Fedora's intended target audience?

[Hans de Goede]

Hi all,

I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the sideline.
And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers.

I'm a bit surprised about this, since I find this very end-user
unfriendly. The possible dropping of these drivers was what triggered me
to write this mail, but the question asked in this mail has be on my
mind for a while. When replying please focus on the asked question and
if you want to discuss the Xorg 7.1 update for FC-5, please do that in
the AIGLX thread and not here, thank you!

I've been putting much of my spare time into Fedora, because I believe
in opensource and want to help and because I believe Fedora is a good
distribution. I've got friends, my wife, my parent and here parents all
running Fedora.

I think in our effort to make the best opensource OS we're loosing sight
of one very important aspect: the people for who we make that OS.

Lately I've heard saying that Fedora is a testbed for new RH technology
(which IMHO is partly true and partly is what makes it great!) and that
its a distro by developers for developers. Know I'm very much hoping
that the statement by developers for developers isn't true, because then
I've been spending my time working on the wrong distro, as I want to
work on a distro targeting a larger audience then just developers.

So lets see what our officially state goals are, the frontpage of
http://fedoraproject.org says:
Fedora Core is an operating system and platform, based on Linux, that is
always free for anyone to use, modify and distribute, now and forever.
It is developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and
maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards.

Then on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview there is some more about
our goals in much the same line. So Fedora is all about opensource,
freedom and choice. Good!

But Fedora as an OS is meant to be used by people, right? I mean what
good is it to create "the very best in free, open source software and
standards." OS, if almost noone is using it?

So I'm assuming that we are making Fedora to be used by people, lets
call these people our target audience. I've been searching the wiki for
a definition of this target audience but I have failed to find it. So
I'm asking it here, what is Fedora's intended target audience?

Regards,

Hans

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hans de Goede wrote:
>  Hi all,
>  
>  I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the sideline.
>  And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
>  strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
>  that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
>  my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers. 
Kernel updates have been breaking non-free drivers all the time. There 
are a number of other changes that broke other third party packages. I 
dont quite understand why there is no much shock on potential of Xorg 
updates breaking such proprietary drivers.

>  
>  I'm a bit surprised about this, since I find this very end-user
>  unfriendly. The possible dropping of these drivers was what triggered me
>  to write this mail, but the question asked in this mail has be on my
>  mind for a while. When replying please focus on the asked question and
>  if you want to discuss the Xorg 7.1 update for FC-5, please do that in
>  the AIGLX thread and not here, thank you!
>  
>  I've been putting much of my spare time into Fedora, because I believe
>  in opensource and want to help and because I believe Fedora is a good
>  distribution. I've got friends, my wife, my parent and here parents all
>  running Fedora.
>  
>  I think in our effort to make the best opensource OS we're loosing sight
>  of one very important aspect: the people for who we make that OS.
>  
>  Lately I've heard saying that Fedora is a testbed for new RH technology
>  (which IMHO is partly true and partly is what makes it great!) and that
>  its a distro by developers for developers. Know I'm very much hoping
>  that the statement by developers for developers isn't true, because then
>  I've been spending my time working on the wrong distro, as I want to
>  work on a distro targeting a larger audience then just developers. 
Agreed.

>  
>  So lets see what our officially state goals are, the frontpage of
>  http://fedoraproject.org says:
>  Fedora Core is an operating system and platform, based on Linux, that is
>  always free for anyone to use, modify and distribute, now and forever.
>  It is developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and
>  maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards.
>  
>  Then on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview there is some more about
>  our goals in much the same line. So Fedora is all about opensource,
>  freedom and choice. Good!
>  
>  But Fedora as an OS is meant to be used by people, right? I mean what
>  good is it to create "the very best in free, open source software and
>  standards." OS, if almost noone is using it?
>   
There is very broad range between people use and depend on proprietary 
software and "noone" and we need to work on improving that user base.


>  So I'm assuming that we are making Fedora to be used by people,
> lets
>  call these people our target audience. I've been searching the wiki for
>  a definition of this target audience but I have failed to find it. So
>  I'm asking it here, what is Fedora's intended target audience? 
It was pointed out in the earlier discussion the current websites didnt 
provide this. Here is a draft. Feel free to clarify this further.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives

Rahul

[Hans de Goede]

Rahul wrote:
>  Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the sideline.
> > And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
> > strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
> > that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
> > my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers.
>  
>  Kernel updates have been breaking non-free drivers all the time. There
>  are a number of other changes that broke other third party packages. I
>  dont quite understand why there is no much shock on potential of Xorg
>  updates breaking such proprietary drivers.
>   
Yes,

They do which is bad enough from an end user POv. But which aslo is
fixable, usually by booting the old kernel, wait for a day or two that
other repo todo the work and tada magicly fixed. Not quite perfect, but
close. NVidea doesn't have drivers which will work with 7.1 planned for
a month and Ati probably will be even slower. Also one cannot just
reboot into that older kernel, so there is a HUGE difference here.

Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
belongs in a seperate thread.


