spyderous: [Gentoo] One small step to 7.1 ...

Donnie Berkholz (

spyderous) wrote,
@ 2006-07-31 22:57:00

Entry tags:

gentoo, x.org

[Gentoo] One small step to 7.1 ...
As you may know, Gentoo's stuck on X.Org 7.0 for x86 and amd64 because we package and "support" Nvidia's and ATI's binary drivers. Finally ATI released 7.1-compatible compatible drivers. Now we just have to wait for Nvidia. Anyone got some idea on when that might happen?

I've been pondering the idea of moving binary drivers out of the main tree to a Gentoo-hosted overlay at overlays.gentoo.org so this doesn't happen again, and I've heard nothing but positive feedback so far. Anyone got thoughts on this?

(Post a new comment)

	Keep binary drivers in main tree (Anonymous) 2006-08-01 06:55 am UTC (link)
	For new users this would be a major pain to have to track down the binary drivers if they are not in the main tree. Please keep them there - I am sure NVIDIA won't be far behind, and once they bring them out, this issue will be resolved. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Keep binary drivers in main tree anholt 2006-08-01 04:38 pm UTC (link)
	It's how many months since 7.1, with the 7.1 API changes being trivial? People really shouldn't be hurting open source software adoption to support binary drivers that the manufacturers aren't supporting. (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 07:25 am UTC (link)

Gentoo's stood apart so far as the only distro I've seen that even remotely supports the binary nvidia drivers. I wouldn't want to see that be lost, especially given the state of the nv driver - last time I tried it I had some issues:
- it couldn't manage the native resolution of my main LCD
- no direct rendering
- it doesn't do Twinview
This is 2006, I don't believe that those are strange or difficult features; it would be a step backwards in my view for Gentoo to pretend that users can manage with the open source drivers.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2006-08-01 08:13 am UTC (link)
	The quality of the nv drivers isn't the issue, the binary drivers would be available in an official overlay. Why do you think every x86 and amd64 user who doesn't care about the ATI and Nvidia drivers should be stuck on xorg 7.0? It's not exactly easy to unmask xorg yourself. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2006-08-02 02:10 am UTC (link)

The quality of the nv driver _is_ the issue if you're talking about moving nvidia out of Portage, because you're effectively requiring users to either use it or jump through hoops to use nvidia - either way it's sending a pretty strong message.

I would hardly say that it's difficult to unmask xorg - I did it several times on different installs/machines during the long period 7.0 was still masked. Anyway, you don't have to - it's only marked ~x86 fercryinoutloud, it's not masked or -* or anything, and if this is the only issue with it then there's no magic rule saying you can't add it to package.keywords.

To put your question another way, why should every ~x86 and ~amd64 user who doesn't care about xorg 7.1 as much as having their video card working have to fetch their drivers from elsewhere? There aren't any convenient numbers, but it's quite possible we're actually the majority of users out there.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 08:27 am UTC (link)

I must say that I agree with previos comments. Removing the binary drivers from the main tree won't solve anything. The only effect will be that all Gentoo users with Nvidia or ATI cards (wich I estimate would be about half) would have to bother with layman and a separate overaly. For me that wouldn't be much of a problem, but for new users it would.
If you think that the current siolution (marking xorg-7.1 ~arch but not arch) isn't good enough I would suggest to extend portage with the ability to use use-flags in KEYWORDS, using the same syntax as DEPEND. Basicly, xorg-x11-7.1 would use the following line:
KEYWORDS="alpha arm ~hppa ia64 mips ppc ppc64 sh ~sparc !video_cards_radeon? ( !video_cards_nvidia? (amd64 x86 ~x86-fbsd ) )"

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2006-08-01 08:16 am UTC (link)
	api doesnt change all the time. I think we can live with such delays :/ (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2006-08-01 09:12 am UTC (link)
	I'd hate to see the nvidia/ati stuff moved out to an overlay. I don't see what is so critical about waiting a bit longer, tbh. --blubb (Reply to this) (Thread)

