way to go (nVIDIA doesn't want the competition to see what's in that binary drivers and vice-versa). So including these drivers on the main CD and asking the user to install them if they have a nVIDIA or ATI video card seems the proper way to do this in my opinion.

MaximB
November 11th, 2006, 12:59 PM
the ubntu edgy drivers for my ATI video card doesn't work and I need to install them manually, so it doesn't really matters...until ubuntu will actually support my ATI video card (ATI radeon 9800 Pro) , like other distros do (berry supports it with compiz with no need to install anything).
it's very sad for me, as it is possible to do.

paul cooke
November 11th, 2006, 03:13 PM
The purpose of this thread is to see how the Ubuntu community feels about enabling those binary drivers by default.

hmmm well, the kororaa distro got hit when he tried doing a live CD with everything enabled for the fancy 3D desktop... a kernel dev got upset with it and sent him a letter accusing him of being in breach of the GPL by having the nvidia binary linked in with the kernel...

The kororaa guy pulled the live CD as he couldn't afford a lawyer to fight back or get a proper opinion on the matter.

http://kororaa.org/


Kororaa AIGLXgl 0.3 Live CD Released
Tuesday, October 3, 2006, 11:44 PM
We are happy to release Kororaa AIGLXgl 0.3 Live CD.

It is available via direct download and bittorrent. Please see the Live CD page here for more details.

Major changes include the removal of non-GPL ATI and NVIDIA video card drivers (see here); the inclusion of AIGLX now along with Xgl (hence the name), 2.6.18 CK patchset based kernel, KDE 3.5.4, Gnome 2.14, updated installer, many bug fixes, as well as a new version of the Kororaa Penguin and other artwork by Pascal Klein.

The system works well on my Macbook with its integrated Intel video card. The open source radeon driver will work with many ATI cards, but not all the newer ones. If you have an NVIDIA video card 3D effects will not be available, however you can still use this CD as a "normal" livecd and installation to disk is available (where you can install any drivers you wish).

We hope you enjoy!

so personally, I can't see how Ubuntu can go ahead and have the 3D nvidia drivers working on the normal live CD.

Here's the Kororaa statement on the GPL issue:

http://kororaa.org/static.php?page=gpl

darkhatter
November 11th, 2006, 03:17 PM
its not the end of the world, move along. If you don't like them uninstall them

Miguel
November 11th, 2006, 04:06 PM
Hi guys,

As an ATi user (sufferer), if Ubuntu installed the proprietary drivers by default it would be installing somemthing half-baked, with horrible performance and unsupportable. On the other side, the r300 driver only suffers from abysmal performance (half of fglrx in 3D) and lack of TV-out. I could consider installing the proprietary fglrx if they actually worked (windows performance like nVidia, windows features like... nVidia), or if I had no alternative. It just happens that I have an alternative, and that under fglrx, every ATi card is slower than a 6600GT (well, maybe the X1950XTX equals it), so my choice is clear.

I could understand though that nVidia users had ther proprietary driver installed by default, as they do have no choice as far as 3d goes. It's similar to X1000 series users.

Another important point is that of legality. Would that be legal? Could the manufacturers be convinced to have their drivers distributed? What would be kernel developers' position on this? Because we might not want to know whether the proprietary drivers are legal or not.

qamelian
November 11th, 2006, 04:12 PM
Personally, I don't want the binary ATI drivers to install because they do not work with the ATI card in my laptop even though ATI says my card is supported. NVidia's drivers work flawlessly on my desktop PC, but my ATI-based laptop suffers from horrible video performance with ATI's binary drivers.

gnomeuser
November 11th, 2006, 04:15 PM
Absolutely no. Binary drivers is the slippery slope to a world were we are forever dependant on proprietary software. It started with defaulting to proprietary drivers to support some wifi setups and now it's video cards.. what's next?

Aside that I think it's disrespectful to the kernel developers, with these drivers loaded it is hard to the point of being impossible to debug kernel issues as they are sutly breaking stuff in random ways. So invest some money in driver development instead please, people who need these drivers will have them available for selective install in a seperate repository.

Kindred
November 11th, 2006, 04:24 PM
I would say definitely no, I think Ubuntu seems to be doing just fine without caving in to this. The current solution is fine in my opinion.

darkhatter
November 11th, 2006, 05:20 PM
Absolutely no. Binary drivers is the slippery slope to a world were we are forever dependant on proprietary software. It started with defaulting to proprietary drivers to support some wifi setups and now it's video cards.. what's next?

Aside that I think it's disrespectful to the kernel developers, with these drivers loaded it is hard to the point of being impossible to debug kernel issues as they are sutly breaking stuff in random ways. So invest some money in driver development instead please, people who need these drivers will have them available for selective install in a seperate repository.

if you load up a binary module, the kernel marks it self as tainted and the kernel developers will not touch it, when installing if a video card that will work with it is present, give them the option to install the driver. I should have the freedom to use binary drivers if I want. :mrgreen:

tageiru
November 11th, 2006, 05:22 PM
What would be kernel developers' position on this? Because we might not want to know whether the proprietary drivers are legal or not.

You will get a kick in the face if you try to report a kernel bug when your kernel has been tainted by non-free drivers.

It's funny that people bicker about the Microsoft-Novell non-issue while happily accepting binary drivers by default which will damage Ubuntu in more ways than Microsoft could ever hope to.

prizrak
November 11th, 2006, 06:14 PM
Because corporations are corporations and will act in the best interest of their bottom line. It has been proven time and time again. (Sony root kit) I personally have never considered Ubuntu a corporation. THe home page says this "It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!" which does not sound like a corporation to me.

http://www.canonical.com/ notice the name, it is a corporation under the UK law. They might not be a publicly traded one yet but their corporate. Corporations might only care about their bottom line but they do it in different ways, Kodak for instance employes hadnicapped/mentally challenged people in their recycling centers to do the forms of labor that they are able to. Sure they do it because it's not only good for their bottom line but for PR but they still do it. They also pay good money to their employees. The hated MS has a huge day care center on their campus for employee children and that includes janitors and all other "lower" people. Costco is better to its employees than they are to its customers.


If functionality is more important than ideology then they should say that in the Ubuntu philiosophy to make sure it is clear.

Why does it have to be so black and white for you? Ubuntu aims to provide the needed functionality with free software, however if free software cannot do it they will use other means. It's clearly stated on the website when it talks about the different software groups.

In this particular case they decided to
1) Provide the functionality that other distros do and people have asked for.
2) Install the software needed for that functionality, especially since a vast majority of people will install those drivers anyway.

gnomeuser
November 11th, 2006, 07:28 PM
if you load up a binary module, the kernel marks it self as tainted and the kernel developers will not touch it, when installing if a video card that will work with it is present, give them the option to install the driver. I should have the freedom to use binary drivers if I want. :mrgreen:

Did you read my post.. you understanding is limited, I did not say you shouldn't be able to install this evil drivers. They simply should not be default and a certain degree of work should be involved in tainting the kernel, it's called education.

deanlinkous
November 11th, 2006, 07:53 PM
Yes Canonical is a company. Ubuntu is not one of their products they are simply a sponsor.

I have no idea how your examples relate to anything since everything you mention is still in the best interest of the companies. It just happens to also be to the benefit of the employees. If both align then no problem, but if they diverge then a company will go in its best interest. But my point was that I and I would think many others do not consider Ubuntu a corporation itself. I quote again from the Ubuntu website

It is developed by a large community

But while we are discussing Canonical, from the Canonical website


Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system. Canonical is committed to providing a Linux operating system that:

* will always be free of charge; Canonical will never charge licence fees for Ubuntu or any component thereof.
* is shipped in stable and regular release cycles; a new release will be shipped every six months.
* is entirely committed to the principles of open source software development; no part of it will ever be proprietary, and we encourage people to use it, improve it and pass it on.

notice that last line?

And from the ubuntu website

..... and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

..... you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.

As I said if Ubuntu wants to go more and more proprietary then that is fine with me but IMO that goes against the following parts that I quoted. I have no problem if they want to take the linspire route but I for one am not interested in yet another proprietary linux.

Thats all I have to say. ;)

jc87
November 11th, 2006, 08:00 PM
I was thinking the same think. Considering the actual specs though the poll should be:

1. Install binary drivers by default and inform the user that next time they should try to get hardware with open drivers
2. Install open source drivers by default and inform the user that binary drivers are available, explaining why they are not installed by default (click to install).

Agree, after some thought on the subject about the non-free drivers inclusion i decided to "vote" (no poll yet) for the second option, that way Ubuntu keeps his freedom without sacrificing user options, basically is up to the user the decision.


WARNING: Personal and likely unpopular opinion ahead.
Drivers are not software and should not be covered by GPL or anything like that. Drivers are only there to provide the interface for the kernel so that the hardware can operate, in most cases there is very little need to deal with the drivers. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think of drivers in the same way I think of firmware in devices such as TV's and routers. Unless something is horribly wrong with it, there is no need to touch it. Generally whether a driver is open or not makes little difference. However there is an exception and that is the networking drivers. I ran across an article from a bit back where a Mac was hacked through a vulnerability in the wireless driver, the card used wasn't an airport one and could be used on a "PC". A bug in a network driver is actually a significant security flaw that is very hard to defend against most other drivers however don't communicate with the outside world so the bugs are less problematic.

Since i´m not a programmer i cant speak about the security factor, but there other things to keep in mind, i for one own an Ati Radeon 9250 (yes i use the open "radeon" driver) but i would like to have the option to use the fglrx one, unfortunately i cant in the newer versions of Ubuntu (6.06 and 6.10) because my GPU is no longer supported by the news fglrx releases (and there is no fglrx-legacy or something like that).

What about my freedom to use which version of the kernel/xorg i would like? if binary drivers makers would sign an legal agreement saying they would open up the drivers when they stopped supporting the hardware i would be fine with that, but this way having a binary driver today does not mean that it will work tomorrow.

lux
November 11th, 2006, 08:12 PM
With great power comes great responsibility. Ubuntu is one of the most visible Linux distributions and it sets an example that many people will see. If people see that binary drivers are installed in Ubuntu by default, they start thinking that binary drivers might actually be OK.

I really, really hope that Ubuntu devs should reconsider this move and decide that installing nVidia/ATI binary drivers by default is against Ubuntu philosophy.

http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy

tageiru
November 11th, 2006, 08:38 PM
One of the developers seem to reject this idiotic idea:

Using closed X drivers by default happens over my cold, dead body.
Posted in the comment section of Dave Jones blog (http://kernelslacker.livejournal.com/62413.html)

deanlinkous
November 11th, 2006, 08:56 PM
Excellent thread and poll. Considering the Ubuntu philosophy as well as statements about Ubuntu on the Canonical website mention things that would be false if (more) proprietary stuff was included.

Matthew Garrets post also clears up some confusion about the freeness of Ubuntu that I brought up in another thread...

lux
November 11th, 2006, 08:58 PM
Originally Posted by prizrak
Curse Canonical for trying to give the users what they want! Those bastards want our hardware to work properly out of the box! HOW COULD THEY?!

What about if the users want to eat their cake and also keep it? What about if you can give people binary-only hardware support now but giving it would mean that you can't give any hardware support later on because the company in question may stop providing the binary drivers? What if you have to choose between a mediocre short-term support and a good long-term support?

What if the binary drivers are buggy? What if there are security problems with the binary drivers?

How are you then going to give people what they want?

What people want is not always necessarily what they need.

shining
November 11th, 2006, 10:42 PM
Yes Canonical is a company. Ubuntu is not one of their products they are simply a sponsor.

I have no idea how your examples relate to anything since everything you mention is still in the best interest of the companies. It just happens to also be to the benefit of the employees. If both align then no problem, but if they diverge then a company will go in its best interest. But my point was that I and I would think many others do not consider Ubuntu a corporation itself. I quote again from the Ubuntu website


But while we are discussing Canonical, from the Canonical website



notice that last line?

And from the ubuntu website



As I said if Ubuntu wants to go more and more proprietary then that is fine with me but IMO that goes against the following parts that I quoted. I have no problem if they want to take the linspire route but I for one am not interested in yet another proprietary linux.

Thats all I have to say. ;)

Yes indeed, actually I found ubuntu position quite confusing when the firefox issue was sorted out.

By the way, from http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/79 again:


It’s worth bearing in mind that Debian’s position on both free software and trademarks is very complex and not entirely consistent. Consider the recent decision to ship Etch with proprietary software built in. Firmware is in most cases X86, PPC, Mips or ARM code (architectures Debian supports) for which real source in C exists - but that source code is of course not provided. Also consider Debian’s own trademark policy which, while liberal, still restricts what can be done.


Firstly, as far as I understand, Debian still wants to fix this firmware issue, it just won't be done in etch, but after.
Secondly, I don't think Debian has any problems with trademarks.
And finally, Ubuntu's position doesn't seem to be very consistent neither, or at least, it's not clear (the contradictions between what is said on the main page of ubuntu.com and the reality).

As a side note, it has already been said, but isn't it a violation that firefox Ubuntu package still have "dfsg" in its name, while the main change made on firefox to comply to the dfsg was the icon change, and this has been reverted in Ubuntu to satisfy Mozilla?

shining
November 11th, 2006, 10:47 PM
Excellent thread and poll. Considering the Ubuntu philosophy as well as statements about Ubuntu on the Canonical website mention things that would be false if (more) proprietary stuff was included.

Matthew Garrets post also clears up some confusion about the freeness of Ubuntu that I brought up in another thread...

Indeed, but that's only one developer :) What about the others?

jc87
November 11th, 2006, 11:18 PM
if you load up a binary module, the kernel marks it self as tainted and the kernel developers will not touch it, when installing if a video card that will work with it is present, give them the option to install the driver. I should have the freedom to use binary drivers if I want. :mrgreen:

The problem is the binary drivers being considered a derivate work when distributed alongside with the kernel.

GPL derivated works restrictions only apply IF you redistribute the software, that means you can do whatever you feel like with GPL software and no one will have the right to say no to you as long you dont redistribute.

damagedspline
November 11th, 2006, 11:38 PM
Look now... I have a laptop with ATI's "finest" :frown: Xpress 200M which has no 3d support in the oss driver and probably never will (due to the impossible reverse engineering of the hypermemory transport). So Aiglx is out of the question for me. Which means that if beryl+aiglx is to be default someday, I might be in a situation where I won't be able to install ubuntu in a "user friendly" environment - this will not bother me, but may bother first-time users with same chipset. Except it, living in the purely oss world is just a dream because some things cannot be achieved with oss.
Let it be chosen on installation what to use!

sonny
November 11th, 2006, 11:45 PM
I said the drivers have to be in the installation cd, but not installed by default, the system can ask the user (while informing about the pro's and con's of closed and open source drivers), it can aslo give webpages of opensource videocards. That's MHO.

nrayever
November 11th, 2006, 11:49 PM
this would make everyone life easier. i believe that it should be added on feisty fawn. :) :)

shining
November 11th, 2006, 11:51 PM
Look now... I have a laptop with ATI's "finest" :frown: Xpress 200M which has no 3d support in the oss driver and probably never will (due to the impossible reverse engineering of the hypermemory transport). So Aiglx is out of the question for me. Which means that if beryl+aiglx is to be default someday, I might be in a situation where I won't be able to install ubuntu in a "user friendly" environment - this will not bother me, but may bother first-time users with same chipset. Except it, living in the purely oss world is just a dream because some things cannot be achieved with oss.
Let it be chosen on installation what to use!