Regards,

Hans

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hans de Goede wrote:
>  
>  Rahul wrote:
> > Hans de Goede wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the sideline.
> >> And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
> >> strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
> >> that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
> >> my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers.
> > Kernel updates have been breaking non-free drivers all the time. There
> > are a number of other changes that broke other third party packages. I
> > dont quite understand why there is no much shock on potential of Xorg
> > updates breaking such proprietary drivers.
> >
>  
>  Yes,
>  
>  They do which is bad enough from an end user POv. But which aslo is
>  fixable, usually by booting the old kernel, wait for a day or two that
>  other repo todo the work and tada magicly fixed.  
Doesnt work that way if a fix is unavailable, there is noone working on 
it, for several different packages where noone is interested or which do 
not allow repackaging in repositories. We arent catering well to those 
user bases which use these non-free drivers and we are not going to do 
it ever. Others can workaround it and probably will continue doing that 
but there are going to be limitations. There is nothing new here.


Not quite perfect, but
>  close. NVidea doesn't have drivers which will work with 7.1
> planned for
>  a month and Ati probably will be even slower. Also one cannot just
>  reboot into that older kernel, so there is a HUGE difference here. 
One can however ignore the update or if they driver is packaged 
properly, it will simply revert to the open drivers.

>  Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
>  belongs in a seperate thread.
>   
Your whole discussion is tied to the argument that since we are 
potentially breaking non-free drivers, noone would use Fedora. I can't 
see how we can have the discussion now without considering the premise. 
Anyway, I hope the objectives page 
(http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives) answers you on your question 
regarding target audience. Its fluid but I dont think we need to 
restrict our definitions too much.

Rahul

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/27/06, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl&gt; wrote:
>  NVidea doesn't have drivers which will work with 7.1 planned for
>  a month and Ati probably will be even slower. Also one cannot just
>  reboot into that older kernel, so there is a HUGE difference here.
>
>  Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
>  belongs in a seperate thread. 
If they'd opened their drivers they would likely have been fixed long ago.

If you have a problem with NVIDIA's inability to track the software
they claim to support and their unwillingness to allow anyone else to
do it... You should be taking the issue to nvidia, not here.

[Emmanuel Seyman]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 08:07:56PM +0530, Rahul wrote:
>  Anyway, I hope the objectives page 
>  (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives) answers you on your question 
>  regarding target audience. Its fluid but I dont think we need to 
>  restrict our definitions too much. 
Agreed on this point.
I'ld actually prefer Fedora not have a target audience.
I find the whole concept discriminating in itself (and I've known some people
who disregarded Fedora as a distribution to try out because they felt it was
geared towards a group they didn't belong to).

Emmanuel

[Hans de Goede]

Rahul wrote:
>  Hans de Goede wrote:
> >
> > Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
> > belongs in a seperate thread.
> >
>  
>  Your whole discussion is tied to the argument that since we are
>  potentially breaking non-free drivers, noone would use Fedora. I can't
>  see how we can have the discussion now without considering the premise. 
No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow over
(Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
this hurts the end users. This xorg update is but one example.

Also I'm not alone in this, I've received private mail backing me, but
people are afraid to back me publicly because they have tried to discuss
this in the past and instead of having a healthy discussion they got flamed.

>  Anyway, I hope the objectives page
>  (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives) answers you on your question
>  regarding target audience. Its fluid but I dont think we need to
>  restrict our definitions too much.
>   
The name of that page describes perfectly what it is a list of
Objectives. A good list, which with I can fully agree, but it doesn't
properly define our target audience. The closest to a target audience
definition I can find on this page is: "built for and by a community"

Which I find a rather narrow definition, so people who do not contribute
are not part of our target audience? Them I'm most definetly putting
large amounts of time into the wrong distro.

Regards,

Hans

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hans de Goede wrote:
>  
>  Rahul wrote:
> > Anyway, I hope the objectives page
> > (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives) answers you on your question
> > regarding target audience. Its fluid but I dont think we need to
> > restrict our definitions too much.
> >
>  
>  The name of that page describes perfectly what it is a list of
>  Objectives. A good list, which with I can fully agree, but it doesn't
>  properly define our target audience. The closest to a target audience
>  definition I can find on this page is: "built for and by a community"
>  
>  Which I find a rather narrow definition, so people who do not contribute
>  are not part of our target audience? Them I'm most definetly putting
>  large amounts of time into the wrong distro.
>   
Your are excluding users as not part of the Fedora community. If you 
look at the complete sentence, this becomes more clear. It is meant as a 
encouragement for others to contribute better.

"Create a complete general-purpose operating system with capabilities 
equivalent to competing operating systems, built for and by a community 
— those who not only consume, but also produce for the good of other 
community members."

We didnt say for the contributors by the contributors. I am not sure how 
to define better the target audience for a open source project other 
than telling them what our goals are letting users decide for themselves 
whether the goals fit into their needs.

I havent seen such target audience definitions for community 
distributions before. I think the idea of target audience fits better 
into commercial products. Perhaps you can write a draft and help.

