[RFC] non-KVM graphics/IO drivers in our default install media

[Alberto Ruiz]

On Wed, 2014-09-03 at 16:42 +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Matthias Clasen <mclasen at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2014-09-03 at 09:21 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Briefly, 1) we aren't staffed for it, 2) it encourages crappy behavior
> >> on the part of the module authors by providing disincentive to getting
> >> it upstream, 3) it's a maintenance hassle, 4) we typically already
> >> have alternatives (this is particularly true in the case of virt), 5)
> >> it's yet another entry in an already rapidly expanding test matrix
> >> that has to be checked off (which goes back to item 1), etc etc.
> >>
> >> I consider myself to be fairly open to many things.  Carrying
> >> virtualbox modules out-of-tree when the authors refuse to even submit
> >> them upstream for review and have no intention of ever doing so is not
> >> one of those things.  This is one of the few items where I simply say
> >> no.
> >
> > Do I sense a possible conflict of interest here ?
> >
> > I think Alberto's argument that including such drivers will make it a
> > lot easier to try the workstation on popular virtualization solutions
> > carries some weight and deserves to be discussed, instead of rejected
> > out-of-hand.
> >
> > --
> > desktop mailing list
> > desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org
> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
> 
> Well, I have used VirtualBox guest additions before, they break every
> time VirtualBox is updated (and you need to update and rebuild them)
> and they are extremely unstable.
> I honestly think they provide *worse* experience for users. And I
> remember someone in an other thread here said their 3d acceleration is
> not stable enough to use with gnome-shell.

They quickly fixed their drivers the first time GNOME Shell was out to
enable it (in fact it was used as an example of how requiring OpenGL
forced improved drivers).

As long as you don't update your guest tools usually things are fine
across upgrades (I tend not to upgrade VBox that I am not sure if other
people do).

The problem from my POV is that we're out there competing for mind share
with other distros, Ubuntu packages the ose (open source edition)
drivers and I've never had an issue with guests running on different
versions of the hypervisor, maybe some people have, but I'm pretty sure
that situation is not that common. So solving this is certainly doable
without a crazy amount of resources (I know because I'm pretty sure
those packages didn't suck that much time from the maintainers), that
said they were not included in the installer so you have to install them
manually, but that's certainly a much better situation than having to
run the .run script and make sure that you have build dependencies
available.

At that point it seems to me that people will just rule out Fedora when
trying Linux in the only free of charge/almost-FOSS hypervisor that you
can use from Mac and Windows (which is what most people use), and that
means that they'll try something else that works instead...

Yes VBox sucks and we call can use Boxes and virt-manager instead... but
for a lot of people out there, VBox is the only available option, keep
that in mind.

-- 
Greetings,
Alberto Ruiz
Engineering Manager - Desktop Applications Team
Red Hat, Inc.