If beryl+aiglx was the default someday, there should still be a way to disable it, so you could install and use ubuntu with a 2d only graphic driver flawlessly. (at least, I hope so)

darkhatter
November 11th, 2006, 11:56 PM
if the ubuntu want to add the drivers there is nothing that any of us can do.

dv_
November 12th, 2006, 12:43 AM
What about triggering a download when trying to install the binary drivers? Since they aren't shipped alongside with the kernel on the CD, this would be fine. The user has to OK this, and then the .deb is downloaded from the rep. Kernel and driver come from different sources then.

gnomeuser
November 12th, 2006, 12:44 AM
Look now... I have a laptop with ATI's "finest" :frown: Xpress 200M which has no 3d support in the oss driver and probably never will (due to the impossible reverse engineering of the hypermemory transport). So Aiglx is out of the question for me. Which means that if beryl+aiglx is to be default someday, I might be in a situation where I won't be able to install ubuntu in a "user friendly" environment - this will not bother me, but may bother first-time users with same chipset. Except it, living in the purely oss world is just a dream because some things cannot be achieved with oss.
Let it be chosen on installation what to use!

This seems to me to be a problem where you need to go to your vendor and calmly demand that they provide the X.org developers with specifications for the card. You, the customer, keep them in business - tell them that the next time you are in the market for a rig you will avoid their products in favor of ones that are supported by free software drivers. If enough people do this and also tell them why you bought the older r200/r300 based cards they will listen eventually.. it's all about hitting them where it hurts, the wallet.

prizrak
November 12th, 2006, 11:53 AM
As I said if Ubuntu wants to go more and more proprietary then that is fine with me but IMO that goes against the following parts that I quoted. I have no problem if they want to take the linspire route but I for one am not interested in yet another proprietary linux.

I'm not Mark and can't give you a definitive answer of course, my understanding of it always was that w/e cool stuff they come up with while working on Ubuntu will be released as open source and not closed up. That is their promise of a free/libre Linux distribution, doesn't mean it wouldn't include anything proprietary if it is necessary for functionality.

Since i´m not a programmer i cant speak about the security factor, but there other things to keep in mind, i for one own an Ati Radeon 9250 (yes i use the open "radeon" driver) but i would like to have the option to use the fglrx one, unfortunately i cant in the newer versions of Ubuntu (6.06 and 6.10) because my GPU is no longer supported by the news fglrx releases (and there is no fglrx-legacy or something like that).

What about my freedom to use which version of the kernel/xorg i would like? if binary drivers makers would sign an legal agreement saying they would open up the drivers when they stopped supporting the hardware i would be fine with that, but this way having a binary driver today does not mean that it will work tomorrow.

Ubuntu is not the only distro around there are many others that do things differently. You can easily install different kernels in Ubuntu and also don't have to stick to official repositories, you might argue that it kinda defies the point of Ubuntu but it's not reasonable to expect them to provide support for everything. I'm sure if you care you can find the binary driver for your Radeon.

What about if the users want to eat their cake and also keep it? What about if you can give people binary-only hardware support now but giving it would mean that you can't give any hardware support later on because the company in question may stop providing the binary drivers? What if you have to choose between a mediocre short-term support and a good long-term support?

Did the community stop developing open drivers for both ATI and nVidia? I personally was not aware of that.

What if the binary drivers are buggy? What if there are security problems with the binary drivers?
It's called testing and is actually covered in the spec if you cared to read it.

How are you then going to give people what they want?

It is also covered in the spec, the installer will choose whether the hardware will work fine with the software.

What people want is not always necessarily what they need.
I prefer to leave it up to the people to decide, as it of now it seems that most people prefer the binary drivers (you can scan the forum and prove me wrong).

What you (and others) seem to fail to realise is that it's all about the defaults. By default Ubuntu will ship with Beryl and proprietary drivers installed, if you don't like it you have the option of installing the free stuff. This default was created as a response to Novell, RedHat and Mandriva's defaults. Ubuntu is also a newbie friendly distro so they don't want to make it harder on users than it has to be.

Lord Illidan
November 12th, 2006, 12:09 PM
I think a dialog box would be good.

Personally, I am pro freedom, but where it is absolutely impractical to be all open source, then I welcome closed source alternatives. I bought an nvidia card to play games on Linux better. With opensource nv drivers, I cannot play any 3D games effectively...so I use the nvidia drivers, and they work quite well.

If you want everything opensource, go to GNewSense or code 3D opensource Nvidia drivers.

Lord Illidan
November 12th, 2006, 12:13 PM
What about if the users want to eat their cake and also keep it? What about if you can give people binary-only hardware support now but giving it would mean that you can't give any hardware support later on because the company in question may stop providing the binary drivers? What if you have to choose between a mediocre short-term support and a good long-term support?

What if the binary drivers are buggy? What if there are security problems with the binary drivers?

How are you then going to give people what they want?

What people want is not always necessarily what they need.

So you are going to tell me what I need. Come on, be serious. I want Nvidia drivers...and if I am going to use Beryl or any 3D games, I need them too...unless you want to code a better nv driver.

If the company in question stops producing binary drivers? What if the dev team of the nv drivers stops? I think the latter is for more likely, as they are unpaid, and not getting any real results.

jc87
November 12th, 2006, 02:46 PM
Ubuntu is not the only distro around there are many others that do things differently. You can easily install different kernels in Ubuntu and also don't have to stick to official repositories, you might argue that it kinda defies the point of Ubuntu but it's not reasonable to expect them to provide support for everything. I'm sure if you care you can find the binary driver for your Radeon.

Yes, but the fact is that binary drivers LIMIT my options, let us say for example i buy a new device for my pc which works great with the kernel (open specs and such) but support was only added at the version 2.6.18, and the binary driver only works with lower versions, that means i have to be moving around kernels each time i want to use one of them, and if i need to use both at once (let us say one is the modem, other the GPU, and i want to play quake online).

And screwing around with xorg would be even worst, because if i wanted the eyecandy at the new versions and required binary driver that does not support them (lucky for me the open driver does support it in my case).

So yes i could make the binary driver "work", but there are several reasons why i just prefer the open ones.

lux
November 12th, 2006, 03:15 PM
Originally Posted by Lord Illidan
So you are going to tell me what I need. Come on, be serious.
I'm telling you that you may want the binary drivers now but what you actually need is better open source drivers because this would allow Ubuntu developers (and other open source developers) to fix and improve the drivers whenever there is need for fixing and improving them. Does this make any sense to you?

It is possible, even likely, that we don't get proper open source drivers as long as the most influential distros are happily shipping binary-only drivers. Is this what you really want?

I'm also saying that distro developers should consider carefully what their users need instead of what they happen to voice out because the developers are often better aware of the various potential consequences and, hence, they might be in a better position than most users to make informed decisions.

If the developers always listened to those newbie requests that say "I want everything that MS Windows has and I want it now," then Linux might end up even worse than MS Windows. But there is a better way to improve Linux and to make it much better than MS Windows, and this better way is called Open Source.

For the further reference, please read the "doomsday scenario" that Ubuntu's BinaryDriverEducation page links to.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation
http://ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0512.0/0972.html

jc87
November 12th, 2006, 03:36 PM
I'm telling you that you may want the binary drivers now but what you actually need is better open source drivers because this would allow Ubuntu developers (and other open source developers) to fix and improve the drivers whenever there is need for fixing and improving them. Does this make any sense to you?

It is possible, even likely, that we don't get proper open source drivers as long as the most influential distros are happily shipping binary-only drivers. Is this what you really want?

I'm also saying that distro developers should consider carefully what their users need instead of what they happen to voice out because the developers are often better aware of the various potential consequences and, hence, they might be in a better position than most users to make informed decisions.

If the developers always listened to those newbie requests that say "I want everything that MS Windows has and I want it now," then Linux might end up even worse than MS Windows. But there is a better way to improve Linux and to make it much better than MS Windows, and this better way is called Open Source.

For the further reference, please read the "doomsday scenario" that Ubuntu's BinaryDriverEducation page links to.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation
http://ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0512.0/0972.html

Dont forget this doomsday scenario (http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/wp-content/ep029.jpg)

Quirky
November 12th, 2006, 04:39 PM
I think it's a bit sad that Ubuntu are shipping binary video drivers. I can't help but feel that we are at the top of a slippery slope. Ubuntu is arguably the most popular distro at the moment and I'm sure the other big distros will follow Ubuntu's lead, then the doomsday scenario (http://ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0512.0/0972.html) would become closer to reality. Ease of use is great, but freedom is better. Is it worth risking our freedom for some wobbly windows?


As long as Ubuntu does ship proprietary drivers in the short term, we should take steps to improve the situation in the long term.
From BinaryDriverEducation (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation)

Once Ubuntu starts shipping binary drivers I doubt that there is any hope of going back. It may only be "the short term" but these things have a habit of sticking. Wouldn't it be better to try and fix the bugs in the open ati/nv drivers? With a growing installed user base of FOSS drivers the developers would have more information to work with for one thing, binary drivers by default could serve to halt this trend.

The only good news is that the tainted kernel will be unsupported by upstream, so hopefully this will cause a flood of unanswerable/unmanageable Ubuntu bug-reports by binary-blob-users that'll make Canonical think twice for feisty+1. But I doubt it.

Maybe it's time to think about using a different distro :(

Lord Illidan
November 12th, 2006, 04:44 PM
I'm telling you that you may want the binary drivers now but what you actually need is better open source drivers because this would allow Ubuntu developers (and other open source developers) to fix and improve the drivers whenever there is need for fixing and improving them. Does this make any sense to you?


That's better. If people can make better open source drivers, than power to them, I'd take open source drivers even if they were 10% less efficient than binary drivers.

But seriously, just because Ubuntu ships with nvidia drivers, does it mean that people need to switch distros??? Why?

And what about wifi closed source drivers? Without them, you don't get at least some performance (like nv drivers) but absolutely nothing. What do you say about that?

jc87
November 12th, 2006, 05:07 PM
That's better. If people can make better open source drivers, than power to them, I'd take open source drivers even if they were 10% less efficient than binary drivers.

But seriously, just because Ubuntu ships with nvidia drivers, does it mean that people need to switch distros??? Why?

And what about wifi closed source drivers? Without them, you don't get at least some performance (like nv drivers) but absolutely nothing. What do you say about that?

The reason why open source drivers are currently behind is because those drivers developers don't get support from the respective hardware makers ( the code of the driver, or the hardware specs so they cant write their own driver), we need to show hardware makers that there is a bonus open-sourcing the drivers, and that will hardly happen if we ship the binary drivers by default.

I´m not against use of binary drivers, anyone is free to use them, and they can using the non-free repo (which isn´t that hard), but for default they are a wrong idea.

deanlinkous
November 12th, 2006, 06:20 PM
This default was created as a response to Novell, RedHat and Mandriva's defaults.

IF it is true that Ubuntu wants to create something that compares with those then I would like to point out that those are proprietary corporate distros and each of those have a "free" community project or release as well. So if this is the route Ubuntu is taking then shouldn't it also do the same?


Ubuntu is also a newbie friendly distro so they don't want to make it harder on users than it has to be.
Sounds like linspire. Are we running as root next? Got to make it easy, right?

kripkenstein
November 12th, 2006, 06:34 PM
if the ubuntu want to add the drivers there is nothing that any of us can do.

Sure there is, we can talk to them about it. We can vote in this poll, which perhaps some of them will see. You never know.

IYY
November 12th, 2006, 07:06 PM
Even though Freedom is very important for me, I'm going to say 'yes', as long as it's an informed decision and it's still possible to install the free alternatives. The people who would choose to use the nonfree drivers will install them anyway, and will appreciate the simplicity of having it done automatically.

Besides, the graphical improvements from such drivers are currently very impressive, and users should be able to see that out of the box (I'm not only talking about Beryl; even Metacity is much smoother with the new nvidia driver.)

prizrak
November 12th, 2006, 07:11 PM
Yes, but the fact is that binary drivers LIMIT my options, let us say for example i buy a new device for my pc which works great with the kernel (open specs and such) but support was only added at the version 2.6.18, and the binary driver only works with lower versions, that means i have to be moving around kernels each time i want to use one of them, and if i need to use both at once (let us say one is the modem, other the GPU, and i want to play quake online).

You run the same exact risks with open drivers, I for one ran into that problem back when I was using RH 6.2 my soundcard and modem would conflict (worked well in Windows). It's possible to get the binary driver to cooperate and it is possible to rewrite the FOSS driver but as you said you are not a programmer so you have to rely on someone else to do it for you anyway.

It is possible, even likely, that we don't get proper open source drivers as long as the most influential distros are happily shipping binary-only drivers.Both impossible and unlikely, ATI hasn't shipped decent drivers till about a year ago and the FOSS driver still wasn't all that good. Truth is that when it comes to hardware that advanced, reverse engineering is almost impossible.

The reason why open source drivers are currently behind is because those drivers developers don't get support from the respective hardware makers ( the code of the driver, or the hardware specs so they cant write their own driver), we need to show hardware makers that there is a bonus open-sourcing the drivers, and that will hardly happen if we ship the binary drivers by default.
When it comes to ATI and nVidia it will never happen, simple truth of it is that in that business the drivers are the differentiation point. The hardware is by and large the same in terms of raw power/performance at least. The firmware and the drivers are what makes them so different. Intel can open their drivers because on the video market they have almost no competition and when it comes to networking then there really isn't any difference in drivers/hardware. There is also the little issue of software limiting, for instance some time ago you could turn a GeForce (consumer) card into a Quadro (pro) card with a software hack.

IF it is true that Ubuntu wants to create something that compares with those then I would like to point out that those are proprietary corporate distros and each of those have a "free" community project or release as well. So if this is the route Ubuntu is taking then shouldn't it also do the same?There is no IF about it, if you care to read the spec it actually spells it out quite clearly. So you want Ubuntu to create a Cubuntu (corporate Ubuntu) that is sold at a premium?

Sounds like linspire. Are we running as root next? Got to make it easy, right?Reductio ad absurdum..... Why is it with all of your arguments there is no middle ground? Yes Ubuntu is deciding to ship with a certain default that RIGHT NOW makes sense. You don't seem to have a problem with binary wi-fi drivers that are part of Ubuntu so why video? Yes sure there are open source drivers, that reduce the functionality of any more or less powerful ATI/nVidia card to that of an integrate Intel chipset (while Intel cards are nice they don't exactly have much performance). Also as said time and time again, this is default behavior that can be changed. They can ship it as it is now and make me install Beryl and the binary drivers, and in case of nVidia edit xorg.conf to get wobbly windows or they can ship it with Beryl and binary drivers and make me (if I care) install the nv/ati driver.

finalbeta
November 13th, 2006, 02:46 PM
I just read this Report from the Ubuntu Developer Summit: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/11/10/168227 . I personally also feel like it's selling out.

The drivers should not be included by default, it should however be a hell of allot easier to get them to run once it's installed. This would be easy for the end user, while still making a statement to the hardware vendors.

I reported a bug in the fglrx drivers some time ago on launchpad. Nothing will happen to it... ATI doesn't care. And by including the drivers by default, we say that that is just fine.

Someone also made a statement in this thread that only network drivers should be open sourced, since video card drivers are not an issue for security. Tell that to nvidea users that had a root exploit that was reported in 2004 and was only recently fixed. http://kerneltrap.org/node/7228

This is plain BAD.

jc87
November 13th, 2006, 03:22 PM
The Jedis are going to feel this one!

Sorry but out of the box eyecandy is not a "killer feature", i installed beryl a while ago, it runs great but after a while i just got tired of it.

People say we need eyecandy to compete with Vista? BS, Ubuntu gold is not to be an windows substitute, but yes just an quality OS freely available to anyone.

Users say we need to offer binary drivers for default? BS, developers are the ones to make the decisions, users are free to contribute but they are not the ones to decide, why not just run as root for default, offer non-free codecs, ignore the permissions thing (because is too hard sometimes change a file permissions) and so on.... If users were the ones to decide probably many of that stuff would be actually on Ubuntu.

And what about other important specs that will actually make an difference? the community is asking GUI´s for configuring XORG and GRUB as long as i can remember using Ubuntu (started at version 5.04), in this specific case a GUI for XORG that would allow install video binary drivers without problems would be just a better solution than making them default.