Rahul

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 16:55 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  
>  Rahul wrote:
>  > Hans de Goede wrote:
>  >>
>  >> Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
>  >> belongs in a seperate thread.
>  >>
>  > 
>  > Your whole discussion is tied to the argument that since we are
>  > potentially breaking non-free drivers, noone would use Fedora. I can't
>  > see how we can have the discussion now without considering the premise.
>  
>  No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow over
>  (Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
>  that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
>  end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
>  this hurts the end users. 
arguably some other people lose sight of all users but themselves...

the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for Intel video
and even 2D nvidia... Intel video has a market share of about 50%,
radeon of about 20%.... that's not numbers you can ignore in the "you
ignore the users" comment. To some degree NOT doing this update is
ignoring the users.

[Hans de Goede]

Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>  On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 16:55 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Rahul wrote:
> >> Hans de Goede wrote:
> >>> Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
> >>> belongs in a seperate thread.
> >>>
> >> Your whole discussion is tied to the argument that since we are
> >> potentially breaking non-free drivers, noone would use Fedora. I can't
> >> see how we can have the discussion now without considering the premise.
> > No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow over
> > (Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
> > that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
> > end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
> > this hurts the end users.
>  
>  arguably some other people lose sight of all users but themselves...
>  
>  the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for Intel video
>  and even 2D nvidia... Intel video has a market share of about 50%,
>  radeon of about 20%.... that's not numbers you can ignore in the "you
>  ignore the users" comment. To some degree NOT doing this update is
>  ignoring the users. 
>   
As said before I only own radeon 9200 cards, so do all the people who I
give Linux support around me. So this is not about all user but me at
all. Wasn't it Linus who said that regressions where not acceptable,
even if the patch causing the regression was a big boon for other users?
I agree with Linus on this, breaking things for a group of users,
because this helps other users is IMO not the way forward.

And here we still are hammering on the Xorg 7.1 example, which is just
that an example!

Here is another one, why ooo why, does inserting a ptp camera still not
work as non root? We had a big rouse about this on the list around
FC5testX or was it around FC4 release. I don't remember. Still this is
not fixed, which is very user unfriendly.

That is what this thread is supposed to be about userfriendly ness, not
about to Xorg 7.1 or not to Xorg 7.1 .

Currently there seems to be an attitude that breaking stuff while going
forward is ok, which is very user unfriendly and scares away users ( ==
future contributers) to other Distro's and even to other OS's

I'm a University CS Teacher as my paid job and I'm always trying to get
my students to use Linux, in general they are enthousiatic, but it is
things like this that drives them straight to ubuntu or back to windows.
Since I do not believe driving users away is what we want I'm making
noise about this. unfortunatly most people on this list don't seem to
give a damn about driving users away, they think "Then they shouldn't
have bought an NVidea card" which is really really helpfull (NOT).


Regards,

Hans

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hans de Goede wrote:

>  
>  As said before I only own radeon 9200 cards, so do all the people who I
>  give Linux support around me. So this is not about all user but me at
>  all. Wasn't it Linus who said that regressions where not acceptable,
>  even if the patch causing the regression was a big boon for other users?
>  I agree with Linus on this, breaking things for a group of users,
>  because this helps other users is IMO not the way forward. 
If we are going to start quoting Linus as the guide,

http://lwn.net/Articles/159313/

" Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only 
modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, 
and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in 
a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules."

>  
>  And here we still are hammering on the Xorg 7.1 example, which is just
>  that an example!
>  
>  Here is another one, why ooo why, does inserting a ptp camera still not
>  work as non root? We had a big rouse about this on the list around
>  FC5testX or was it around FC4 release. I don't remember. Still this is
>  not fixed, which is very user unfriendly. 
Is there a bug report?

>  
>  That is what this thread is supposed to be about userfriendly ness, not
>  about to Xorg 7.1 or not to Xorg 7.1 .
>  
>  Currently there seems to be an attitude that breaking stuff while going
>  forward is ok, which is very user unfriendly and scares away users ( ==
>  future contributers) to other Distro's and even to other OS's 
We are having no such attitude. If we are breaking anything we ship on 
updates, we should try and avoid that. Some regressions are inevitable 
but those arent a problem of attitude.

Rahul

[Alan]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Hans de Goede wrote:

>  So I'm assuming that we are making Fedora to be used by people,
> lets
>  call these people our target audience. I've been searching the wiki for
>  a definition of this target audience but I have failed to find it. So
>  I'm asking it here, what is Fedora's intended target audience? 
Fedora's target audience is people who ask what our target audience is.

-- 
"I want to live just long enough to see them cut off Darl's head and
  stick it on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some
  things come at too high a price. I would look up into his beady eyes and
  wave, like this... (*wave*!). Can your associates arrange that for me,
  Mr. McBride?"
                       - Vir "Flounder" Kotto, Sr. VP, IBM Empire.

[Steven Pritchard]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 04:23:15PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  They do which is bad enough from an end user POv. But which aslo is
>  fixable, usually by booting the old kernel, wait for a day or two that
>  other repo todo the work and tada magicly fixed. 
Maybe you should file a bug with the other repo to make their ATI and
Nvidia drivers conflict with xorg-x11-$something >= 7.0.  Then the
upgrade should get held until after the drivers have been fixed.