(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 10:29 am UTC (link)

How much longer?
What if an nvidia executive decides it's become too expensive to release linux drivers as often as you'd like? Say they decide to release only for even versions of the kernel and xorg, 2.6.18 & 7.2...
I wish nvidia would stop releasing linux drivers, that would teach you all something about slaveryware.
There's no reason freeware should be stalled by slaveryware.
Please get those binaries out of the way, which ever way is least annoying, but do get them out of the way.
Thanks.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2006-08-01 10:47 am UTC (link)
	uhm is there an opensource driver for nvidia cards that offers accelerated 3d? nouveau is under construction so we have to stick with nvidia drivers for now. Do not forget that some people's work depend on such drivers. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Whatever... (Anonymous) 2006-08-01 12:26 pm UTC (link)
	Well, that's easy to say. Just begone with your proprietary drivers. Never mind that there isn't an alternative, if you want 3D-acceleration to work. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	That's what they call "compatible"? (Anonymous) 2006-08-01 11:48 am UTC (link)
	Well, the new ATi drivers don't _really_ workd. 7.1 users don't get Xvideo support, for example. (Reply to this)

Why wait?
(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 12:24 pm UTC (link)

Hi, I'd prefer not to move so much stuff out of the tree, but one question:
Is it really neccessary to hold back stuff because of 1-2 packages? I wouldn't mind if ati-drivers would block some xorg-packages (I know this is not very well handled by portage atm, that's a problem).

Then ati/nvidia-bindriver-users could add some lines to package.mask (which is already the case for ~-users).

After all, I'm strongly against holding back development because of some companies doing proprietary stuff.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Why wait?
(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 12:35 pm UTC (link)

> Is it really neccessary to hold back stuff because of 1-2 packages?
When about half of the users need at least one of those two packages, it really is.

> Then ati/nvidia-bindriver-users could add some lines to package.mask
> (which is already the case for ~-users).
~arch users know their stuff break sometimes, and (hopefully) knows how to handle it. Stable, on the other hand, is supposed to just work, but not nesdsesarily be bleding edge latest version.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Why wait?
(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 07:38 pm UTC (link)

>> Is it really neccessary to hold back stuff because of 1-2 packages?

> When about half of the users need at least one of those two packages, it really is.

Hahah, ok - so where did you get this number... "about half of the users"???

Additionaly, if "about half of the users" need one of the packages, then logically, the _other_ half of the users _dont_ need one of the packages -- why do the half that need the package have more weight than the half that dont?

At any rate, I can see that this comes to a basic premis of a principle: that the natural advancement of open-source/free software should not be delayed/stunted by closed-source/commercial software.

I'm amongst those others in this comments section that shows agreement with that principle - and think that Gentoo, as an open-source, community driven linux distribution very much dependent on GNU software, should make it an officially policy to stick to the spirit of Free Software.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 12:50 pm UTC (link)

I agree that although the ATI drivers will sort of work on 7.1 (won't crash and burn), I wouldn't say they are fully compatible either. Other than XVideo support ATI hasn't seen fit to make r200 work. Also, one of the most important parts of 7.1, AIGLX still will not work with those drivers.

In short, the new ATI drivers are really a quick workaround just so that users can use 7.1 but it doesn't really work. I believe that Nvidia, on the other hand, is working to have full support for 7.1 upon the release of their new drivers.

Also, there's the option of the r300/r200 opensource drivers (now in the Mesa CVS tree). They supported EXA and AIGLX upon the release of 7.1. Despite a few rendering issues and slightly worse performance, they appear to be a win .

(Reply to this)

Keep them in the tree, provide a script to unmask 7.1
(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 01:11 pm UTC (link)

Please don't remove the binary drivers from the tree. You will simply increase dramatically the number of support requests on the forums and the mailing lists as you will be forcing many stable users into using an overlay for the first time to handle a core part of their systems. Why this is more acceptable than having to wait a few months for upstream drivers is beyond me.