There's a time for philosophy and a time for reality

What is Ubuntu without his philosophy? committed to the free software principals only when convenient?

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

We need to encourage non-binary drivers usage, period! If companies don't want to open them up fine, that means they don't get the benefits, sure users will be the ones to "pay", but is by paying for things we start to give them their respective value.

Also Ubuntu already gives good binary drivers support, for instance Fedora Core devs don't give a crap about making sure blobs work with Fedora or not.

shining
November 13th, 2006, 04:30 PM
What is Ubuntu without his philosophy? committed to the free software principals only when convenient?


Isn't it already the case? Or, what do you mean exactly?
In any case, Ubuntu's philosophy is probably different than gNewSense one, otherwise gNewSense wouldn't have been created, would it?

jc87
November 13th, 2006, 05:12 PM
Isn't it already the case? Or, what do you mean exactly?
In any case, Ubuntu's philosophy is probably different than gNewSense one, otherwise gNewSense wouldn't have been created, would it?

The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

These freedoms make Ubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.

Ubuntu traditionally lets users use whatever software they want (free or not) by apt-get, but the goal is to be free by default, if someone wants to apt proprietary stuff is up to them, but bundling them by default just go against the principles of Ubuntu.

PatrickMay16
November 13th, 2006, 06:04 PM
I understand how you guys feel. I, too, used to complain about binary drivers. But since then, I have learned the true pow0r of closed software, and you can too.

Using binary drivers increments your freedom by 100,0000%, but Stallman does not want you to know this. They call it "GNU's not unix" for a reason; GNU is not UNIX, and this is infringing on our UNIX FREEDOM. But binary drivers have UNIX embedded within, and you become attractive and popular with women if you use them.

I know what you're thinking. "How can this be possible? If you cannot see the source-code, then freedom is limited." A common misconception. Let me show you this graph:

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/1306/graphcf7.png

As you see, with the increasing amount of binary drivers, freedom has skyrocketed.

DoctorMO
November 13th, 2006, 06:16 PM
You missed a metric

prizrak
November 13th, 2006, 06:26 PM
Sorry but out of the box eyecandy is not a "killer feature", i installed beryl a while ago, it runs great but after a while i just got tired of it.
Perhaps to you or me it makes no difference whatsoever (yes it does get quite annoying after a bit) but for someone who is looking to switch from Windows it might. Even look at it this way "Vista can do this, but Ubuntu can't. Who knows what else it's missing, I don't want to try it". See the issue?

Someone also made a statement in this thread that only network drivers should be open sourced, since video card drivers are not an issue for security. Tell that to nvidea users that had a root exploit that was reported in 2004 and was only recently fixed. http://kerneltrap.org/node/7228

This is plain BAD.
If you read the description it says that it requires either local access or remote X login or X client visiting a malicious website. So it is easy to protect against such a security vulnerability (you also assume open drivers have no such problem, which is quite untrue). My point about networking drivers was rooter in the fact that it is damn near impossible to protect against a hole there as firewalls work on higher ISO layer than drivers.

DoctorMO
November 13th, 2006, 06:29 PM
The difference is that if anything went wrong the community could fix open sourced drivers.

if nVidia went bust we'd be in the fecies.

prizrak
November 13th, 2006, 06:33 PM
This is going in circles so I'm just going to make my final point. The choice here is the following:
1) Stay 100% ideologically pure and risk going the HURD way (I mean Linux in general not just Ubuntu), with no 3rd party giving a damn about the OS and having to reverse engineer just about every little piece of hardware.
2) Allow for certain compromises and gain a significant enough market share to make a difference.

Simple fact is that with wider adoption of Linux you will see more 3rd party support and those 3rd parties might not be interested in FOSS ideology and will provide products based on their own "ideology". I also believe that once Linux achieves a significant enough market share it can force ISV/OEM's to open up their specs as it stands right now we can turn away from closed source and achieve nothing.

prizrak
November 13th, 2006, 06:36 PM
The difference is that if anything went wrong the community could fix open sourced drivers.

if nVidia went bust we'd be in the fecies.

I guess I will make this my last response. nVidia going bust does not automagically remove all the drivers you have installed. It also means that no new cards will be released so you won't need newer drivers. It would in turn mean that the community can reverse engineer everything (not to mention that bigger Linux distro's with money could buy their IP). In a 2 years after nVidia goes bust you will not be able to find a GFX card based on their reference design.

Lord Illidan
November 13th, 2006, 06:39 PM
The difference is that if anything went wrong the community could fix open sourced drivers.

if nVidia went bust we'd be in the fecies.

Gah, NVIDIA is going quite well now, and we still can't make a decent driver!

Personally, I think the user should decide what to install on his computer. Because that's freedom, where I am concerned. The freedom to do what I like on my pc, not the developer's freedom to do what they like on my pc. That's Microsoft, Sony, and Apple, not Linux.

Now, about the "root" debacle, Ubuntu already solved that with sudo, so why open that can of worms? The point is "Should people be allowed to install binary drivers by default, Y/N?" I say Y, and the OS should make it as easy as it can to let me do what I want. Currently, if I give a noob an Ubuntu CD, I am not sure whether he will know how to use Synaptic to download nvidia drivers. And whether he will be bothered to check on the internet/google is another matter entirely. And Nvidia's installation program is not as userfriendly as they can make it, neither.

Miguel
November 13th, 2006, 06:54 PM
2 years after nVidia goes bust you will not be able to find a GFX card based on their reference design.

Sorry for stepping in late. One minor kernel release after nVidia has gone bankrupt their drivers might no longer work. One X.org release and their drivers won't work.

While I understand nearly 100% of nVidia users install the proprietary driver as soon as they can (ATi X1000 users are in a worse position, as their option is vesa), I also understand that Beryl, compiz or anything 3D related is not critical for system operation. You can still use X. It is *very* different from network cards (wireless or otherwise). Accepting fglrx or nvidia by default is re-entering their game. And won't convince AMD to release specs, code or anything.

DoctorMO
November 13th, 2006, 06:54 PM
Personally, I think the user should decide what to install on his computer. Because that's freedom, where I am concerned. The freedom to do what I like on my pc, not the developer's freedom to do what they like on my pc. That's Microsoft, Sony, and Apple, not Linux.

At the expense of everyone else in the community. and it doesn't mean as programmers we have to care if anything goes wrong. as far as we're concerned you turned your back of the free software developers so you should go buy your friends at xcorp a new merc should your computer have issues.

Programmers are free too, and ditching people who creating the software you use for gratis will not put you in a good position in the future. unless you want to become a programmer yourself which is fine.

duffman25
November 13th, 2006, 07:54 PM
It will be. Intel and ATI cards up to the X800 are now OOTB 3D-capable.

mmm

you mean that my x700 ati card has 3d acceleration with xorg's radeon driver?

thanks

deanlinkous
November 13th, 2006, 08:07 PM
This is going in circles so I'm just going to make my final point. The choice here is the following:
1) Stay 100% ideologically pure and risk going the HURD way (I mean Linux in general not just Ubuntu), with no 3rd party giving a damn about the OS and having to reverse engineer just about every little piece of hardware.
2) Allow for certain compromises and gain a significant enough market share to make a difference.

Simple fact is that with wider adoption of Linux you will see more 3rd party support and those 3rd parties might not be interested in FOSS ideology and will provide products based on their own "ideology". I also believe that once Linux achieves a significant enough market share it can force ISV/OEM's to open up their specs as it stands right now we can turn away from closed source and achieve nothing.

How the HURD comes in I have no idea but you sure like to throw it out a lot. Sounds like you know a lot about the hurd. Oh wait, the HURD is still a work inprogress an last time i checked did not even have a sound system so why we use that to discuss binary drivers is beyond me but feel free.

I think the key difference is this - I do not care about market share. I did not choose linux because it was the latest cool thing. I am not some kid trying to show everyone how l33t I am because I run linux.

Why would a wider market share allow anyone to force open the specs/drivers if everyone is already running the closed drivers. Now if we just keep on with out ideology, the marketplace is already moving toward linux adoption, then the big companies will realize either they play ball our way and benefit from it or they continue playing it their way. Realize that "their way" will fail when nobody wants their cards because they do not have a open driver.

I personally think Nvidia/ATI have played you'll like a harp. I figure they sit around joking about the pact they made to never provide open drivers. As long as one of them doesn't then their is no reason for the competition to match it. They think that with the binary drivers they can continue dropping support for older cards, forcing hardware upgrades and keep raking in piles of cash. (but that my just be my paranoia so excuse me)

deanlinkous
November 13th, 2006, 08:16 PM
Perhaps to you or me it makes no difference whatsoever (yes it does get quite annoying after a bit) but for someone who is looking to switch from Windows it might. Even look at it this way "Vista can do this, but Ubuntu can't. Who knows what else it's missing, I don't want to try it". See the issue?
If that is their criteria for evaluating linux then I would rather they stayed with windows. I choose linux for what it offers not how it compares to something else. I don't want a OS that is just trying to be a clone for the sake of being a clone.

Lord Illidan
November 13th, 2006, 08:22 PM
At the expense of everyone else in the community. and it doesn't mean as programmers we have to care if anything goes wrong. as far as we're concerned you turned your back of the free software developers so you should go buy your friends at xcorp a new merc should your computer have issues.

Don't get me wrong. I respect free software developers, otherwise I wouldn't be using Linux. But I also need to have functionality. Why do we have to be 100% one way or the other? This is not a religion. This is not...If you're not with me, you're against me. Why do we have to turn the GPL into a damn religion? I like the philosophy, but I hate the zealots.

Yep, I want to become a programmer myself, and as such that is why I like opensource, because I can see the code.
However, I also believe in compromises. If it is impossible due to market conditions to release opensource code, then remain closed source. NVIDIA cannot afford to have it's code viewable by ATI, unless it wants its secrets to be out in the open and vice versa.

Now, saying, but if NVIDIA goes bust..and...bla bla bla...that is just freakin pessimism, imho. :mrgreen:

Lord Illidan
November 13th, 2006, 08:24 PM
If that is their criteria for evaluating linux then I would rather they stayed with windows. I choose linux for what it offers not how it compares to something else. I don't want a OS that is just trying to be a clone for the sake of being a clone.

aye, but without closed source drivers, it doesn't offer that much if you like gaming :(, and then you have to use either Windows or a console, both of which are closed source.

With Windows one can do a lot of things.. I also want Linux to do a lot of things. And you have no right whatsoever to judge a guy for chosing Linux over Windows or vice versa.

MedivhX
November 13th, 2006, 08:28 PM
I don't mind including those nVidia propetary drivers in Ubuntu (but I think that nVidia and ATi should make those drivers opensource and respect Linux community at least a bit...), because nothing works without them, and opensource graphic drivers are s**t... But I do mind built in XGL/Compiz!!! I don't want neither of them...

Lord Illidan
November 13th, 2006, 08:30 PM
I don't mind including those nVidia propetary drivers in Ubuntu (but I think that nVidia and ATi should make those drivers opensource and respect Linux community at least a bit...), because nothing works without them, and opensource graphic drivers are s**t... But I do mind built in XGL/Compiz!!! I don't want neither of them...

Aye, I also want them to be opensource..but will it benefit them? They are companies, ruled by their desire for profit. If making opensource drivers is not worth the cost, then they won't do it. This is not startrek. This is real life on planet Earth, unfortunately.

DoctorMO
November 13th, 2006, 09:35 PM
Aye, I also want them to be opensource..but will it benefit them? They are companies, ruled by their desire for profit. If making opensource drivers is not worth the cost, then they won't do it. This is not startrek. This is real life on planet Earth, unfortunately.

Unfortunately I believe the companies to be the ones not seeing reality; 1) ATI and nVidia both know each other decompiles it's rivals software in order to learn it's secrets. 2) Open sourcing your drivers adds value not only in the sort term from patches but in the long run, something which your closed source competitor can't have until he shares too. 3) Both companies work together on the OpenGL standards, are we really so neive to believe there are mega amazing ways of doing the same thing that would give it's rival such an influence. 4) are we sure we're not just being led to believe this is the only way they will do thing, and that it is the best way for them to do things because they have an irrational fear?

At the end of the day it's about doing the right thing.

For ATI and nVidia it's about doing the right thing for it's customers.
For you all linux users it's about doing the right thing for the community.

If we compromise we all loose in the long term so you can get your eye candy now.

gnomeuser
November 13th, 2006, 09:37 PM
I don't mind including those nVidia propetary drivers in Ubuntu (but I think that nVidia and ATi should make those drivers opensource and respect Linux community at least a bit...), because nothing works without them, and opensource graphic drivers are s**t... But I do mind built in XGL/Compiz!!! I don't want neither of them...

You claim to want respect for the Linux community yet you proceed to mock the fantatic effort made by a grade hackers like Dave Arlie. The people you can thank for having great working 3d drivers for Radeon (* < r400), Intel, Matrox, hell even nvidia is getting a working open 3d driver to compliment the ton of well tested 2d drivers. All might (Intel aside) reverse engineered without having specs provided by vendors.. so support of proprietary drivers will gain you NOTHING in terms of respect, voting with your dollars however or vocalising your needs for specifications for the X developer to your vendor however is an entirely different thing.

So no binary drivers, it's temporary ease bought at the cost of all respect for the existing developers and the ideals that started this great system you run now.. it's not like anyone is making it extremely hard to install them manually today is it?

Lord Illidan
November 13th, 2006, 09:39 PM
Unfortunately I believe the companies to be the ones not seeing reality; 1) ATI and nVidia both know each other decompiles it's rivals software in order to learn it's secrets. 2) Open sourcing your drivers adds value not only in the sort term from patches but in the long run, something which your closed source competitor can't have until he shares too. 3) Both companies work together on the OpenGL standards, are we really so neive to believe there are mega amazing ways of doing the same thing that would give it's rival such an influence. 4) are we sure we're not just being led to believe this is the only way they will do thing, and that it is the best way for them to do things because they have an irrational fear?

At the end of the day it's about doing the right thing.

For ATI and nVidia it's about doing the right thing for it's customers.
For you all linux users it's about doing the right thing for the community.

If we compromise we all loose in the long term so you can get your eye candy now.

How about compromising a bit now so we can pile on the pressure in the long run? Right now, linux users (EDIT : who demand 3D performance) are really really few...it's amazing that they even release drivers, closed source or otherwise. When linux users increase to a point that it would be sheer foolishness to ignore their demands, then they will start taking notice.

prizrak
November 13th, 2006, 10:00 PM
How about compromising a bit now so we can pile on the pressure in the long run? Right now, linux users (EDIT : who demand 3D performance) are really really few...it's amazing that they even release drivers, closed source or otherwise. When linux users increase to a point that it would be sheer foolishness to ignore their demands, then they will start taking notice.

Actually the only reason nVidia provides their binary drivers for Linux is the renderfarms. It's actually right in their release notes/brochure for the driver. They couldn't care less about the individual user we don't buy 400 computers with Quadro's in them.

DoctorMO
November 13th, 2006, 10:05 PM
Nah we've reached that point were they need to take notice of us now. we won't be able to apply presure in the future because propritory was always good enough before.

Lord Illidan
November 13th, 2006, 10:08 PM
Nah we've reached that point were they need to take notice of us now. we won't be able to apply presure in the future because propritory was always good enough before.

They don't need to take notice of us now...unless you consider 3% marketshare to be a roaring lion.

deanlinkous
November 13th, 2006, 10:32 PM
So they don't need to take notice yet? Strange that everything from Forbes to Business Week has articles about linux. I think right now IS the exact time Linux is being noticed and one of the things it gets noticed for is the philosophy and ideology. I think that is exactly why we need to keep those things. WHo is going to notice just another proprietary OS

gnomeuser
November 14th, 2006, 12:22 AM
Here (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/) is your best not to mention only hope to get a decent, supportable driver for nvidia cards for X.org.