Steve
-- 
Steven Pritchard - K&S Pritchard Enterprises, Inc.
Email: steve(a)kspei.com             http://www.kspei.com/
Phone: [phone]               Mobile: [phone]

[Emmanuel Seyman]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 05:35:29PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  
>  all. Wasn't it Linus who said that regressions where not acceptable,
>  even if the patch causing the regression was a big boon for other users? 
The other way round, actually.

Linus has a habit of taking semi-working drivers out of the kernel in the
hope that this will give the users of said driver an incentive to build
a driver that really works.

>  Currently there seems to be an attitude that breaking stuff while
> going
>  forward is ok, which is very user unfriendly and scares away users ( ==
>  future contributers) to other Distro's and even to other OS's 
Disclaimer: IANAFD (Fedora Developer) so this is just my opinion.

Fedora is Free Software by principle. This means that the freedom aspect of
the thing is more important than userfriendlyness (or anything else, for that
matter). This will sometimes be inconvenient. And it really doesn't matter
because the important thing isn't the userfriendly-ness (or lack thereof)
but the fact that you're free to do what you want with it.

Mako sums it up better than I ever could so I'll just let him tell it
like it is : http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/freesoftware/20060109-00.html

Emmanuel

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Jeu 27 juillet 2006 17:35, Hans de Goede a écrit :

>  Currently there seems to be an attitude that breaking stuff while
> going
>  forward is ok, which is very user unfriendly and scares away users ( ==
>  future contributers) to other Distro's and even to other OS's 
Hans,

This is a very valid point but you chose a very inappropriate example to
raise it.

Fedora dearly needs some polishing. The core system is great but there are
lots of little things which require user intervention and as you wrote
scare users. So complain when one of these warts is added. Help hunt them
down, help fix them. This will make Fedora a better place for newcomers
and improve its image tremendously. (old timers mostly do not care as
they're used to the manual fixing-up) You'll have the heartfelt support of
every member of the community.

However whatever happens to closed software is not part of this covenant.
Closed software is NOT FEDORA'S PROBLEM. Whatever annoyance that causes to
users needs to be offset by better FLOSS packaging, not by trying to
bandaid the situation.

Fedora made a deliberate choice in being pure FLOSS. You don't help it,
its users or yourself by muddying waters and raising closed software
issues.

You won't ever make a great boat out of a car. You won't ever make a great
closed software platform out of Fedora. However many users will appreciate
Fedora on its own merits, just like many people appreciate their car, even
if it's somewhat lacking on the amphibious side.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Gérard Milmeister]

On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 10:46 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>  On 7/27/06, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl&gt; wrote:
>  > NVidea doesn't have drivers which will work with 7.1 planned for
>  > a month and Ati probably will be even slower. Also one cannot just
>  > reboot into that older kernel, so there is a HUGE difference here.
>  >
>  > Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
>  > belongs in a seperate thread.
>  
>  If they'd opened their drivers they would likely have been fixed long ago.
>  
>  If you have a problem with NVIDIA's inability to track the software
>  they claim to support and their unwillingness to allow anyone else to
>  do it... You should be taking the issue to nvidia, not here. 
People should stop blame NVIDIA for everything because of the binary-only
drivers. There are many reasons, why the 3D-accelerated drivers are not
(yet) open-source, some more valid than others. For me, the problem is
not 3D-acceleration, but TwinView. Reverting to the open-source driver
would break my configuration and not just make some games stop working.
Also, NVIDIA does not support Fedora Core 5. They support Linux in 
general and simply cannot follow every little technical issue of 
hundreds of distributions.
-- 
Gérard Milmeister
Langackerstrasse 49
CH-8057 Zürich

[Emmanuel Seyman]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 06:06:58PM +0200, Gérard Milmeister wrote:
>  
>  People should stop blame NVIDIA for everything because of the binary-only
>  drivers. 
Well, we can certainly blame them for being clueless.

'"It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not
 help," said Andrew Fear, Nvidia's software product manager.'

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6061491.html

And please note that we're not asking for an open-source driver.
Hardware specs would suffice.

>  not 3D-acceleration, but TwinView. Reverting to the open-source
> driver
>  would break my configuration and not just make some games stop working. 
Last I heard, NVidia was responsible (or was paying the person responsible)
for maintaining the nv driver. So they're actually responisible for that, too.

>  Also, NVIDIA does not support Fedora Core 5. They support Linux in 
>  general and simply cannot follow every little technical issue of 
>  hundreds of distributions. 
Which is exactly why they should publish hardware specs and let the
distributions (well, the X.org developers) handle the problem themselves.

Emmanuel

[David Boles]

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Hash: SHA1

Steven Pritchard wrote:
>  On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 04:23:15PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > They do which is bad enough from an end user POv. But which aslo is
> > fixable, usually by booting the old kernel, wait for a day or two that
> > other repo todo the work and tada magicly fixed.
>  
>  Maybe you should file a bug with the other repo to make their ATI and
>  Nvidia drivers conflict with xorg-x11-$something >= 7.0.  Then the
>  upgrade should get held until after the drivers have been fixed. 
I hope that comment was meant to be funny.

They gave you the solution to this the other day.

