-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Bruno Prior wrote: > > Buchan Milne wrote: > >> Sure, for the Radeon 7500, there is no excuse (but AFAIK it should >> work fine out-the-box on 9.2), but for newer Radeon's, there isn't >> much we can do, since no free software driver supports them yet. > > > That's not absolutely the case. The Vesa driver supported my Radeon 9600 > without acceleration, which is all you need to get a workable > desktop, which is what we should be trying to provide at install as a > minimum.
Sorry, I was not aware it was this bad (DrakX not using vesa if it does not know the card). > There would be much less issue if problems were along the lines > of "my games run slow", than "I get dumped at the command prompt after > installation". > BTW, you may have missed a lot of threads on cooker here where I have been advocating that all display managers (not just gdm) kick off XFdrake if X fails to start ... > For some reason, this guy says the Vesa driver doesn't work for him. He > hasn't provided enough info to be able to figure out what's going on, > and probably won't now. Could very likely be user error (I suspect it > may be configuration of his monitor rather than his card that is > failing), but we will probably never know now, because he was put off by > the difficulty of it all. It might be annoying, but we need people like > that, and we certainly don't need them telling stories about how lame > Mandrake is. > >> XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the >> non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on >> the commercial CDs - -on the Club. > > > Yes, I've pointed this out, and that it would be fairer to compare the > Mandrake box-set with Windows, but you aren't going to get many people > spending money on Mandrake box-sets or Club membership, if it gets a > reputation for being hard to install or (in extremis) damaging hardware. Chicken and egg problem, and there's no real solution to this. > >> This is ATIs problem, if they can't sort out their driver installation >> routine for non-free software. They are the ones providing bad support >> for their products. Most NVidia newbies don't have this problem. > > > Agreed. It is frustrating that the only distro they support without > having to compile modules (and therefore download the *&%^ing missing > kernel-source) is RedHat. Can't Mandrake contact them and provide > modules to bundle with their install package, the same way they have > bundled RedHat modules? Presumably it would be in ATI's interests to > make this work as easily as possible with as many distros as possible. > >> There is currently nothing that can be done about this issue. Nothing. >> Unless you are volunteering to write a free software driver that >> supports these cards. > > > As I say, Vesa works with at least some Radeon 9600 cards, so presumably > there _is_ something that can be done about this. > >> Steffen Barzus had his device replaced, no-one has reported *not* >> having their device replaced. > > > Good news. > >> It's unfortunate, but this would have happened to some distro (whoever >> merged packet writing first), since it's very unlikely the problem >> would have been found by people manaully patching packet writing into >> their kernel (the patch has been available and in use for a long time). > > > True. Mandrake has always been bleeding-edge. Compared to say Redhat who ships with cvs snapshots of unstable versions of glibc (and then has to issue updates to glibc so users in large installations can see all users), and similar things? > But if it's risky > installing it before more experienced users have had a chance to test > it, what were Mandrake doing providing it for inclusion with a UK > magazine before it had even gone on public release? Who said Mandrake provided it? > I thought the idea > this time was that the public download edition and box-sets would be > delayed for a while, to give Club and Cooker members a chance to run it > to spot and fix the most serious gremlins (and provide an incentive for > people to join the Club). And provides users who have already downloaded the ISOs (likely >85% of users) absolutely no incentive to pay Mandrakesoft, buy boxed sets, or join the club for no other reason but charity. > This pretty well undermines that. > >> So, I guess no-one applies service patches etc (some of which cause >> bigger problems, such as XP SP1 messing up virtual memory management)? > > > Exactly. And why do you think Windows has the reputation it does? It's a > regular refrain of linux advocates that linux is more stable than > Windows. Is this not a part of what they are referring to? Stability doesn't have that much to do with how many updates are available (IMHO). > > I'm a long way from being a Windows advocate. I just don't think it > helps for linux to suffer from the same problems as Windows. I want > linux to be better than, not as good (or bad) as Windows. Agreed, but you (and a lot of others) are concentrating on two hardware issues, and not seeing a lot of improvements in 9.2 (and the development process). 9.2 really is a substantially better release than 9.1, but no-one is prepared to tolerate even one hardware issue that affects them. > >> Well, the only additional issue you have mentioned (besides the LG >> issue) is totally out of our hands. No distro can currently support >> the latest Radeon cards without free software. So, users should either >> bite the bullet and install the ATI drivers manually, buy the release, >> or join the club and use the packages there (and hope they have been >> updated for the new kernel too). > > > I gave you an example. I don't think it will help anyone for me to copy > every problem on the forum to this list. And, I have seen many complaints on forums about beta2/rc1/rc2, and many of the reporters didn't report their issues, so how should they be fixed? > The problems are many and > varied, but they mostly resolve to either (a) "I couldn't complete > installation", or (b) "I was dumped at a console when rebooting after > installation". And, I have been trying to prevent at least (b) from happenning in future (yes, I agree this is a problem). > It's easy to belittle less experienced users' problems > one by one, but if Mandrake wants to be seen as a user-friendly desktop > OS, it has to cope with these problems. Maybe it's only a matter of not > putting the new release out too early to the public in the way that they > did, but if you've got a lot of people with problems like this, it's a > sign that something is wrong. Did you test the beta release? Did you report that your card wasn't automatically configured to work? Did you report that the vesa driver worked? Mandrake can't test every single hardware configuration. That's why there are 4 or 5 opportunities for users to easily test installation, to ensure the installation works on their hardware. If no-one tests on the hardware you have, how is it to be fixed? I agree that things must be improved, but saying "things must be improved" doesn't change the situation. Something needs to be done, by those who are in a position to do something (ie those who have affected hardware). Regards, Buchan - -- |--------------Another happy Mandrake Club member--------------| Buchan Milne Mechanical Engineer, Network Manager Cellphone * Work +27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x202 Stellenbosch Automotive Engineering http://www.cae.co.za GPG Key http://ranger.dnsalias.com/bgmilne.asc 1024D/60D204A7 2919 E232 5610 A038 87B1 72D6 AC92 BA50 60D2 04A7 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/r4dSrJK6UGDSBKcRAlMTAJ4+fO/Q7Iv2ytxVyK+RMvAnd4nelgCfRwpN wa4ZexaHkcMx8L/ILwQ7yFE= =sTLC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