Instead of using the binary driver, help those guys out any way you can, they have a probing tool so you can provide data for them to use for your card. I'm sure they would enjoy even that tiny effort.

Say if every registered user here gave them a dollar to develop that driver.. one dollar per user for free drivers, it could turn into what 200.000$ ? (or more realisticly maybe 10.000$). That should be more than enough to employ someone fulltime to write the driver.

I don't even own an nvidia card but in the interest of shutting up all these "we need proprietary driver.. oh Mark please save me" posts I'll pledge let's say.. 50$. Come on people - don't sell out our roots for temporary comfort, let's show the world that we can do this!

matiastepli
November 14th, 2006, 12:32 AM
So what is next? Ubuntu being DRM compatible because it's cool (*) and convenient (*)?? Canonical making an agreement with the devil like Novell already did??. I am sorry, but I am strongly dissapointed, already.

(*) NO WAY!!!.

prizrak
November 14th, 2006, 01:38 AM
So what is next? Ubuntu being DRM compatible because it's cool (*) and convenient (*)?? Canonical making an agreement with the devil like Novell already did??. I am sorry, but I am strongly dissapointed, already.

(*) NO WAY!!!.

The Linux kernel is 100% DRM compatible. In fact if you read Torvalds's reasons to not go to v3 you will see that he feels DRM support is necessary at kernel level.

prizrak
November 14th, 2006, 01:39 AM
Here (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/) is your best not to mention only hope to get a decent, supportable driver for nvidia cards for X.org.

Instead of using the binary driver, help those guys out any way you can, they have a probing tool so you can provide data for them to use for your card. I'm sure they would enjoy even that tiny effort.

Say if every registered user here gave them a dollar to develop that driver.. one dollar per user for free drivers, it could turn into what 200.000$ ? (or more realisticly maybe 10.000$). That should be more than enough to employ someone fulltime to write the driver.

I don't even own an nvidia card but in the interest of shutting up all these "we need proprietary driver.. oh Mark please save me" posts I'll pledge let's say.. 50$. Come on people - don't sell out our roots for temporary comfort, let's show the world that we can do this!
Finally a piece of useful information, the probing tool is definetly a good idea.

AlphaMack
November 14th, 2006, 02:41 AM
I'm adding my voice to the 'let users have a choice' category knowing that ATI binary drivers have plenty of issues to be chosen by default.

matiastepli
November 14th, 2006, 03:01 AM
The Linux kernel is 100% DRM compatible. In fact if you read Torvalds's reasons to not go to v3 you will see that he feels DRM support is necessary at kernel level.

But at the time in which the GPL v2 was being developed, there was no concern about DRM. Now there is, so that's why GPL v3 development is in progress. The problem with the linux kernel sticking with GPL v2 is that it could be tivoized. As Richard Stallman says:



Torvalds disapproves of GPL v3 because he rejects its goal of protecting users' freedom from tivoization. Since we are not particularly friends, I don't think he would listen to me. I hope he will change his mind, but I don't think my talking with him is likely to achieve that result.

http://www.billxu.com/friend/rms/zeuux.rms.anti.drm.html

Buffalo Soldier
November 14th, 2006, 03:10 AM
I'm all for ease of use. But I think we should be concern with the long term ease rather than short term ease. My only fear is when this scenerio happens:

The year is 2008. Let say I have been using an Nvidia or ATI graphic card. Ubuntu has been working nicely beautifully with these graphic card using non-free binary drivers. Little or no work has been done on the free drivers for years because majority of Ubuntu and other major distro users are using the non-free drivers. No update on the free drivers (especially on latest hardware).

After years of being comfortable with Ubuntu and thinking I am proficient enough in using GNU/Linux, I decide to jump to another distro. (flashback to the wonderful experience I had when I jump to Ubuntu in 2004).

Let say I'm trying a new distro (Distro X). Everything else works perfectly fine. The distro, the work i want to do, and my hardware is like a perfect match. EXCEPT, it has a little bit of problem with my graphic card.

As usual, I go screaming at the developers of Distro X. "Why aren't your distro working with my graphic card??? Ubuntu works just fine!!!"

One of them replied, "I'm so sorry dude, nothing much we can do about that, you have to wait until Nvidia/ATI release a non-free binary driver for Distro X."

There's nothing much the developer can do. Once again i have to re-live the experience of transition of non-free closed-source OS to a free and open source OS. Held hostage by the hardware manufacturer.

I hope we all could think of the long term implication of this move. Free and open source drivers are not only for the freedom to developers, but to us as end-users.

http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/wp-content/ep029.jpg (http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/wp-content/ep029.jpg)

I want hardwares to work all the time. Not just when and where the hardware manufacturer decides it should work.

Yes, going with binary video drivers may make our life a bit easier in Ubuntu-world. But one day we may be going to another distro or another different platform (reminisence of Windows -> Linux migration). If we surrender now, we are condemning ourselves to repeat the vicious proprietary non-free cycle again.

BarfBag
November 14th, 2006, 03:20 AM
This is GREAT! Who cares if it's closed source? A lot of the closed source software available for Linux actually works better then the open source alternative (take Opera for example). Plus, face it guys - we can't live without video drivers.

DC@DR
November 14th, 2006, 06:41 AM
Check this link out, dudes: http://www.jejik.com/articles/2006/11/is_ubuntu_set_to_become_non-free. I don't know what the Ubuntu devs will decide, but I agree with the author of the article, that:

Let free be the default and let users easily override it afterwards. Not the other way around.

DarkN00b
November 14th, 2006, 07:39 AM
I voted no. To include non-free drivers would violate the Ubuntu philosophy, losing a lot of users (and no doubt gaining some in the process). I would certainly think hard about changing to another distro if the core ethic of Ubuntu was so easily thrown away.

Sam
November 14th, 2006, 07:42 AM
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/accelerated-x
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/composite-by-default

DarkN00b
November 14th, 2006, 07:48 AM
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/accelerated-x
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/composite-by-default

That sux. :mad:

kuja
November 14th, 2006, 08:12 AM
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/accelerated-x
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/composite-by-default
Essential my ****.

Pat_Primate
November 14th, 2006, 08:29 AM
I just wanted to voice my support for keeping Ubuntu Free (in all ways). I love this distribution, and it is what brought me over from windows.
I understand that people want the eye-candy (I have it running myself :P) and that video drivers are required for this. But it is not too difficult to install binary drivers on one's own
(marginally more difficult for those new to linux). And even if binary drivers are only a short arms-length away we are still sending a defiant message to the hardware companies.

Bigbluecat
November 14th, 2006, 08:45 AM
I voted no. Stick to the core ehtos of open source by default but make it really easy to enable. It is not difficult now (at least I had no issues with all the help and How To's here).

By easy I mean make it a one button preference option (select x to enable Beryl etc.). A clear warning can then be placed in the box describing the fact that proprietary closed source software will be installed.

DoctorMO
November 14th, 2006, 09:15 AM
so do we have a pledge page for nouveau? because I'll give Ł25 towards the development.

steven8
November 14th, 2006, 09:30 AM
I'll just paste my reply over from the Slippery Slope thread, which is primarily the same thing:


I think it is purely semantics. To allow the users a one-click (or so) option to enable/install the proprietary drivers and 3d doohickeys is no less righteous than having them enabled by default with a blurb about why they're bad and giving the user a one-click (or so) option to disable/unistall them.

I believe that having them there at our fingertips, yet not on by default, merely gives the 'impression' of righteousness.

This is a design decision, not an ethical decision, I believe.

The FSF distro is called gNewSense, and has been ridiculed for it's name being too close to 'Nuisance', in another thread.

DC@DR
November 14th, 2006, 10:39 AM
OK, here is the answer (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2728972720932273543) from Mark Shuttleworth @ UDS for those concerning about Ubuntu core ethics, and let's quote him:
We will use free softwares/applications only by default!.

steven8
November 14th, 2006, 10:55 AM
Here is a link to Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Wiki, which answers many questions about Ubuntu:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth

Here is an extract specifically about the future free-osity of Ubuntu:


Will Ubuntu ever demand licence fees or royalties?

No. Never. I have no interest in taking Ubuntu to join the proprietary software industry, it's a horrible business that is boring and difficult, and dying out rapidly anyway. My motivation and goal is to find a way to create a global desktop OS that is *free*, in every sense, as well as sustainable and of a quality comparable to anything you could pay for. That's what I'm trying to do, and if we fail, well then I will go and find some other project to pursue rather than get into the proprietary software business. I don't think any of the core Ubuntu developers, or much of the community, would stick around if I went loony and decided to try the latter, anyhow.

If that isn't enough for you, then you will be happy to know that Canonical has signed public undertakings with government offices to the extent that it will never introduce a "commercial" version of Ubuntu. There will never be a difference between the "commercial" product and the "free" product, as there is with Red Hat (RHEL and Fedora). Ubuntu releases will always be free.

That said if you want to pay for Ubuntu, or something that includes Ubuntu code, you probably can. There are proprietary apps that are certified for Ubuntu. Some Ubuntu-derivatives, like Impi (in which I am an investor) are targeted toward vertical markets that demand specific software, currently proprietary, which they bundle. There is already Ubuntu code in Linspire, which you can pay for (w00t!). Though Linspire is not (yet) based directly on Ubuntu, it's not infeasible that the Linspire guys figure out what a good option that would be for them sooner rather than later. There are likely to be many specialised versions of Ubuntu, under other brand names, that have commercial or proprietary features. They might have proprietary fonts or software like Impi, or add-ons or integration with services, etc. There is also likely to be quite a lot of proprietary software available for Ubuntu (there is already a fair bit - Opera for Ubuntu was announced recently, for example). But Canonical, and I myself, and the Ubuntu Community Council and Technical Board, will not produce an "Ubuntu Professional Edition ($XX.00)". There will certainly be no "Ubuntu Vista".

Iassume with or without proprietary drivers and such, Mark plans on keeping it free?

gnomeuser
November 14th, 2006, 11:05 AM
so do we have a pledge page for nouveau? because I'll give Ł25 towards the development.

There you go, I set the pledge at a meager 10 dollars and minimum requirement of 1000 pledgers. This should show if the free software community are willing to put their money where their mouths are.

http://www.pledgebank.com/nouveaudriver

gnomeuser
November 14th, 2006, 11:41 AM
The question and the thread title are not matched. You read "is Ubuntu becoming non-free" and the poll question has the opposite meaning so my answer for yes to the title will become no for the poll. This will lead to people not reading the poll options clearly and screwing the results. Please fix.

My feelings are quite clear, over my dead body will this become the default. It's a betrayal of the ideals of the community and the developers who came before us. Added to that it does not buy us anything expect temporary comfort. If you give up freedom for temporary comfort you deserve neither.

There are far better options like supporting development of supportable free drivers, feel free to see the link in my signature.

DC@DR
November 14th, 2006, 11:55 AM
It's weird that I could only change the title of the post, instead of the thread itself...Anyway to change that, so I can fix the thread title? There's no such an option, is it enabled only for mods? :(

frodon
November 14th, 2006, 12:00 PM
It's how vBulletin works, you can't change thread titles without mod rights, maybe this will change in next releases.
I changed the title for you, i guessed it's the title you wanted.

finalbeta
November 14th, 2006, 01:44 PM
I would actually take that pledge, even though I don't own nvidea. Perhaps you should take to some other project,I would like something more official/trustworthy. Did you talk to developers? How far would that money take the project?

You need some big project to support this, and then get it posted on news sites/digg etc.

AndyCooll
November 14th, 2006, 01:52 PM
I voted no to non-free drivers by default. I agree with the view that non-free drivers should be easy to install however.

I'm a pragmatist and recognise that for some folk in some scenarios proprietary software is the best option. Personally I prefer to use open-source apps wherever possible, and will choose the FOSS path over closed-source if given the choice. So I wouldn't want non-free drivers installed by default, but I'm happy if they are made easy to install at some stage.

:cool:

DC@DR
November 14th, 2006, 01:59 PM
Thanks frodon :)

kripkenstein
November 14th, 2006, 02:16 PM
Even though Freedom is very important for me, I'm going to say 'yes', as long as it's an informed decision

Maybe I don't understand you, but if you think people should make a decision, then shouldn't you have voted for option 3, rather than 'yes'?

gnomeuser
November 14th, 2006, 02:42 PM
I would actually take that pledge, even though I don't own nvidea. Perhaps you should take to some other project,I would like something more official/trustworthy. Did you talk to developers? How far would that money take the project?

You need some big project to support this, and then get it posted on news sites/digg etc.

I have not talked to anyone within the project, but I don't see why they would refuse a donation like this. If they do not want the money then the solution is simple, it's a pledge simply disband it and no money will have been lost. On the other hand if we do make 10000 USD it would at least show that the community is more than just talk which would send a message to those like Mark Shuttleworth who is willing to sell out freedom for comfort so easily. For now I think it's more important to get to 1000 pledgers. Remember you aren't actually giving any money now, just a promise that if we reach a 1000 people you will.

I'll do the legwork once we get there, have no worries.

I don't have an nvidia card either, but I understand they make up quite a big marketshare so I think it's important and worthwhile to free the users and I am perfectly willing to put my money where my mouth is.

Miguel
November 14th, 2006, 02:43 PM
Hi guys,

I'm with gnomeuser in this one: over my body. Why? Two reasons emerge. As a Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (128Mb) owner, I've also suffered the awful fglrx drivers. They not only perform badly, but also have uncorrected critical bugs and suspend/resume cycles are way safer with the free drivers. The second reason is that ATi has dropped support for every card older than a 9500. No one assures me that 9xxx cards will be supported one X.org release more.

On the other hand, I'm all for making these drivers relatively easy to install. I mean, if you do anything 3D related and you want to be productive, they are your best bet. But installed by default? That will be the day I switch to Arch.

prizrak
November 14th, 2006, 02:52 PM
matiastepli,
You get the missing point award of the year. I know the issue with GPL v3 more than I wanted to. The point that was made was the fact that Torvalds does not want to move to v3 because he feels DRM support is essential.

Buffallo Soldier,
If something works with one distro it will work with another distro. It might take more effort but it will still work. In the case of drivers they tend to work with the kernel (in the case of GFX also the X server) so you might have to use a certain version or create a patch that would basically fool it into working but it will work.

MedivhX
November 14th, 2006, 02:57 PM
(...)So no binary drivers, it's temporary ease bought at the cost of all respect for the existing developers and the ideals that started this great system you run now.. it's not like anyone is making it extremely hard to install them manually today is it?

Huh... You want to say that I shouldn't use propietary drvers??? Well if they wouldn't exist I would be on Linux only 1 day (and then I would delete it)... Without those drivers, I'can't play these (stupid) linux games, I can't watch movies normally, I can't even view web pages normally... I don't need a system can't do anything that it has (needs) to do...

DoctorMO
November 14th, 2006, 03:01 PM
uh... You want to say that I shouldn't use propietary drvers??? Well if they wouldn't exist I would be on Linux only 1 day (and then I would delete it)... Without those drivers, I'can't play these (stupid) linux games, I can't watch movies normally, I can't even view web pages normally... I don't need a system can't do anything that it has (needs) to do...