Option 1: DO the updates and lose the propriety driver that you installed.
Then complain loudly to the video card maker.

Option 2: DO NOT do the update and keep propriety driver that you installed.
Then complain loudly to the video card maker.

My first linux was Redhat 5.2. It cam with a "Linux for Dummies" book.  ;-)
For as long as I can remember kernel updates and XFree86/Xorg updates 'break'
propriety drivers. Not just Fedora but the other distros too. So if you knew
enough to install them to begin with you SHOULD know enough how not to 'break'
them.

Fedora should go on and not wait for NVidia, ATI, or whoever to provide your
drivers while making the rest of (probably the majority of) Fedora users wait
for the improvements since they are using the official, supported, software.
You hacked your system when you installed the propriety driver. When it breaks
you get to keep the pieces.

- --


  David
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[Gérard Milmeister]

On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 18:20 +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
>  On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 06:06:58PM +0200, Gérard Milmeister wrote:
>  > 
>  > People should stop blame NVIDIA for everything because of the binary-only
>  > drivers.
>  
>  Well, we can certainly blame them for being clueless.
>  
>  '"It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not
>   help," said Andrew Fear, Nvidia's software product manager.'
>  
>  http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6061491.html
>  
>  And please note that we're not asking for an open-source driver.
>  Hardware specs would suffice.
>  
>  > not 3D-acceleration, but TwinView. Reverting to the open-source driver
>  > would break my configuration and not just make some games stop working.
>  
>  Last I heard, NVidia was responsible (or was paying the person responsible)
>  for maintaining the nv driver. So they're actually responisible for that, too.
>  
>  > Also, NVIDIA does not support Fedora Core 5. They support Linux in 
>  > general and simply cannot follow every little technical issue of 
>  > hundreds of distributions.
>  
>  Which is exactly why they should publish hardware specs and let the
>  distributions (well, the X.org developers) handle the problem themselves. 
While I completely agree with you technically, users should only
minimally suffer because of some executive stupidity.

-- 
Gérard Milmeister
Langackerstrasse 49
CH-8057 Zürich

[Hans de Goede]

Rahul wrote:
>  Hans de Goede wrote:
>  
> >
> > As said before I only own radeon 9200 cards, so do all the people who I
> > give Linux support around me. So this is not about all user but me at
> > all. Wasn't it Linus who said that regressions where not acceptable,
> > even if the patch causing the regression was a big boon for other users?
> > I agree with Linus on this, breaking things for a group of users,
> > because this helps other users is IMO not the way forward.
>  
>  If we are going to start quoting Linus as the guide,
>  
>  http://lwn.net/Articles/159313/
>  
>  " Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only
>  modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones,
>  and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in
>  a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules."
>  
> >
> > And here we still are hammering on the Xorg 7.1 example, which is just
> > that an example!
> >
> > Here is another one, why ooo why, does inserting a ptp camera still not
> > work as non root? We had a big rouse about this on the list around
> > FC5testX or was it around FC4 release. I don't remember. Still this is
> > not fixed, which is very user unfriendly.
>  
>  Is there a bug report?
>   
There was when it was discussed some time ago, I assume it hasn't
disappeared so yes.

Regards,

Hans

[David Nielsen]

tor, 27 07 2006 kl. 18:06 +0200, skrev Gérard Milmeister:
>  On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 10:46 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>  > On 7/27/06, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl&gt; wrote:
>  > > NVidea doesn't have drivers which will work with 7.1 planned for
>  > > a month and Ati probably will be even slower. Also one cannot just
>  > > reboot into that older kernel, so there is a HUGE difference here.
>  > >
>  > > Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
>  > > belongs in a seperate thread.
>  > 
>  > If they'd opened their drivers they would likely have been fixed long ago.
>  > 
>  > If you have a problem with NVIDIA's inability to track the software
>  > they claim to support and their unwillingness to allow anyone else to
>  > do it... You should be taking the issue to nvidia, not here.
>  
>  People should stop blame NVIDIA for everything because of the binary-only
>  drivers. There are many reasons, why the 3D-accelerated drivers are not
>  (yet) open-source, some more valid than others. For me, the problem is
>  not 3D-acceleration, but TwinView. Reverting to the open-source driver
>  would break my configuration and not just make some games stop working.
>  Also, NVIDIA does not support Fedora Core 5. They support Linux in 
>  general and simply cannot follow every little technical issue of 
>  hundreds of distributions. 
They support X.org on the following platforms: Linux and FreeBSD,
however the fact that they can't follow X.orgs release schedule is not
our problem. It is an open platform so API changes can't catch them by
surprise.

- David Nielsen

[David Nielsen]

tor, 27 07 2006 kl. 18:49 +0200, skrev Hans de Goede:

>  > 
>  > Is there a bug report?
>  > 
>  
>  There was when it was discussed some time ago, I assume it hasn't
>  disappeared so yes. 
If it's not in bugzilla it doesn't exist.

Not that this is the only functionality regression, my personal
"favorite" regression issue is:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=179862

Users can't use cdrecord since FC4, I have in the interest of getting it
solved offered up 100 USD for a suitable solution for FC6.