If unmasking 7.1 is such a problem for stable users, provide a script to do it automatically for those users. Push the script out with an update to the 7.0 meta, put prominent ewarn messages there, advertise its existence in GWN, Planet Gentoo, the forums, etc. Use the existing tools to make users' lives easier, don't force users to work harder just to make a point about free vs. proprietary software.

sternklang

(Reply to this)

please keep binary drivers in main tree

other_tetromino
2006-08-01 03:57 pm UTC (link)

Anyone who runs x86 or amd64 on a desktop uses one of 3 video cards: nvidia, ati, or intel's i810-945. Intel graphics are found mostly in laptops, and gentoo is simply not a laptop-friendly distro (compiling kills battery life, there is no official gentoo power management script with workarounds for various laptop models, networkmanager is still not in portage [despite 2 years of user requests], etc.); so I would guess that most desktop x86 and amd64 users are using ati and nvidia.

So you want to force the majority of your users to subscribe to an unofficial unsupported overlay to get their most important piece of hardware working. That is just rude. Even ubuntu, who are generally open-source purists, keep the nvidia driver in the main tree (in fact, their kernel virtual package pulls it in).

Until open-source ati drivers start support modern cards and nouveau releases some working code, Gentoo has no choice but live with the binary driver writers' schedule.

So these are the philosophical, userrel reasons. Now for the practical reason: portage.

Portage pulls in the highest-numbered version of a package. If you have the main tree with xorg 7.1 and an nvidia overlay with 7.0, "emerge xorg-x11" will install the 7.1 version and break your setup. In other words, putting the nvidia drivers into an overlay does not help anything -- the user will still have to manually add 7.1 to /etc/portage/package.mask, and then somehow (by diligently following p.g.o?) figure out when it is safe to undo the manual mask.

Unless, of course, you are willing to hack on portage, add a method for allowing to package.mask an ebuild from a specific overlay, add a method for allowing overlays to export their own package.masks which are combined with /etc/portage/package.mask and /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask. (Come to think of it, these features would be quite useful in a number of other cases.) Anyway, once you add these features to portage, and wait for it to stabilize, I suspect that nvidia will already have released the new driver.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: please keep binary drivers in main tree spyderous 2006-08-01 04:10 pm UTC (link)
	It's neither unofficial nor unsupported, it would be supported by Gentoo developers and hosted on Gentoo hardware in the official Gentoo overlay project. Open-source radeon driver does support up through X850, that's pretty recent. (Reply to this) (Parent)

This Would Be A Step Backwards
(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 06:55 pm UTC (link)

I have to be rude, but the opensource drivers simply aren't good enough at this time, unless you own old hardware. My laptop's over two years old now, and it wasn't the latest and greatest when I bought it either, but the opensource ATI drivers still only provide partial support for the graphics chipset (R300-based). The only way to get working 3D support is to use the binary drivers. And we're talking about a Radeon 9600 M10 - a card that really is obsolete.

Why can't you have both X.org 7.0 *and* X.org 7.1 stable at the same time? If you want/need to use binary drivers, have the deps force you to use 7.0. If you're (un)lucky enough to own hardware that works with the opensource drivers, the deps will let you install 7.1. Why isn't that possible?

Best regards,
Stu

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: This Would Be A Step Backwards spyderous 2006-08-02 02:11 am UTC (link)
	I replied to this over on your blog. (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 07:19 pm UTC (link)

Please keep the drivers in the main tree! Getting the drivers from an overlay would be fsck for users. I rather see xorg 7.1 bumped in the tree with nvidia drivers in the tree as well than xorg 7.1 bumped and I need to get the drivers from some overlay. Removing the drivers from the tree doesn't remove the need for them. It only creates frustration for the users. The real solution is to define the dependency of xorg based on VIDEO_CARDS use-expand. Compatible pulls in 7.1, not compatible pulls in 7.0. Please don't hack around the problem by removing the drivers to an overlay.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

I concur, leave them in the main tree

wblew.pip.verisignlabs.com
2006-08-01 08:45 pm UTC (link)

I see this from a user's perspective. What is most convenient for the Gentoo users, myself included?