Then you shouldn't have a) bought crappy unsupported hardware or b) bought crappy baddly supported hardware.

gnomeuser I've signed the pledge could you add a new thread, I'll put it on gentoo forums, can someone get debian forums? lets get this party started.

raublekick
November 14th, 2006, 03:59 PM
i am concerned about this issue for several reasons. first let me say that if i could get the nvidia driver working, i would use it, but i don't think it should be included by default.

ubuntu is in a position where it can give the people what they want AND provide a fully free operating system. it's the same idea as allowing an easy way to install codecs, but not have them installed by default. why do people use Ubuntu? because it's free or because it has proprietary drivers installed by default? i will concede that i am glad it has some proprietary stuff installed, like wireless drivers, but i also use other distros that don't, and i have been able to get things working by hand. video drivers aren't nearly as complicated to install, however.

also, my card is supported for the nvidia driver, but it just does not work. i don't know why but i have spent countless hours trying to get it to work with no luck, just a black screen. will the Ubuntu installer recognize my card as a supported card? i think it will, but it will not work. this is really why i think there should at best be an option by default.

i honestly question anyone what the necessity of proprietary drivers is. have you ever used Windows without video drivers? Windows is unusable without them. i have been using the free drivers in Ubuntu for several months with absolutely no problem other than the lack of 3D acceleration. my computer works just fine, i just can't play 3D games or have cool window effects, neither of which are necessary for a working system. i repeat: the free drivers provide everything you NEED.

The Grum
November 14th, 2006, 04:13 PM
Writing our own drivers is not going to solve things in the long term either. Its a medium term solution which says to the hardware companies we accept being ignored, because we will not only continue to buy their hardware, we will also figure out how it works and write the drivers (so they dont have to). Theres still demand for their card at no additional effort to them, so why should they change?

Next upgrade, I will probably go with Intel's (open-sourced) products (and buy a Wii for gaming). I'll write to ATI and NVidia and tell them why they wont get any money from me. That might get their attention if enough of us do it.

Id settle for a basic Free 3D driver from NVidia - enough to use the basic features that Beryl needs, but not the ones that Doom 3 needs. Until then, whats the problem with making it easy for me set up my NVidia card to play UT2004 using the only driver available?

jc87
November 14th, 2006, 04:26 PM
Writing our own drivers is not going to solve things in the long term either. Its a medium term solution which says to the hardware companies we accept being ignored, because we will not only continue to buy their hardware, we will also figure out how it works and write the drivers (so they dont have to). Theres still demand for their card at no additional effort to them, so why should they change?

Next upgrade, I will probably go with Intel's (open-sourced) products (and buy a Wii for gaming). I'll write to ATI and NVidia and tell them why they wont get any money from me. That might get their attention if enough of us do it.

Id settle for a basic Free 3D driver from NVidia - enough to use the basic features that Beryl needs, but not the ones that Doom 3 needs. Until then, whats the problem with making it easy for me set up my NVidia card to play UT2004 using the only driver available?

Nobody is saying you cant have/use the binary drivers, after all Ubuntu does offer them by the non-free repositories, Ubuntu even does a better job supporting them than other distros like Fedora Core (for which i have read they are broken by default), they just should not be offered by default going against all the freedoms that Ubuntu stands for.

timbobsteve
November 14th, 2006, 04:27 PM
Binary drivers should be an option at install time. A step 7 that says "Do you want binary Video drivers? [Yes/No]".... that would solve it all. Might not be easy to implement, but it would solve all the problems and arguing. I don't think that users shoul HAVE to use binary drivers... or even have to remove them after install.. it should be a choice, like most other facets of Linux/OSS.

Also, I think community written drivers are great, as long as the company who makes the hardware has open-sourced the specs so the devs can write proper drivers for it. Nvidia/ATI need not spend time writing extra drivers for Linux if they don't want to, they just need to open up the specs for their card. Then the community would do the rest. This also involves no sharing of binary driver code or trade secrets for the company in question, all they need to give us is the specs for the devices... then 3D would be supported by community written drivers.

gnomeuser
November 14th, 2006, 04:32 PM
Nobody is saying you cant have/use the binary drivers, after all Ubuntu does offer them by the non-free repositories, Ubuntu even does a better job supporting them than other distros like Fedora Core (for which i have read they are broken by default), they just should not be offered by default going against all the freedoms that Ubuntu stands for.

The nvidia driver is not broken nor is it hard to install them. Just like with Ubuntu you have to enable a repo whuch has these legally dubious things like nvidia/ati drivers, libdvdcss, mp3 support, etc. Then the drivers are available at your fingertips.

The Grum
November 14th, 2006, 04:57 PM
From the hardware manufacturers' point of view, I dont see the difference between including the drivers in a repository and including them by default. Their driver is still being used. The only result is its harder for new users to get their hardware working (especially wireless).

Projects like nouveau (best of luck to them, by the way!) will replace the binary drivers when they are ready - and it should be a drop-in replacement. Until then, we have either no 3D or proprietary 3D. I would imagine 99% of users would want 3D, so why not have it enabled by default? In general, the people who definitely dont want non-Free drivers are those who have the ability to replace them with Free alternatives.

I dont see this as welcoming non-Free drivers with open arms. The wiki page made it clear that Free alternatives should be used if available.

DoctorMO
November 14th, 2006, 05:29 PM
It isn't just that their available but that they're free. if we get used to propritory drivers no one will be willing to commit volenteer time to getting free versions made.

prizrak
November 14th, 2006, 07:00 PM
Binary drivers should be an option at install time. A step 7 that says "Do you want binary Video drivers? [Yes/No]".... that would solve it all. Might not be easy to implement, but it would solve all the problems and arguing. I don't think that users shoul HAVE to use binary drivers... or even have to remove them after install.. it should be a choice, like most other facets of Linux/OSS.
And if the people here that are arguing their asses off cared enough to read BOTH of the specs they would realise that it is EXACTLY what the plan is. It will say that it can install binary drivers, explain why it's a bad thing and give you the option.

prizrak
November 14th, 2006, 07:08 PM
It isn't just that their available but that they're free. if we get used to propritory drivers no one will be willing to commit volenteer time to getting free versions made.
Please, this has been addressed years ago. Here is a good example. ATI drivers, up until very recently we had no proprietary driver and the FOSS driver was still very basic.

chaosgeisterchen
November 14th, 2006, 07:09 PM
It would be fine seeing them included. But it's breaking with the principle of open source so I doubt that it will find good reputation to do so throughout all the ubuntu community.

MedivhX
November 14th, 2006, 07:15 PM
Then you shouldn't have a) bought crappy unsupported hardware or b) bought crappy baddly supported hardware.

Huhhhhh... So that should mean that i should change my VGA??? What if I don't want to??? What if I don't have enough money??? You can't say some stupid thing like that... Shouldn't Linux support even the stupidest computer???

DoctorMO
November 14th, 2006, 07:38 PM
MedivhX - Linux as a kernel doesn't support most ati or nvidia cards, so i guess it should but it doesn't. but it's on the to do list.

Should programmers stop adding support because ati and nvidia got off their backsides and did propritory drivers? hell no. if it's not free it's not good enough.

prizrak
November 14th, 2006, 09:44 PM
MedivhX - Linux as a kernel doesn't support most ati or nvidia cards, so i guess it should but it doesn't. but it's on the to do list.

Should programmers stop adding support because ati and nvidia got off their backsides and did propritory drivers? hell no. if it's not free it's not good enough.

As far as I know no one said they would. Perhaps RedHat and Novell won't be doing that but there are enough Free software minded people will keep working on the drivers. One thing to realize is that the free drivers for both ATI and nVidia will always lag behind and not be as good. Simple truth is that neither will open their drivers, it's the drivers that provide differentiation not the hardware.

DoctorMO
November 14th, 2006, 10:34 PM
prizrak, then they really need to pick a new business model because eventualy the free drivers _will_ eat them for breakfast providing stable 3d drivers for both cards which is integrated into the system or add on some proprietory gunk that opens your computer to security threats and isn't as integrated into the system.

No one will care that the free drivers don't provide hardware accelerated 3d cross shading which is 0.3 pico seconds faster. you never know the free drivers may end up faster. being gpl neither nvidia or ati could take the code without ending up in court too.

Being behind in the driver market has always been about getting the first level of support in position. patches for newer hardware come very quickly afterwards.

givré
November 14th, 2006, 11:13 PM
Two points :
- The forum is not where the decision are made. Talking with no end on this forum has few effect on the final decision.
- All is transparent, if you disagree on a spec just add a comment.

Read the spec (lot's of things just changed due to the comments)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX
Comment on it :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX/Comments

jc87
November 14th, 2006, 11:17 PM
Two points :
- The forum is not where the decision are made. Talking with no end on this forum has few effect on the final decision.
- All is transparent, if you disagree on a spec just add a comment.

Read the spec (lot's of things just changed due to the comments)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX
Comment on it :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX/Comment

Actually was moved to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX/Comments ;) , using just comments gives an non-existent page.

givré
November 14th, 2006, 11:56 PM
Actually was moved to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AcceleratedX/Comments ;) , using just comments gives an non-existent page.
Wha, i'm dumb :rolleyes: , thanks.

Buffalo Soldier
November 15th, 2006, 12:05 AM
Buffallo Soldier,
If something works with one distro it will work with another distro. It might take more effort but it will still work. In the case of drivers they tend to work with the kernel (in the case of GFX also the X server) so you might have to use a certain version or create a patch that would basically fool it into working but it will work.That's exactly why I'm against it.

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 12:21 AM
prizrak, then they really need to pick a new business model because eventualy the free drivers _will_ eat them for breakfast providing stable 3d drivers for both cards which is integrated into the system or add on some proprietory gunk that opens your computer to security threats and isn't as integrated into the system.

No one will care that the free drivers don't provide hardware accelerated 3d cross shading which is 0.3 pico seconds faster. you never know the free drivers may end up faster. being gpl neither nvidia or ati could take the code without ending up in court too.

Being behind in the driver market has always been about getting the first level of support in position. patches for newer hardware come very quickly afterwards.
I don't think you are understanding what I'm saying. The free drivers won't eat up anything, reverse engineering is an extremely difficult process considering the complexity of the hardware involved. Hell after 6 years we still don't have reliable NTFS writing and that stayed the same unlike the video hardware. Also if the drivers are GPL then both nVidia and ATI would be able to benefit from each others tricks. The point is not that one would steal another's code and not give it back, the point is that the only thing that makes a difference between ATI and nVidia is the drivers, the hardware is similar enough to be ignored.

That's exactly why I'm against it.
My point was only that your thought experiment is wrong :)

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 02:02 AM
:roll:

afonic
November 15th, 2006, 03:37 AM
I think this could be quite easy IMO:

Install wizard, extra step:
1) Install 3D Desktop (mpla mpla mpla, binary, stability, hardware etc)
2) Install Default Desktop

End of story.

tzulberti
November 15th, 2006, 05:08 AM
Wasn't Koraraa XGL edition down because of this??

Miguel
November 15th, 2006, 10:16 AM
Hi prizrak,


Also if the drivers are GPL then both nVidia and ATI would be able to benefit from each others tricks.

In this case, I think it's the consumer who benefits. Does this affect windows? I'm not sure. You just have to see the difference between nVidia in windows an linux (pretty small except in SLI) and then compare it to ATi. If ATi cards perform similarly to nVidia in Windows, why are these so crappy in linux? Why are X1000 cards unable to outperform X800's? It is not correct to assume that Windows solutions work for linux (or otherwise).

Just one more thing: until recently the free drivers were 7 times faster than fglrx in 2D. Reverse engineering is tough, but writing drivers is way easier when you have some kind of specs.

easytiger
November 15th, 2006, 10:21 AM
I think an Issue has to be addressed with regard to GNU/Linux running ATI hardware. It would be foolish to choose ATI hardware knowing its poor quality support on Linux.

I think for one thing NVidia and ATI need to be presured to open source their drivers, or to at least work much more closely with communities.

I'm sure the first of the companies to do so will be well received by the Linux userbase.

Miguel
November 15th, 2006, 10:27 AM
It would be foolish to choose ATI hardware knowing its poor quality support on Linux.

Mmmm... it might not be that foolish. If you buy a X800 graphics card, you will get 3D acceleration and composite with the free radeon driver (as long as you don't install fglrx). It sucks to support ATi by buying their cards but the fact is that the older X series are the fastest cards with free drivers. Of course, if you buy up to date hardware, ATi is a no-no (X1000 only work with vesa or fglrx).

joshier
November 15th, 2006, 10:36 AM
Doh, I voted yes, I meant to vote 'choice' :)

steven8
November 15th, 2006, 10:37 AM
legally dubious things like nvidia/ati drivers

I wouldn't say these are legally dubious since I purchased a geforce fx 5200 card. I didn't steal it. I can download drivers for it from the nvidia site for the rest of my life once I've purchased the card.

n6mod
November 15th, 2006, 10:37 AM
To me, the appeal of Ubuntu has always been that it's slightly less zealous about Capital-F-Freedom, and more pragmatic about delivering something that works.

Witness the recent Iceweasel silliness; in the end Ubuntu not only shipped Firefox, but they shipped with the official artwork.

As such, I voted yes. While it's unfortunate that we're in a world with binary drivers (and we are starting to see the security implications of that), that is where we are today. I don't see enabling them by default to be a blow to Freedom or acceptance of the status quo.

uNmentaLogic
November 15th, 2006, 10:58 AM
To me, the appeal of Ubuntu has always been that it's slightly less zealous about Capital-F-Freedom, and more pragmatic about delivering something that works.

Witness the recent Iceweasel silliness; in the end Ubuntu not only shipped Firefox, but they shipped with the official artwork.

As such, I voted yes. While it's unfortunate that we're in a world with binary drivers (and we are starting to see the security implications of that), that is where we are today. I don't see enabling them by default to be a blow to Freedom or acceptance of the status quo.
I agree with you, to some extent. I voted for giving people the choice to include the driver on installation, for the simple fact that not all drivers work properly or as some people have mentioned they use alternate drivers (r300).

Breepee
November 15th, 2006, 10:59 AM
Yes, I'm all for it. Ubuntu is about it's users, also the ones that aren't tech savvy (even though I think Synaptic is the easiest way to install software ever, not everyone will understand, let alone configuring drivers).

KnevetS
November 15th, 2006, 10:59 AM
I just installed ubuntu yesterday, and I caught the poll on digg.

Personally, I'm still having some difficulty getting the ATI drivers working correctly. It looks from my searching that many others have also had difficulty. It seems to be the luck of the draw in my searching as to where the most useful information is. Not too much of a bother for me since I'm a nerd, but I think that having the binary drivers in there by default will help the propogation of linux to regular people a great deal - especially if they can pop in a LiveCD and have everything working as they would expect.

I know that ATI has been a pain through the years, but I picked up the card specifically for some video projects and I'm not about to go get another one just to run linux. And having an expensive card running with drivers that don't take advantage of it's features is absurd in my mind. I'm sure other people out there feel the same way.

On the one hand, linux distros should be promoting open source. On the other hand, acceptance of binaries from hardware manufacturers can really help the popularity of linux in general. You'd be surprised what a little penguin label on the side of all the peripheral boxes will do for linux. I imagine there are more than a few vendors out there who feel that their device drivers contain trade secrets that they don't want distributed. A driver with source code helps because the community can help drive development of updated drivers, but it shouldn't necessarily be a requirement. Eventually, some of the vendors will open source their drivers. Some, like ATI, probably won't, but it still is important to have at least some sort of support for those products - especially when those products have such an enormous customer base.

It certainly is worth debating, though. You wouldn't want to encourage other manufacturers to only provide binaries.

Miguel
November 15th, 2006, 11:05 AM
I wouldn't say these are legally dubious since I purchased a geforce fx 5200 card. I didn't steal it. I can download drivers for it from the nvidia site for the rest of my life once I've purchased the card.

Of course you didn't steal it. And you can download and use nVidia's drivers as you please. Nobody is saying you did something illegal. What it's actually dubious is proprietary modules or if nVidia drivers are not derivative work from the kernel.

It's actually illegal to distribute proprietary binaries linked to anything GPL (though LGPL linking is licit). It's also illegal to distribute binaries of derivative work. So the issue here is that the borders are clear, but the drivers move in a grey area, maybe even a loophole (they rely on *you* linking them to GPL code). Anyway, my stand here has nothing to do with the law but with the effect it could have if we accepted binary drivers.