Your bug would be:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=194601

If I'm not mistaken, meaning the developers have only known about this
bug since 2006-06-14.

- David Nielsen

[David Nielsen]

tor, 27 07 2006 kl. 18:33 +0200, skrev Gérard Milmeister:
>  On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 18:20 +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
>  > On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 06:06:58PM +0200, Gérard Milmeister wrote:
>  > > 
>  > > People should stop blame NVIDIA for everything because of the binary-only
>  > > drivers.
>  > 
>  > Well, we can certainly blame them for being clueless.
>  > 
>  > '"It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would
> not
>  >  help," said Andrew Fear, Nvidia's software product manager.'
>  > 
>  > http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6061491.html
>  > 
>  > And please note that we're not asking for an open-source driver.
>  > Hardware specs would suffice.
>  > 
>  > > not 3D-acceleration, but TwinView. Reverting to the open-source driver
>  > > would break my configuration and not just make some games stop working.
>  > 
>  > Last I heard, NVidia was responsible (or was paying the person responsible)
>  > for maintaining the nv driver. So they're actually responisible for that, too.
>  > 
>  > > Also, NVIDIA does not support Fedora Core 5. They support Linux in 
>  > > general and simply cannot follow every little technical issue of 
>  > > hundreds of distributions.
>  > 
>  > Which is exactly why they should publish hardware specs and let the
>  > distributions (well, the X.org developers) handle the problem themselves.
>  
>  While I completely agree with you technically, users should only
>  minimally suffer because of some executive stupidity. 
We have NO technical regression with this update, when FC5 shipped only
the nv driver was supported, when we push this update the nv driver will
remain working out of the box it will even be better (I think it got EXA
support but I'm not certain if that patch got into CVS).

I repeat, no regression what so ever on an out of the box FC5 setup, any
issues with this update are created by 3rd parties and it's up to them
to solve it.

- David Nielsen

[Steven Pritchard]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:23:11AM -0700, David Boles wrote:
>  Steven Pritchard wrote:
>  > Maybe you should file a bug with the other repo to make their ATI and
>  > Nvidia drivers conflict with xorg-x11-$something >= 7.0.  Then the
>  > upgrade should get held until after the drivers have been fixed.
>  
>  I hope that comment was meant to be funny. 
I think you misunderstood.  I meant make the packages conflict at the
rpm level.  (It's a simple matter of putting the right Requires: or
Conflicts: line(s) in the spec.)  That way yum wouldn't try to upgrade
xorg until the driver package was upgraded.

Steve
-- 
Steven Pritchard - K&S Pritchard Enterprises, Inc.
Email: steve(a)kspei.com             http://www.kspei.com/
Phone: [phone]               Mobile: [phone]

[Denis Leroy]

Steven Pritchard wrote:
>  On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:23:11AM -0700, David Boles wrote:
>  
> >Steven Pritchard wrote:
> >
> >>Maybe you should file a bug with the other repo to make their ATI and
> >>Nvidia drivers conflict with xorg-x11-$something >= 7.0.  Then the
> >>upgrade should get held until after the drivers have been fixed.
> >
> >I hope that comment was meant to be funny.
>  
>  
>  I think you misunderstood.  I meant make the packages conflict at the
>  rpm level.  (It's a simple matter of putting the right Requires: or
>  Conflicts: line(s) in the spec.)  That way yum wouldn't try to upgrade
>  xorg until the driver package was upgraded. 
Yes i think this is the best solution for nvidia.ko users. Use the livna 
package and rely on an explicit versioned Requires:. This will act as a 
"reminder" to add the proper --excludes if you try to run a 'yum -y 
update' during an uncaffeinated morning. Now I guess we just need new 
maintainer for the livna package...

-denis

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
>  On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 05:35:29PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > all. Wasn't it Linus who said that regressions where not acceptable,
> > even if the patch causing the regression was a big boon for other users?
>  
>  The other way round, actually.
>  
>  Linus has a habit of taking semi-working drivers out of the kernel in the
>  hope that this will give the users of said driver an incentive to build
>  a driver that really works. 
Name one case where he went and removed a driver from a previous kernel 
release.

Regards,
   Dennis

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>  On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 16:55 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Rahul wrote:
> >> Hans de Goede wrote:
> >>> Anyways I explicitly asked not to discuss this in this thread this
> >>> belongs in a seperate thread.
> >>>
> >> Your whole discussion is tied to the argument that since we are
> >> potentially breaking non-free drivers, noone would use Fedora. I can't
> >> see how we can have the discussion now without considering the premise.
> > No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow over
> > (Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
> > that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
> > end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
> > this hurts the end users.
>  
>  arguably some other people lose sight of all users but themselves...
>  
>  the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for Intel video
>  and even 2D nvidia... Intel video has a market share of about 50%,
>  radeon of about 20%.... that's not numbers you can ignore in the "you
>  ignore the users" comment. To some degree NOT doing this update is
>  ignoring the users.  
Users who want this support are free to upgrade to FC6 once it's released. 
That's how new features are usually introduced, in new releases not in past 
ones.