As I see it, the current situation is adequate, although depressing, until/if changes are made to portage to permit keyword dependency on use flags.

Also in my view, there is no ideal solution. Leaving it the way it is, or changing things, will inevitable annoy some portion of the Gentoo user community. :-(

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: I concur, leave them in the main tree spyderous 2006-08-02 02:15 am UTC (link)
	Try seeing it from a long-term perspective. Picture a world where more and more vendors release binary-only drivers, and a distribution can never update any of its core packages because they're incompatible with these third-party, unfixable drivers. Then picture what happens when said third-party vendor decides to stop providing support. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	spyderous 2006-08-02 02:14 am UTC (link)
	Your suggestion is not currently possible. I suggest a couple of changes to Portage that would make something like it possible at http://blog.stuartherbert.com/gentoo.php/2006/08/01/time_for_a_two_speed_approach (Reply to this) (Parent)

Whats gonna change?
(Anonymous)
2006-08-01 09:41 pm UTC (link)

Some thoughts on this. Imo, we don't get nothing. Users will continue to install closed source drivers from overlay cause most of us use some kind of 3d acceleration. Now what if x.org change api once again at ,lets say, 6.5 so there should be a new delay from nvidia and ati, right?
But this time x.org 6.5 will get stable in portage and users will have to mask those upgrades to stay with an older,compatible with nvidia/ati drivers, version. More work and same results imo :/

(Reply to this)

deskitty
2006-08-02 03:27 am UTC (link)

I agree, in principle. I utterly loathe the idea of binary drivers, and it annoys me to no end that nVidia will not release the source for theirs. I don't think, in principle, open-source communities should support that sort of thing.

That said ... I use the binary nVidia drivers, because they're the only things that work on my semi-broken Dell laptop. (I believe the OSS drivers cause X to freeze, or something like that -- don't remember offhand exactly why I don't use them.) I am also lazy. ;)

So I think I'd like to see the nVidia binaries stick around, and more pressure applied to nVidia to open-source their drivers. (Not that I honestly think they would listen ... but one can always hope, and wait for that open source graphics card, whenever it gets released.)

(Reply to this)

	seperate the binaries (Anonymous) 2006-08-06 12:34 am UTC (link)
	binary drivers are unmaintainable by a distro, both practically and politically. Separating them from the mainline makes that clear, and would encourage sophistication in the overlay functionality of portage. (Reply to this)

Leave them in
(Anonymous)
2006-08-06 08:50 pm UTC (link)

Leave things as is, this isn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. It only affects x86/amd64, and only those in x86/amd64 who use X. This group is largely composed of people who use ati/nvidia, and a large part of this group is going to want to use the binary drivers. Also, for the user, unstabling x11 packages is a lot easier to do than to get the binary drivers out of an overlay. Seems to me that Gentoo is usually slow to stabilise packages in general anyway, so this would keep that consistent ;). I mean, what was it that help 7.0 back for so long?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Leave them in (Anonymous) 2006-08-06 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	held* (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Leave them in

spyderous
2006-08-06 10:11 pm UTC (link)

To unmask 7.0, we had to find the correct build-time and run-time dependencies for every package in the tree that uses X and fix them all. Changes numbered in the thousands. It was not a simple process. The only other distribution with anything close to as many packages as us, Debian, took even longer. It's got around 19,000 packages compared to us around 12,000.

In the general case, Gentoo is pretty fast.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Nvidia-Drivers for xorg-x11-7.1 (Anonymous) 2006-08-25 02:10 pm UTC (link)
	It appears that nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774 came into the tree this morning, and is supposed to work with xorg-x11 7.1. I'm emerging the updates now and we'll see how well it works. I had to modify the ebuild for xserver-1.1.1 so it only blocks on nvidia-drivers below 1.0.8774 for the test. (Reply to this)

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