Sencer
November 15th, 2006, 11:07 AM
If the answer is going to be yes, there should definitely be a "expiration date" attached to that decision. I can see how it is important for new users and a growing userbase in the short term, but in the mid- to long-term the negative effects of shipping the binary-drivers will outweigh the benefits big time. For me it has never been about the price-tag, if I am going to use a closed-sourced/binary-blob as my OS, why bother switching to Ubuntu in the first place; I might as well continue to use/go back to MacOSX or MS. Everything that makes Ubuntu, Debian, GNU, Linux etc. what it is today is the freedom, why sloppily give that away, when there is finally the chance to move something? OK, that's a little bit of hyperbole, as of course things have moved and are moving a lot due to free software. It just doesn't make sense to give up on the leverage against the hardware companies and include binary drivers by default, as it removes (a large part of) the incentive for that situation to ever change.

While I personally tend more towards "No", I would also be in favour of "Choice", if only for the simple fact to educate users about the bad choices by hardware manufacturers and how it affects the end-users.

canardo
November 15th, 2006, 11:08 AM
Do agree slightly that it is a slippery slope into closed source drivers like has happened with wifi and ndiswrapper,

but on the other hand more people will flock to Ubuntu the easier it is to use, so think the choice option is best, however I do think its need illustrating to the user that the next time they purchase a piece of hardware to vote with their wallet and get something that is supported natively, as this is the only way the corporates will take notice, but Linux needs more users before that will have an effect so I think by making the adoption process easier, that lobby group can be achieved

enquiry
November 15th, 2006, 11:11 AM
The inclusion of proprietary components in Ubuntu's default install is no new phenomenon. It has been done since the beginning. If the restricted modules are required by the hardware, it will be installed without even giving the user a choice. Another example is the Talkback crash reporter in Firefox, which is also proprietary.
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/licensing

Personally I have no problem with Ubuntu making it convenient to install non-free components, but I do have a problem with such components being installed without giving the user a choice. The reality is that a lot of people are running Ubuntu, thinking it's an entirely free distribution, when in fact it's not.

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 11:25 AM
Hi there you all!

I voted on the *option* to install these binary drivers. This gives us freedom of choice. The user must be informed that these pieces of software are provided as a convenience, and that they are not supported at all.

It should also say that this is provided as there are no alternatives available (yet...), and that these are provided only because of this.

It should also say that this is a way to Freedom. We should accept this as path to a totally free system. We can't have it all in one big step. One war at a time... And, at least the users that need this hardware support will get it, at a little (temporary) cost of their Freedom.

We can't be fundamentalists here...

Just my 0.02€...

--
Ricardo
Lisboa, Portugal

FyreBrand
November 15th, 2006, 11:26 AM
They should be included in the Live CD by default and the setup should ask the user whether or not they want the binary drivers installed.

For me I would love to have that option as I always install the NVIDIA drivers.

I would love to use the open drivers but they don't work good enough for me right now. I don't use fancy desktop environments like compiz or beryl so it has nothing to do with that. They are just slow and buggy and not quite ready for everyday use, at least not for me.

I find it interesting that proponents of using only foss drivers suggest paying the developers. Asking the end user to spend more money for a driver for hardware they already paid for seems odd to me. Why wouldn't I just use NVIDIA's driver? That's what I paid for when I bought their card.

I think a better idea than telling NVIDIA and ATI to **** off is to figure out a way to create an environment in the Linux world where they can and will want to open their drivers. Or open them again as I think for a time NVIDIA or ATI did have some open code until MS slammed their fingers in the door.

Anyways I don't think fighting the hardware vendors will produce a good solution.

steven8
November 15th, 2006, 11:31 AM
That makes sense, Miguel.

And Dean. . .quit rolling your eyes!!

DoctorMO
November 15th, 2006, 11:45 AM
I don't believe in not being able to do something.

JohnTheLutheran
November 15th, 2006, 11:49 AM
"We can't be fundamentalists here..."

Yes, you *can*. You are choosing *not* to be. (This is assuming that disparaging those who actually want to retain a commitment to free software - even at the price of some inconvenience - as "fundamentalists" is a helpful approach to furthering the cause of free software.)

Ubuntu has faced the choice between convenience/ease of use and freedom from the beginning. It has now chosen convenience and ease of use over software freedom. That's fine - that's its decision. But there's no use pretending this is some great triumph on the road to full software freedom - this is a pragmatic acknowledgement that maximum ease of use for ordinary desktop users cannot yet be achieved other than on ATI and Nvidia's terms.

melissawm
November 15th, 2006, 11:53 AM
Well, that depends: are they going to work, or am I going to STILL have the same stupid "black screen" problems with ATI drivers that I have had to install edgy? (still no success, by the way. edgy doesn't install - live cd doesn't work because apparently they "didn't do enough tests with ATI cards".) C'mon guys, there was a topic about this on a day to day basis in the forums, we found a solution, everybody was happy with dapper because the ATI drivers worked (at least we had a workaround if they didn't out of the box) and they STILL come broken in Edgy? I know that's not easy, but I'm really disapointed.

That said, if there's an effort to make it work out of the box, I'm all for it...

enquiry
November 15th, 2006, 11:58 AM
It should also say that this is a way to Freedom.
Now that I don't agree with! Installing non-free software is not a path to freedom. Although I also support choice, even the choice to give up some freedoms, I find it to be essential that no free software initiative encourages use of proprietary software.

Before installing any such components it must be made perfectly clear that the user is giving up some freedoms, and that the software is not endorsed by Ubuntu.

sittisal
November 15th, 2006, 11:59 AM
ubuntu = windows
ubuntu community = windows community + macintosh-like arrogance


ubuntu= linux desktop
ubuntu community= novice,desktop users,developers who want linux easy
ubuntu shouldn't be another linux non-user oriented distribution.
Use debian instead.

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 12:14 PM
"We can't be fundamentalists here..."

Yes, you *can*. You are choosing *not* to be. (This is assuming that disparaging those who actually want to retain a commitment to free software - even at the price of some inconvenience - as "fundamentalists" is a helpful approach to furthering the cause of free software.)

Ubuntu has faced the choice between convenience/ease of use and freedom from the beginning. It has now chosen convenience and ease of use over software freedom. That's fine - that's its decision. But there's no use pretending this is some great triumph on the road to full software freedom - this is a pragmatic acknowledgement that maximum ease of use for ordinary desktop users cannot yet be achieved other than on ATI and Nvidia's terms.
Things in life aren't just White or Black you know? There's a huge grey area in between... And I strongly believe that the path to software freedom can be this. Use their drivers until we have proper support.

I, most of all, believe in usefullness of things. Sometimes we have to give in, and loose one battle! But not the war...

But hey!... I still live in a Democracy. All opinions must be respected, and I respect your option. :)

--
Ricardo
Lisboa, Portugal

Schotty
November 15th, 2006, 12:21 PM
I voted yes, and here is why:

Ubuntu to me, has been the regular guy's distro that costs nothing and has accomplished what Linspire has strived, and to some degree failed. Ubuntu has made it much simpler than any other community or commercial distro to not only install but become instantly productive in.

Most people that have asked me about Ubuntu and this "Linux" honestly could give 2 sh!ts about the FSF or the GNU. Thats more than they care or want to know. What they do care about is the fact that regular shmoes have come together to build an OS that is enitrely free (costwise) and beats the snot out of MS and Apple on the security front, reliability front, and the wealth of USEFUL knowledge when searching for help.

These users are our mothers, our neighbors, our co-workers, our pastors/priests/etc, and our bosses. They arent geeks, nor do they strive to be. Lets understand that. They only want to be able to USE the machine, not maintain it on the level we (generally) care to, not nitpick over licenses, or worry about the difference between FSF/GNU free drivers and the proprietary ones. They care about which one works better NOW, not which one is better in the longrun (which the FSF/GNU free ones are of course, thats not I think the real argument at hand).

Long winded, but I felt the need to say this since alot of us (yes I was this way not too long back) tend to forget that.

Thanks,
Andrew

shining
November 15th, 2006, 12:30 PM
Wasn't Koraraa XGL edition down because of this??

Yes, I believe it was, so I don't really understand.
Maybe there is a difference between installing the proprietary drivers by default without any confirmation, and installing them with the need of user confirmation before.

themacmeister
November 15th, 2006, 12:38 PM
I really don't care how you do it, but it must contain DRI open source drivers for AIGLX compatibility, as well as proprietary drivers for Nvidia/ATI. Users need to make the choice for compatibility and performance, compared with a pretty desktop.

As long as it is configured correctly, and working from the first install - that is all that is needed. DreamLinux 2.0 has a good startup script for nvidia that asks for the default resolution. his is handy, as some LiveCDs I have used are bogus and use a refresh rate that renders the monitor unusable!

soc
November 15th, 2006, 12:45 PM
I voted NO.
We don't need users who don't respect the principles of free open source software. That's like administering the baptism to a satanist.
If they don't like the rules, they shouldn't play the game, that is the way it goes.

It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal to ship them with Ubuntu. As long as the INFLUENTIAL kernel people in the linux world say that it is not allowed, everything else doesn't matter.
If Ubuntu starts using blobs, i hope the kernel folks will void their license as fast as possible.
Do we want to end up like Novell? I hope not. We have already serious problems with the Debian people, we don't need anything else.

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 12:58 PM
I voted NO.
We don't need users who don't respect the principles of free open source software. That's like administering the baptism to a satanist.
If they don't like the rules, they shouldn't play the game, that is the way it goes.

It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal to ship them with Ubuntu. As long as the INFLUENTIAL kernel people in the linux world say that it is not allowed, everything else doesn't matter.
If Ubuntu starts using blobs, i hope the kernel folks will void their license as fast as possible.
Do we want to end up like Novell? I hope not. We have already serious problems with the Debian people, we don't need anything else.

2.66Ghz Intel Pentium 4, 1024MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 SE (fglrx) - Ubuntu Edgy Eft
Dell Inspiron 9400 - 1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2048MB RAM, ATI Radeon X1400 (fglrx) - Ubuntu Edgy Eft


Just look at the bold parts... Then you say people don't respect "the principles of open-source". But you use the closed drivers. How convenient...

Well... I don't need to say anything else do I?...

;)

TBOL3
November 15th, 2006, 01:00 PM
You could have two vertions of ubuntu, the Completely free and open source one, wich is without the drivers, and the one that is opoen source, but includes the drivers.

uNmentaLogic
November 15th, 2006, 01:01 PM
I voted NO.
We don't need users who don't respect the principles of free open source software. That's like administering the baptism to a satanist.
If they don't like the rules, they shouldn't play the game, that is the way it goes.

It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal to ship them with Ubuntu. As long as the INFLUENTIAL kernel people in the linux world say that it is not allowed, everything else doesn't matter.
If Ubuntu starts using blobs, i hope the kernel folks will void their license as fast as possible.
Do we want to end up like Novell? I hope not. We have already serious problems with the Debian people, we don't need anything else.
The sad thing is if we use your thinking, Linux will be left out in the cold because it does not cater to what some of its users want. By crying out "users not respecting principles or not liking the rules, they shouldn't play the game" is to put it mildly rather dogmatic, not everyone believes what you do. I thought Linux was for everyone. Not those who agree to the principles or ideology behind linux. Or did I miss the small print? By giving people the option to use proprietary modules, you can cater to those that follow the scripture, or to those who don't really give a stuff. Everybody wins.

Stop thinking like a snob, the more users the better.

Regards
The uNmental one.

David Marrs
November 15th, 2006, 01:22 PM
As it stands today, the linux nvidia driver is no harder to install than the windows driver. Having the driver pre-installed doesn't do anything substantial to make the desktop easier to use; it provides some nice eye candy and a spinning cube. Those things probably don't need all the capabilities of the proprietary drivers anyway. Maybe the ubuntu team could put some effort into making the free drivers good enough?

I'm quite comfortable with individual users going out and installing proprietary software if they desire it (I do so myself) but for the distro to ship with it pre-installed is not the action of a free software distro, which is what I understood Ubuntu to be. And when I say free, I mean freedom, not a free ride.

I think it's reasonable that when a user downloads a free software operating system, he should be able to presume that it is free software. The great appeal of ubuntu is that it's free software that anyone can use. If you take away the free part, you're essentially left with a brown version of Windows. I see little incentive in that.

LordBug
November 15th, 2006, 01:23 PM
I voted NO.
We don't need users who don't respect the principles of free open source software. That's like administering the baptism to a satanist.
If they don't like the rules, they shouldn't play the game, that is the way it goes.

It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal to ship them with Ubuntu. As long as the INFLUENTIAL kernel people in the linux world say that it is not allowed, everything else doesn't matter.
If Ubuntu starts using blobs, i hope the kernel folks will void their license as fast as possible.
Do we want to end up like Novell? I hope not. We have already serious problems with the Debian people, we don't need anything else.

I love the smell of zealotry in the morning!

Linux's main strong point, IMO, is choices. Lots and lots of choices. I also consider this Linux's greatest weakness. Too many choices. Still, I voted that Fawn should give installers the choice to use nVidia/ATi out of the box. I don't think it should be forced one way or the other. I would love to see it, personally, because the "NV" driver doesn't work for me and I have to manually install the nVidia driver (or drop to the VGA driver (yuck)) to have a working system.

JohnTheLutheran
November 15th, 2006, 01:36 PM
I love the smell of zealotry in the morning!

"Fundamentalism", and now "zealotry" - good to see everyone engaging with the issues rather than just throwing "boo!" words around the place.

What this thread confirms is that many people take the view that software freedom has now done enough - sure, we needed to take a firm line on these issues back in the day, when the GNU project got going, or the Linux kernel was first being developed. But, hang it all, I've got music to listen to and games to play. Time to take our foot off the gas, relax and just trust the proprietary vendors to see our point of view eventually.

As I said before, if Ubuntu chooses to include proprietary drivers as standard, in order to improve user experience, then that's a perfectly legitimate decision. But it does have to make a choice: either it is in the vanguard of software freedom, or it is a free-as-in-beer replacement for Linspire. No disgrace in that, but you can't have your cake and eat it.

luca.b
November 15th, 2006, 02:03 PM
Yes, I believe it was, so I don't really understand.
Maybe there is a difference between installing the proprietary drivers by default without any confirmation, and installing them with the need of user confirmation before.

In Ubuntu, the drivers are linked at boot, therefore there is no problem with GPL, unlike Kororaa that had them already linked.

Zate
November 15th, 2006, 02:31 PM
I want to give Ubuntu to someone and have them be able to do a point and click install and have EVERYTHING working that they want, including Accelerated 3D out of the box. No distribution is there yet but Ubuntu comes close.

2 things would help this alot:

1) Include the OPTION to install Beryl during the install, a requirement of this is to install the correct 3D drivers for your card.

2) Include an OPTION for Automatix.

those are the first 2 things I do with an Ubuntu install anyhow and anyone wanting to use it as a replacement for Win XP (or Vista) will more than likely need those two aswell.

I am a linux "zealot" most of the time but I continue to be frustrated at why Linux as a whole cannot get this desktop thing "right". Right to the point of it being EASIER than windows. The install is already easier and Ubuntu almost gets it right with the package selection and interface but for it to be a direct drop in replacement for Windows it needs to set up everything seamlessly, including 3D desktops. Its hard to sing the praises of Linux when the distros are so fragmented and everyone is obsessed with this idea that we want to keep the riff raff out. the riff raff is who is going to get it mainstream and out of this realm of being not quite ready.

I actually enjoy a linux install with Ubuntu, at the end of it I am 95% towards having everything I need. That extra 5% would seal the deal.

ericesque
November 15th, 2006, 02:44 PM
I really think there is little reason to include the drivers and beryl by default. I'm sorry, but why jeapordize our ideals as a community for a few people who are simply too lazy to follow a how-to. Seriously, is copying and pasting a few commands into the CLI THAT hard? I have to wonder whether these same people think that beryl will be any more stable on their system if it is installed with the OS.