Regards,
   Dennis

[Alan Cox]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:28:11PM +0200, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>  Name one case where he went and removed a driver from a previous
> kernel 
>  release. 
pwc

Alan

[Leszek Matok]

Dnia 27-07-2006, czw o godzinie 21:31 +0200, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
napisał(a):
>  > the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for
> Intel video
>  > and even 2D nvidia...
>  Users who want this support are free to upgrade to FC6 once it's released. 
>  That's how new features are usually introduced, in new releases not in past 
>  ones. 
So you're saying "better support for hardware" is "new
features"? For
me, until the hardware support is "full", making it better is "bug
fixes".

In any case, are you really saying that after releasing a "release" of
an OS, the authors should stop providing updates if they can possibly
introduce any new feature? :) I don't know any vendor doing that, but
instead, you're free to not update your system (or go for some "from
scratch" system and once you install it, spend the whole time
backporting the fixes to your version, good luck!)

Lam

[Emmanuel Seyman]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:28:11PM +0200, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>  
>  Name one case where he went and removed a driver from a previous kernel 
>  release. 
The incident I was thinking of was a sound card driver during (I think)
the 2.2.x series. I'm sorry but it was so long ago that I don't remember
all the details. Maybe the kernel hackers on the list have more memory
than I do.

If you're looking for just any exemple, a whole bunch of drivers were
dropped when 2.4.0 came out (since nobody had updated the 2.2 driver).

And I doubt anybody has forgotton the min/max mess from a while back.

Emmanuel

[leomon]

Sorry to but in guys, but.....


I think there is an inherant differentiation between the ideology of the
Fedora Project and it's user base and/or developers.

Yes there maybe an update that may break a user's system if it was due to a
driver that was not included at default installation. This goes to say that
if a user installs the nVidia proprietary driver on his system, that means
that it was his choice, not the developers. The user needs to take into
account that if he installs the driver, it is not the developer's
responsability to make sure that any update will not break the driver, but
in fact it is the user's responsability. (i.e. if the user decides to
install any piece of software, it is his responsability to make sure that it
works!!!)

No one sees  Apple scrambling to make sure that  if someone with a PowerMac
G4 that gets an upgrade card from Sonnet, to improve clock-speed, they can
get it working with every G4 Mac. The responsability falls with Sonnet to
support the user, and if they decide not to untill 2 days/months/years
later, it's the user's problem not the developer's.

I would say that it is not the developer's deliberately trying to break
user's machines, but them staying out of places they should not be!

cjr


On 7/27/06, Leszek Matok <Lam(a)lam.pl&gt; wrote:
>  Dnia 27-07-2006, czw o godzinie 21:31 +0200, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
>  napisał(a):
>  > > the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for Intel
>  video
>  > > and even 2D nvidia...
>  > Users who want this support are free to upgrade to FC6 once it's
>  released.
>  > That's how new features are usually introduced, in new releases not in
>  past
>  > ones.
>  So you're saying "better support for hardware" is "new features"?
> For
>  me, until the hardware support is "full", making it better is "bug
>  fixes".
>
>  In any case, are you really saying that after releasing a "release" of
>  an OS, the authors should stop providing updates if they can possibly
>  introduce any new feature? :) I don't know any vendor doing that, but
>  instead, you're free to not update your system (or go for some "from
>  scratch" system and once you install it, spend the whole time
>  backporting the fixes to your version, good luck!)
>
>  Lam
>
>
> >  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >  Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (GNU/Linux)
> >
> >  iD8DBQBEyRhsGU+CzS/wSzYRAoDkAKCJKYrtHxNWS+N+82GvCvpr8NoBMQCgm/7E
> >  MXJDUNzwTHHpWxpKqyeRPqs=
> >  =f7YS
> >  -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 
>
>  --
>  fedora-devel-list mailing list
>  fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>
>

[Thomas M Steenholdt]

Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
> > the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for Intel
> video
> > and even 2D nvidia... Intel video has a market share of about 50%,
> > radeon of about 20%.... that's not numbers you can ignore in the "you
> > ignore the users" comment. To some degree NOT doing this update is
> > ignoring the users. 
>  
>  Users who want this support are free to upgrade to FC6 once it's 
>  released. That's how new features are usually introduced, in new 
>  releases not in past ones.
>   
Actually, I, for one, can't wait to get Xorg 7.1 for FC5. I have a 
radeon card in my system and will benefit from the progress made to the 
radeon driver in 7.1. ATI's binary driver does not work as well as the 
floss driver for me. Sure I'm missing 3D atm, but at least I can keep my 
system up and running for days and days, suspending and resuming without 
too much hassle.

/Thomas

[Chris Chabot]

Please someone buy this man a beer for voicing what I imaging a lot of us
are thinking, and I thoroughly agree with

For the record I'll be the LAST man to stand against progress, I run rawhide
almost fulltime on all my machines, love to contribute where I can and time
allows, have been a Red Hat user since 4.something if I remember correctly.
So no I'm an avid fan of progress and development of the platform!

However to take away the -choice- of upgrading to a new platform from the
(assumingly) unsuspecting users of Fedora, is something that rubs me the
wrong way.

