30.05.2012 12:23, Thierry Vignaud skrev:
On 30 May 2012 11:09, Thomas Backlund<t...@mageia.org> wrote:
I think we must discuss the following point for next release:
currently radeon firmwares are in non-free.
However this break havoc quite a lot of install b/c by default
non-free is not enabled.
So its an installer issue.
No it's a policy issue.
media.cfg enforces not installing firmwares by default.
But builders of live cds overrides this.
Which is inconsistent
Well, it was a old design decision we followed for livecds...
Maybe should we split firmwares in another medium that should:
- be enabled by default
- be included in the install ISOs
1) This makes the Mageia experience horrible on some machines
(black screen, machines unusable by newbies (and worse
unrecoverable by newbies), ...)
Newer ATI/AMD cards cannot work w/o the needed firmware.
That's also the issue with several network cards.
(which makes network installation impossible by default)
So people should think twice about what hw they want to buy/use.
Come on you're trolling.
What's more, _YOU_ are the one building live cds with proprietary drivers... :-)
Well, I have no problem dropping them from livecds again as I can use
the space...
It did work for mga1 (as there were no prebuilt proprietary drivers then)
That is totally inconsistent.
Other distros either use proprietary drivers or free drivers with the
needed firmwares.
We do the first (live-cd) and the worst of all choices: free drivers
w/o the needed firmwares (install ISO)
2) this is unlike the live-cd where we've those firmwares (and
the proprietary drivers as well)
This is because you cant install rpms on live media...
(or you can, but as the change is gone with a reboot,
there is not much point)
Yet it is inconsistent.
3) This is unlike other "pure" FOSS distro such as Fedora
which includes the firmwares.
Well, that's their choice, not ours...
Offering the choice between working proprietary drivers
and NOT working free drivers is somewhat stupid don't you think?
So we need to fix the hw/driver detection/switching and not just
"paper over" it by pulling nonfree stuff by default
So we offer the choice between:
- either be able to choose between working proprietary driver and
working free driver
- or to have non working free driver
This is _INSANE_.
I think It's time we reconsider this.
Firmwares do not run on the main CPU.
They're needed for additional chips where no one will ever
ever write a program for.
From the main CPU/memory view point they're data.
But not from our perspective about free-only.
Then why do you promote proprietary drivers on live cds :-) ?
Again this is totally inconsistent...
So I guess we need to fix livecds by either dropping proprietary
stuff, or make the display_driver_helper ask if user wants to
boot with proprietary stuff or not...
And nobody will ever wrote an alternative firmware anyway...
And in most cases, nobody knows how the internal works.
And for the AMD/ATI case, the free driver won't pick directly at the
hardware but will use AtomBIOS to level differences between
hw (remember the radeonhd fiasco).
Who will rewrite the AMD firmwares for all radeon generations
and/or make the driver work without Atom BIOS ??
Come on...
What we're actually promoting to our end users is that free drivers
suck whereas the live cds with proprietary drivers works smoothly.
Again, this is hw specific.
There is Intel, nouveau, sis,... that does not need fw/proprietary drivers.
That's a total aberration regarding promoting FOSS
Well, it's also a simple truth/fact.
Not all hw is fully FOSS supported.
I think we should offer the choice to:
- either be able to choose between working proprietary driver and
working free driver
- or to have _working_ free driver
(that is including the needed firmwares)
As pointed out in earlier discussions about this issue...
There is 2 points needing fix.
- the installer should detect the need for nonfree, and ask if people
want to enable it. (or simply ask if user want to add nonfree media)
I'm actually planning to add a media screen in cauldron installer so that
one can enable/disable media.
Great.
But that needs to actually include a nonfree/release subset on the install
ISO so that those w/o network can enable it.
Or ask for additional media pointed out below.
Detecting need for non-free could then be done (looking at modinfo
output for needed modules)
- the other thing to fix is to change the installer option about
"additional CD" to "additional media" and allow for browsing for
additional rpms on a cd/dvd/disk/usb/... media.
--
Thomas