I vote no. Not as a biggot, zealot, or fundamentalist-- I haven't been around the topic of FOSS long enough-- but as someone who see's a wonderful distro on the edge of a slippery slope. Although it lends a whole new meaning to edgy...

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 03:10 PM
I really think there is little reason to include the drivers and beryl by default. I'm sorry, but why jeapordize our ideals as a community for a few people who are simply too lazy to follow a how-to. Seriously, is copying and pasting a few commands into the CLI THAT hard? I have to wonder whether these same people think that beryl will be any more stable on their system if it is installed with the OS.

Yes, it is that hard. Unless you want Linux to be next biggest geek-OS, you must forget about the CLI. Users are what matters most, and if you're in the OS business you must cater for them. People won't type commands on the CLI. It's too damn confusing! Try to ask your mother to do it...

And the reasonable way to cater for those users is to provide (right there in the Desktop!) tools that they can use to have what they want. You don't have to have the evil software on the cd's... But at least have a "few-clicks away" way of doing it. If you don't have the right tools they will return to the evil empire (http://www.microsoft.com/)...

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 03:18 PM
In this case, I think it's the consumer who benefits. Does this affect windows? I'm not sure. You just have to see the difference between nVidia in windows an linux (pretty small except in SLI) and then compare it to ATi. If ATi cards perform similarly to nVidia in Windows, why are these so crappy in linux? Why are X1000 cards unable to outperform X800's? It is not correct to assume that Windows solutions work for linux (or otherwise).
Up until about 3 years ago the ATI drivers sucked horribly for Windows in fact you would actually run into the newer card being slower than the older card because the new driver doesn't have all the bugs worked out yet. Since they haven't been writing drivers for Linux as long they got the same issues.

Just one more thing: until recently the free drivers were 7 times faster than fglrx in 2D. Reverse engineering is tough, but writing drivers is way easier when you have some kind of specs.
The thing is that regardless why ati was faster than gflrx in 2D, that is not why you would get ATI. If you want good 2D get Intel, they are completely open anyway and you will even get enough 3D to run compositing. The problem is lack of 3D not 2D.

Of course you didn't steal it. And you can download and use nVidia's drivers as you please. Nobody is saying you did something illegal. What it's actually dubious is proprietary modules or if nVidia drivers are not derivative work from the kernel.

It's actually illegal to distribute proprietary binaries linked to anything GPL (though LGPL linking is licit). It's also illegal to distribute binaries of derivative work. So the issue here is that the borders are clear, but the drivers move in a grey area, maybe even a loophole (they rely on *you* linking them to GPL code). Anyway, my stand here has nothing to do with the law but with the effect it could have if we accepted binary drivers.
Well nVidia drivers link to the kernel from userspace so they are legal. If they wanted a kernel space driver then they would have to open it.

As it stands today, the linux nvidia driver is no harder to install than the windows driver. Having the driver pre-installed doesn't do anything substantial to make the desktop easier to use; it provides some nice eye candy and a spinning cube.
If you read the spec you will see that it's not about the spinning cube, in fact Compiz/Beryl is unlikely to be installed by default. The only thing they want to do is enable compositing by default, one of the examples given is actually zooming for accessibility use.

Those things probably don't need all the capabilities of the proprietary drivers anyway.
The only way to do that on nVidia cards without using XGL (which is unsupported as mentioned in the spec) is by installing the latest nVidia driver.

If you read the spec you will see that it will use free drivers whenever possible and only install the binary ones if there is no other way to get compositing. It's no diffeferent from what Ubuntu does right now with other hardware.

toddhd
November 15th, 2006, 03:25 PM
Ubunbtu has always been asserted an OS "that just works", and I think that including the video drivers from the get-go follows that paradigm. I can that point that some users make about drivers being fluky, and so I agree that a notice should go up during installation offering the user the choice of whether to install them or not, but they should absolutely be included and be the default choice.

For what it is worth, most other distros do not include the proprietary drivers, which is a huge disadvantage, and I think this will give Ubuntu a leg up in the market (so to speak).

FrdPrefct
November 15th, 2006, 03:29 PM
Testing, testing, and more testing.

I have a Laptop which has an ATI card in it, and the fglrx drivers do NOT cooperate with it well at all. Now, assuming either that issue is resolved (I'm sure others have it as well), or it detects properly, and installs the current ATI drivers, then I'd support it.

Either way, testing needs to be done.

...frd

darkghost
November 15th, 2006, 03:33 PM
Like many, I think non-free drivers shouldn't be installed by default.
On the other way, there should be an easy option (like automatix for instance, but easy installable by clicking an icon or entry menu).

Why not let people have a choice...if you want the non-free stuff, just click an icon and everything is ready in 5 minutes wihtout hassles for those new to linux.

tclark
November 15th, 2006, 03:58 PM
We need to work towards fully capable in-tree drivers for these cards. We'll need to use a careful carrot-and-stick approach. The trick with the stick is to avoid accidentally hitting any new users with it.

I'd like to talk about the carrot for a minute. Video card manufacturers need to see some sort of benefit to providing free drivers. (Happily installing the non-free drivers for people may work against this.)

Here's one idea (borrowing from Firefox): Let's raise a pile of cash, and announce to the card manufacturers that for the first one who offers in-tree drivers (no binary blobs, please) for each of its currently produced cards, we'll buy a full page ad the the New York Times or something similar. The ad could say "The Ubuntu community thanks <vendor> for its support of Linux and Free Software..."

Apreche
November 15th, 2006, 04:01 PM
Seems my thinking was correct. There are more people who care about having a system that works than there are crazy zealots who would rather have "broken" systems using exclusively "free" software. When there is an open-source alternative that can compete with the binary drivers, we'll all use it without question. Until then, we have to learn to make do with that we've got. How many people have been turned away from Linux because they couldn't get X, Y or Z to work because installing binary drivers was too hard. Not only should we have NVidia/ATI drivers in Ubuntu, but we should have ndiswrapper and NTFS read/write as well. Make the system as good as it can be.

aaroncampbell
November 15th, 2006, 04:15 PM
I want to qualify my selection. I said that users should be given the choice. However, I think that the DEFAULT should be to use them, allowing a more informed user to UNCHECK the option if he/she wants. The users that need this are the XP users that we want to get. The ones that don't are the long-time linux users/idealists. It's far easier to train the latter.

tclark
November 15th, 2006, 04:23 PM
A system that is running non-free drivers is broken. Maybe it's not a critical bug, but it's a bug. The priority must be to eliminate the need for non-free drivers. Here are two approaches we could take:


Try to get as many users as possible, even if that requires non-free drivers. Once we have the user base, use our leverage to get free drivers.
Insist more strongly on free drivers now, even if that slows the uptake of new users.


I don't know which is the best route, but if we get a lot of people to use Ubuntu and don't ultimately give them freedom, then we've failed.

For reference, I seem to recall that in the past, many people thought that it would be impossible to provide a free operating system. Those people were wrong.

ssam
November 15th, 2006, 04:58 PM
you dont need the binary drivers for xgl/aiglx/compiz/beryl etc.

the open source divers for intel and radeon (for the slightly older radeons) work fine. work is being done on the newer radeon cards and nvidia (see http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=299516)

the binarys should be easy to install though.

(the effort should be in getting more network stuff on the cd, because downloading drivers without an internet connection is not fun).

mlat
November 15th, 2006, 05:01 PM
As long as the choice is clear, (like during setup, it gives a dialog when it detects that it can do this), and not some obscure checkbox in some package, then I'll say give them the choice.

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 05:11 PM
Try to get as many users as possible, even if that requires non-free drivers. Once we have the user base, use our leverage to get free drivers.
How would having a bunch of users running proprietary drivers some how encourage the companies to make free drivers. Seems illogical to me. Now, if these companies seen a lot of people not buying their products because they did not have free drivers - that would be incentive IMO.



For reference, I seem to recall that in the past, many people thought that it would be impossible to provide a free operating system. Those people were wrong.

Exactly. We have come so far why would we throw in the towel and go for easy now?

budman21901
November 15th, 2006, 05:14 PM
I am a 2 month old user of Ubuntu i chose to have users have a choice. If i was still a one week old user i would have most likely answered different. I have had my trial and error with nvidia drivers, and getting them to work especially with the learning curve of being new. Thanks to the community here for all the help with that and beryl. I have had some nvidia drivers work, and others don't. If you could guarantee every driver install would work with every system then i would say do it. If Ubuntu could check the install upon reboot, and then revert to another version then that's cool also. There's no problem with it being default. I just feel it may hurt stability of the OS for users experiencing Linux for there first time. I love Ubuntu, and the constant forward progress. I just don't think its time to make this step yet.

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 05:16 PM
And Dean. . .quit rolling your eyes!!

](*,)

geoffp
November 15th, 2006, 05:25 PM
I love Free software, and the philosophy that goes with it.

But I have to remind myself that the FSF's free-software ideals are geared towards people who are competent coders. To most, the freedom to modify and examine the code they run is totally irrelevant. This is in much the same way that to me, the freedom to modify and examine the inner workings of my car's transmission allows me nothing but the freedom to break it.

On the other hand, to the average user, the set of relevant freedoms most definitely will include the freedom to to do things like play Warcraft. We must remember that in cases like this, what we perceive as freedom, most will perceive as limitations.

The only reason this is an issue is that the ATI/Nvidia open video drivers are just not good enough for most people yet. And that's a sad fact. I think our two goals should be to a) make it work out of the box right now, and b) make it work out of the box the way we want it to for the future. I see binary blob video drivers, then, as a temporary and necessary evil. I use 'em, because they work.

To have enough leverage against hardware companies to get them to provide documentation and code, we need a large user base, and to have a large user base, I think we (at the moment) need to compromise just barely enough to get a lot of people to love Ubuntu. It's a chicken-and-the-egg tightrope walk.

I propose:

1) We include the blobs (with education!) for now. I like the idea of a sunset clause. To those who care (and those are the folks who can code), the proliferation of evil blobs should make the development of open drivers that work more urgent.
2) Canonical (or somebody) hires someone full-time to work on nouveau and r300. I bet in a year or two, we'll be in fighting shape.
3) As our influence grows, we continue to push for openness from the Big Two. As Intel's GPUs quickly grow in strength, and the i810 drivers continue to improve and work perfectly, the benefits of openness will become more obvious.

- G

nobodie
November 15th, 2006, 05:37 PM
This is very disappointing, but it is also how things are lost, warped and destroyed in this world.

OSS is within a very few years of having the puissance to lead manufacturers away from proprietary drivers. But not today, not yet. Only by holding out a little longer (and by a little I mean two years at most) will OSS actually change the world and not be subverted by it. This is just the beginning of the subversion.

Recently I saw a review that said that Linux distros, such as Ubuntu, have reached the same level of usability as Windows 2000. That reviewer also noted that it was quite possible that Linux distros would surpass Windows within 6 months of the release of Vista.

Yes, what I am saying is that we will win, and soon. So the only way for makers of porp software, those big, fat greasy guys who make their fortune sucking a percentage out of good honest hardworking folks, to continue to make money with their vision of how the world should work is to subvert the OSS model, and I fear that this is the first step down that path.

Yes, the general, ungeek user, such as myself (and I'm not a geek, i struggle to make anything work) will have to struggle on with CLI and repeated failure, but the real loss is not in potential new users drawn by an increase in ease. We can still win this, ATI and NVidia will come around, but we have to show them we are serious about OSS, not just about being anti-Microsoft. Anti will just subvert the real goal, a changed world.

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 05:52 PM
Since they haven't been writing drivers for Linux as long they got the same issues.
What exactly is the cause of this? What are the "bugs"?


The problem is lack of 3D This is a problem for who? What percent of regular users truly need 3D? What percent of regular users that have Nvidia cards actually use them for 3D stuff and how many just have them cause everyone says they are good and you can get one at walmart? So to you the only valid reason I would buy a ATI or Nvidia is because I wanted 3d?


Well nVidia drivers link to the kernel from userspace so they are legal. If they wanted a kernel space driver then they would have to open it.

Can you explain exactly how this works and is different from a regular module and how it becomes acceptable please.


If you read the spec
Could you possibly credit us with reading the spec. Maybe our understanding is a bit lacking compared to you but rest assured some of us probably did look at it. So you are saying that zooming requies 3d?


If you read the spec
Sheesh, yet again with the reading. Are you aware that it sounds condescending to constantly imply that I have not done something that you obviously have. That somehow your argument is valid because you have read it and agree with it, yet I have obviously not read it since I dont agree with it.


it will use free drivers whenever possible and only install the binary ones if there is no other way to get compositing. No it sounds like IF I have that hardware then I get binary drivers. Maybe I have that hardware but do not want those drivers regardless of compositing. I do have a nvidia card yet I do not want proprietary drivers. I refuse to have them telling me what I will run and won't run, and when I will upgrade and so forth.


It's no diffeferent from what Ubuntu does right now with other hardware.
Strange, around a week ago I thought you said the following...

There is Ubuntu and Debian that are free already unless you install non-free stuff in them. So why another free distro? Not to mention that for a vast majority of people there is a need for proprietary stuff anyway and what can be installed into Ubuntu

a distro that can be 100% free (Ubuntu) if you so choose. It doesn't make you install anything proprietary.

So can you at least see a reason for gNewSense now? Since you have proven your own point false.

Oh you also said this in the other thread:

Even better when you could get everything you need (such as mp3 and video codecs (other than Theora)) out of the box on distro's like Ubuntu. However we cannot as they are not free. So I guess we should go with all that other stuff too now since we haven't drawn the line at free anymore, right? I mean you argued since it wasn't free that it cannot be included yet now seem to be arguing to the contrary.

I am sooooo confused.

anlari
November 15th, 2006, 05:53 PM
This poll is pointless.

Kids, remember that 700 billion flies like eating **** too. That means it must taste very very good.

Popularity votes like this should be simply ignored by all serious developers.

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 05:58 PM
some would argue that forums are pointless also ;)

Popularity votes like this should be simply ignored by all serious developers.
What makes you think they aren't and what is the point in saying that they should? :D

David Marrs
November 15th, 2006, 06:21 PM
Can you explain exactly how this works and is different from a regular module and how it becomes acceptable please.

I'm not a kernel developer, so I can't give specifics, but in general it's only illegal to use GPL code in your proprietary application, not to just talk to a GPL app. If the nvidia module talks to the kernel through an interface without plugging directly into it then it's a separate application and subject to its own copyright terms.

To put it another way, if you can compile an application without relying on a GPL library, you're not using its code in your software and therefore aren't subject to its terms and conditions.

Miguel
November 15th, 2006, 06:36 PM
I'm not a kernel developer, so I can't give specifics, but in general it's only illegal to use GPL code in your proprietary application, not to just talk to a GPL app. If the nvidia module talks to the kernel through an interface without plugging directly into it then it's a separate application and subject to its own copyright terms.

To put it another way, if you can compile an application without relying on a GPL library, you're not using its code in your software and therefore aren't subject to its terms and conditions.

David, in this case the "library" is called "kernel", and just happens to have "GPL v2.1" all over it. It is not illegal for you to link something non-gpl to the kernel, because gpl code gives you freedom to use it as you will. It is illegal though to distribute non-gpl code that relies on something GPL. nVidia overcomes this because the "glue" that links the blob to the kernel is actually gpl code. I suppose ATi does something similar.

BTW: After reading most of the responses, I guess I am a zealot. Or at least some would describe me as one.

soc
November 15th, 2006, 06:45 PM
@rramalho
OMG ... very emberrasing ](*,) ... I gave these details when I signed up in this forum back in 2005 and never cared about it since then.
I use the free r300 driver for my Radeon 9800SE and plain vesa/vga drivers for my laptop since January 2006.
I correct this at once.
Regards.
soc

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 06:53 PM
This poll is pointless.

Kids, remember that 700 billion flies like eating **** too. That means it must taste very very good.

Popularity votes like this should be simply ignored by all serious developers.

Yes, they should ignore their users! After all, users don't matter! Right? Wrong dude! It's this fanatism/religious thing that is pointless... Computers were made to solve problems, not to create even more problems.

Face that, or get a new job! Call it a popularity vote, or whatever you want, but i think the poll speaks for itself. People don't care about CLI, about philosophy, about whatever! People want to get things done, that's it! Is it that hard to understand?

And don't call people "kids" just because they don't think the way you do ok? I believe in the F/OSS movement, I believe it can help a lot of people! But no one should be a Fundamentalist here!

I believe we can have Free Software drivers for lots of things we don't have now, but we need the user base now! So, it's a means to an end.

Some people can be really short-sighted...

somerandomnerd
November 15th, 2006, 06:57 PM
Here's a different "Use Study"...

SomeRandomNerd starts playing with Linux, and installs Ubuntu on his desktop machine as a dual boot. Impressed with the software and philosophy, he starts using free software more and more, and proprietary software less and less.

A few months later, he buys a new laptop. Deciding that he wants to support Open Source and use Ubuntu on it with as little hassle as possible, he chooses a model with Intel accelerated graphics, as they have released open source graphics.

Now he sees that there is apparently no actual reason for the end user to care about the distinction- free or non-free, they both work out of the box, so what's the reason to support one over the other? And if you're not too bothered about the "freedom" issue and care more about ease of use, then Novell's SUSE seems to be the distro to watch, with the recent MS deal...

Miguel
November 15th, 2006, 07:25 PM
Yes, they should ignore their users! After all, users don't matter! Right? Wrong dude! It's this fanatism/religious thing that is pointless... Computers were made to solve problems, not to create even more problems.

And free (speech) software was created to solve the problems introduced by proprietary software. There are a couple of articles about this on the FSF site. They are a good read.


People don't care about CLI, about philosophy, about whatever!

If the CLI doesn't matter, why has Microsoft just released a very improved CLI for WinXP and 2003? Why does it include scripting (a la bash)? I am quoting only the CLI part, but it wasn't fair to split the quote.



I believe we can have Free Software drivers for lots of things we don't have now, but we need the user base now! So, it's a means to an end.

Some people can be really short-sighted...

This one is funny. "We" don't need the user base now. Linux user base is way larger than it was 3 years ago. It is smaller than tomorrow. And believe it or not there are people using it because of philosophy, because they have the skills to fix what is broken. What we don't need is the hardware manufacturers thinking they don't need to provide free drivers or hardware specs. If this happens, we will be again in 1996.

Finally, to answer your previous post on "the OS business", I'll tell you that these guys are doing it for free. They are doing it because they like it. A guy that's able to code a filesystem, or a device driver or an abstraction layer is *not* an average guy (in the same way that a physicist isn't or a matematician isn't). As soon as he feels forced to do things that cater the likes of other people but that he doesn't agree with, the programmer will quit. Why go on if I am not having fun? In short, no, these guys aren't in the OS market and yes, they are pleasing their user base (themselves).

shining
November 15th, 2006, 07:27 PM
If you read the spec you will see that it will use free drivers whenever possible and only install the binary ones if there is no other way to get compositing. It's no diffeferent from what Ubuntu does right now with other hardware.

So r300 driver will be used for all the ati cards it supports?

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 07:44 PM
What exactly is the cause of this? What are the "bugs"?
I do not work for ATI so can't answer that. The bugs are problems that relate to driver performance and have nothing to do with bad hardware. Crashing would be one of those bugs.

This is a problem for who? What percent of regular users truly need 3D? What percent of regular users that have Nvidia cards actually use them for 3D stuff and how many just have them cause everyone says they are good and you can get one at walmart? So to you the only valid reason I would buy a ATI or Nvidia is because I wanted 3d?
Why would you ask me that? Create a thread and ask users about it, I for one do play games that use OpenGL (such as supertux) and there are screensavers that use OpenGL (GLMatrix being my favorite). Now that compositing is available and I can run Beryl I take advantage of that as well. And yes I do see very little reason to getting powerful graphics hardware if you don't do anything with it. My Toshiba laptop has an integrated Intel board that works very well with everything that you would normally do on a desktop so why would you pay a premium? Sure there is always the nForce based machines with integrated nVidia but that's a bit different.

Can you explain exactly how this works and is different from a regular module and how it becomes acceptable please.

It has been explained above by Miguel and David Marrs.

Could you possibly credit us with reading the spec. Maybe our understanding is a bit lacking compared to you but rest assured some of us probably did look at it. So you are saying that zooming requies 3d? Sheesh, yet again with the reading. Are you aware that it sounds condescending to constantly imply that I have not done something that you obviously have. That somehow your argument is valid because you have read it and agree with it, yet I have obviously not read it since I dont agree with it.

When someone argues for somethign to be done that is already part of the spec I can safely assume that they did not read it. There is a way to zoom without using compositing, however compositing makes it much better and more fluid than the regular way. Also a hardware accelerated desktop is snappier than the software one and takes the burden of the CPU. The crazy screen effects are just a side effect but are not necessary. Fonts in XGL are much better looking than fonts in normal non accelerated X.

No it sounds like IF I have that hardware then I get binary drivers. Maybe I have that hardware but do not want those drivers regardless of compositing.

No it does not. It says right there that there will be a whitelist and a blacklist and that the blacklisted cards will get free drivers regardless as compositing won't work anyways. Whitelisted cards will get free drivers unless there is no possible way to get compositing w/o them. So older ATI's and everything but nVidia can be 100% free.

There is also a link in that spec to the binary driver education spec. According to that spec the system will pop up something that will tell you when it is about to install the drivers explaining possible issues with using proprietary hardware and asking you if you want to go ahead with it or use a free driver.

No it sounds like IF I have that hardware then I get binary drivers. Maybe I have that hardware but do not want those drivers regardless of compositing. I do have a nvidia card yet I do not want proprietary drivers. I refuse to have them telling me what I will run and won't run, and when I will upgrade and so forth.

So you put your own preffered defaults over someone else's (a majority too)? Tell me what is the problem with making it easy on those less technical to have the driver installed. Those who care about freedom can quite easily remove the binary driver (assuming it will even be installed w/o your permission in the first place) and use the free one. Those who are prepared to either compromise or don't care at all won't have to do anything else as opposed to now where they have to install the drivers.


Strange, around a week ago I thought you said the following...
Quote:
There is Ubuntu and Debian that are free already unless you install non-free stuff in them. So why another free distro? Not to mention that for a vast majority of people there is a need for proprietary stuff anyway and what can be installed into Ubuntu
Quote:
a distro that can be 100% free (Ubuntu) if you so choose. It doesn't make you install anything proprietary.
So can you at least see a reason for gNewSense now? Since you have proven your own point false.

Oh you also said this in the other thread:
Quote:
Even better when you could get everything you need (such as mp3 and video codecs (other than Theora)) out of the box on distro's like Ubuntu. However we cannot as they are not free.
So I guess we should go with all that other stuff too now since we haven't drawn the line at free anymore, right? I mean you argued since it wasn't free that it cannot be included yet now seem to be arguing to the contrary.

I am sooooo confused.
If you want to keep arguing about that resurrect the old thread don't start in here.

elsupermang
November 15th, 2006, 07:44 PM
In considering if this is the right step to take for the Ubuntu distribution you have to consider the majority of the user base. After all, we choose a distribution because of the unique philosophy and features it brings to the table. Otherwise, we would all use the same basic Linux distribution.

I'd think the majority of the Ubuntu user base cares more about making stuff work out of the box. The slogan is "Linux for human beings", after all. So while the rest of the Linux world might be concerned with being exclusively open-source and proprietary free, Ubuntu users want stuff to just work.

I believe free and open software is great, but I also believe things shouldn't be complicated if they don't need to be. As long as the Nvidia and ATI software is free to the end user, I really don't care if it is closed source, especially if my video card "just works".

For Ubuntu to ultimately be successful, and by successful I mean widely adopted, it has to a good balance of proprietary and open-source solutions. I would prefer if it stays cost free but of course we know most of the time that isn't the case. That being said, the choice should always be there on whether or not to install or keep the software. Not doing so would put Ubuntu alongside with the draconian Microsoft Corp!

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 07:44 PM
So r300 driver will be used for all the ati cards it supports?

If it does 3D and can do compositing then yes.

shining
November 15th, 2006, 07:51 PM
Fonts in XGL are much better looking than fonts in normal non accelerated X.


Shouldn't it just affect the rendering performance, and not rendering quality?

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 07:54 PM
If you want to keep arguing about that resurrect the old thread don't start in here.
OLD? Less than a week ago is old? The issue here is the same. Easy at the expense of freedom. So I was trying to understand how last week Ubuntu was so free that a free distro wasn't needed yet this week you argue that Ubuntu is not free for good reason and we should be happy to have it less free so things work. So I asked if your position has changed on gNewSense and if you could see a reason for it at least since you seem to prove that Ubuntu isn't quite as free as you originally stated. And this "less free" Ubuntu is something you support.

And if we are throwing out free when we need it for things to work then isn't that the EXACT argument for including mp3 and other codecs then? That is why you are FOR the binary drivers, correct? So things will work for the user.

As I said you have confused me in this past week. Maybe i should just get a shorter memory huh?

](*,)

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 07:59 PM
Well heck, we could of had a awesome linux years ago. How did we miss that boat. We could already be taking over the world... Let's just dump everything free and open, take a few free pieces and a few proprietary pieces and wala we have the perfect OS.

Aww ****, I already have that. Windows XP, great driver support, and tons of free software.

Heck, Linux is pointless now since according to the "mixed source is perfect OS" peope that has already been realized. Why bother with linux.

See you guys later. This is not the free OS I signed up for.

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 08:03 PM
And free (speech) software was created to solve the problems introduced by proprietary software. There are a couple of articles about this on the FSF site. They are a good read.

I've read them a long time ago, thank you! And they're understood by me... I just don't take that matter the way some people do. Doing so is known as Fundamentalism.



If the CLI doesn't matter, why has Microsoft just released a very improved CLI for WinXP and 2003? Why does it include scripting (a la bash)? I am quoting only the CLI part, but it wasn't fair to split the quote.

It's for us geeks out here! It's not for the mere users, that want to get things done, with their point-and-click stuff.


This one is funny. "We" don't need the user base now. Linux user base is way larger than it was 3 years ago. It is smaller than tomorrow. And believe it or not there are people using it because of philosophy, because they have the skills to fix what is broken. What we don't need is the hardware manufacturers thinking they don't need to provide free drivers or hardware specs. If this happens, we will be again in 1996.

Finally, to answer your previous post on "the OS business", I'll tell you that these guys are doing it for free. They are doing it because they like it. A guy that's able to code a filesystem, or a device driver or an abstraction layer is *not* an average guy (in the same way that a physicist isn't or a matematician isn't). As soon as he feels forced to do things that cater the likes of other people but that he doesn't agree with, the programmer will quit. Why go on if I am not having fun? In short, no, these guys aren't in the OS market and yes, they are pleasing their user base (themselves).

As long as some people continue to be blind, the user base will be small as it is now. It's increasing, yes, but it's a small userbase. Mostly tech-savvy people... My mother can't install a driver in Linux, but she can do such in (ergh) Windows.

As for the OS Business... most kernel developers don't work for free, as no one does. Most work for some enterprise(s) that benefit from their work somehow. That's the main advantage of Free Software, we all can benefit of each others work. It's not just about "fun". It's about competitive advantage...

But whatever. Portugal and Spain are both Democracies! ;) Anyone can have their opinion. ;)

Cheers!

cor2y
November 15th, 2006, 08:03 PM
Give users the choice whether or not to install a concrete explanation of why and what you risk by doing this.
Most folks would probably optout and do the manual install or use the open source drivers if they knew what was going on.

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 08:03 PM
I'd think the majority of the Ubuntu user base cares more about making stuff work out of the box. The slogan is "Linux for human beings", after all. So while the rest of the Linux world might be concerned with being exclusively open-source and proprietary free, Ubuntu users want stuff to just work.


Sounds like the exact sales pitch of every commercial linux company I have ever came across. Next go for the "The worlds easiest desktop linux" that is a good one too.

kentborg
November 15th, 2006, 08:11 PM
I want to see Ubuntu be successful. I want it to be so successful that hardware manufacturers say "Gee, that's a market I don't want to ignore, we should support it." When they see that closed, buggy, half-way support is good enough, they won't be motivated.

I am a fan of Intel chipsets specifically to reward their support of open source software. My notebook has wifi and graphic support without running a tainted kernel. No, we don't have a lot of choices for graphics--that is why we need better support.

We should not reward companies that don't provide open drivers. Companies look at hard numbers. They count the money. They need a concrete motivation. A successful OS that only makes open source drivers standard will be that motivation. A successful OS that includes crappy tainting drivers will not be a motivation.

Vote to keep it as is. Motivated people already have a pretty damn easy work around, the "masses" should only be served up as customers to companies that support open source.


-kb

rramalho
November 15th, 2006, 08:23 PM
Sounds like the exact sales pitch of every commercial linux company I have ever came across. Next go for the "The worlds easiest desktop linux" that is a good one too.

If it ain't difficult, it ain't Linux right? ;)

WorLord
November 15th, 2006, 08:29 PM
I'm for including them.

bruce89
November 15th, 2006, 08:51 PM
Curse Canonical for trying to give the users what they want! Those bastards want our hardware to work properly out of the box! HOW COULD THEY?!

I don't know about you, but the nv driver works fine out of the box unless you want 3D stuff.

I don't want to be lectured about how I shouldn't have bought a nvidia graphics card, and if I did, then how I should use the free drivers, even though it installs the non-free ones by default.

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 09:32 PM
Shouldn't it just affect the rendering performance, and not rendering quality?

Not sure, perhaps XGL being a different X server has something to do with it. Although I think AA has something to do with it. Obviously OpenGL would have a much better AA engine than software rendering.

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 09:35 PM
OLD? Less than a week ago is old? The issue here is the same. Easy at the expense of freedom. So I was trying to understand how last week Ubuntu was so free that a free distro wasn't needed yet this week you argue that Ubuntu is not free for good reason and we should be happy to have it less free so things work. So I asked if your position has changed on gNewSense and if you could see a reason for it at least since you seem to prove that Ubuntu isn't quite as free as you originally stated. And this "less free" Ubuntu is something you support.

And if we are throwing out free when we need it for things to work then isn't that the EXACT argument for including mp3 and other codecs then? That is why you are FOR the binary drivers, correct? So things will work for the user.

As I said you have confused me in this past week. Maybe i should just get a shorter memory huh?

](*,)
As I said previously, if you want to talk more about gNewSense (someone should be shot for the name) I will gladly talk to you in the other thread just post the exact same thing you said here.

The only thing I will say here is that I was wrong in wording the issue with mp3 and codecs. It is not the problem of being free it is the problem of being legally questionable.

prizrak
November 15th, 2006, 09:37 PM
I don't know about you, but the nv driver works fine out of the box unless you want 3D stuff.

I don't want to be lectured about how I shouldn't have bought a nvidia graphics card, and if I did, then how I should use the free drivers, even though it installs the non-free ones by default.

Out of curiosity is it a desktop or a laptop card? I think that nv worked fine on my desktop (been a while since I used it, the desktop that is) but had issues on my laptop. Thank you for supporting my argument, that is exactly what I was trying to say, the defaults don't matter if you care about them you can change them.

deanlinkous
November 15th, 2006, 10:04 PM
No thanks, I am confused enough already. I certainly do not need someone incorrectly wording more stuff, all that spin and side step confuses me and makes me dizzy and I fall down.

I thought the point to binary drivers were so things "just work" which would be a great argument IMO for codecs and mp3 and dvd and a microsoft deal so we can interoperate and... whew head spinning...

must rest...