If their better served by Xorg 7.1 (which by all accounts I hear a lot might
be), then download Fedora Core test2 and give it a spin! This is where they
expect the new developments and releases to take place, not sneaked thru in
some updates

I thought Linux was all about choice .. so why are we arguing about taking
away this choice?

... I'm puzzled ...


-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Dennis
Jacobfeuerborn
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 21:31
To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core
Subject: Re: Fedora's intended target audience?

Users who want this support are free to upgrade to FC6 once it's released. 
That's how new features are usually introduced, in new releases not in past 
ones.

Regards,
   Dennis

[Callum Lerwick]

On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 18:20 +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
>  And please note that we're not asking for an open-source driver.
>  Hardware specs would suffice. 
There seems to be some progress with reverse engineering nvidia cards:

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/RequiredFunctionality

[Chris Chabot]

Then run fedora core 6 test/rawhide, or if your truly not capable, compile
the srpm's your self? :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Thomas M
Steenholdt
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 22:39
To: fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
Subject: Re: Fedora's intended target audience?

Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
> > the 7.1 update adds a lot better support for radeon and for Intel
> video
> > and even 2D nvidia... Intel video has a market share of about 50%,
> > radeon of about 20%.... that's not numbers you can ignore in the "you
> > ignore the users" comment. To some degree NOT doing this update is
> > ignoring the users. 
>  
>  Users who want this support are free to upgrade to FC6 once it's 
>  released. That's how new features are usually introduced, in new 
>  releases not in past ones.
>   
Actually, I, for one, can't wait to get Xorg 7.1 for FC5. I have a 
radeon card in my system and will benefit from the progress made to the 
radeon driver in 7.1. ATI's binary driver does not work as well as the 
floss driver for me. Sure I'm missing 3D atm, but at least I can keep my 
system up and running for days and days, suspending and resuming without 
too much hassle.

/Thomas

-- 
fedora-devel-list mailing list
fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

[Thomas M Steenholdt]

Chris Chabot wrote:
>  Then run fedora core 6 test/rawhide, or if your truly not capable,
> compile
>  the srpm's your self? :-)
>   
Why should I? I'm not the one who installed unsupported binary-only 
drivers? This is as silly as suggesting that users of binary-only 
drivers install FC4 until ATI and Nvidia release working drivers for FC7.1.

Besides - I believe the FC6 src.rpm for Xorg 7.1 won't simply rebuild on 
FC5. I have to admit that I haven't tried, though!

/Thomas

[Chris Chabot]

I have to go and agree with this point as if it came from my own lips.

With a clear picture of the 'end users' in a developers mind (I play one at
work too), you end up making far better end-user software then when you
assume you know whats best for them.. often you can be right, but never stop
to listen to those pesky users, because even though they don't know what the
best solution is for their problems, they do take time out of their day to
tell you of their problems.

The negativity I taste in replies to the AIGLX thread, and in response to
Hans's post make me have this underbelly type feeling that some strong
advocates of pure open source solutions (a lofty goal as it is!) might
sometimes forget the 'users of today's software'.

Fedora Core has been called a 'incredibly fun technological playground' by
some, and I think it sums up one of the things that make it so great;
However one should always be open as well to accepting ones weakness, and I
think 'userfriendliness' (in the widest meaning of the word) might be one of
'our' weak points, even more so if we allow our selves to say 'Its their
problem, let them deal with it!', it shows a complete hostility to what in
the end amount to the reason why we are in this, the users, the choice and
the freedom.

If all we want to focus on is technological development, and all users be
dammed, then a majority of the world will often read about our latest and
greatest achievements in the Ubuntu release notes.

	-- Chris Chabot


-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Hans de Goede
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 14:44
To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core
Subject: Fedora's intended target audience?

Hi all,

I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the sideline.
And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers.

I'm a bit surprised about this, since I find this very end-user
unfriendly. The possible dropping of these drivers was what triggered me
to write this mail, but the question asked in this mail has be on my
mind for a while. When replying please focus on the asked question and
if you want to discuss the Xorg 7.1 update for FC-5, please do that in
the AIGLX thread and not here, thank you!

I've been putting much of my spare time into Fedora, because I believe
in opensource and want to help and because I believe Fedora is a good
distribution. I've got friends, my wife, my parent and here parents all
running Fedora.

I think in our effort to make the best opensource OS we're loosing sight
of one very important aspect: the people for who we make that OS.

Lately I've heard saying that Fedora is a testbed for new RH technology
(which IMHO is partly true and partly is what makes it great!) and that
its a distro by developers for developers. Know I'm very much hoping
that the statement by developers for developers isn't true, because then
I've been spending my time working on the wrong distro, as I want to
work on a distro targeting a larger audience then just developers.

So lets see what our officially state goals are, the frontpage of
http://fedoraproject.org says:
Fedora Core is an operating system and platform, based on Linux, that is
always free for anyone to use, modify and distribute, now and forever.
It is developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and
maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards.

Then on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview there is some more about
our goals in much the same line. So Fedora is all about opensource,
freedom and choice. Good!

But Fedora as an OS is meant to be used by people, right? I mean what
good is it to create "the very best in free, open source software and
standards." OS, if almost noone is using it?

So I'm assuming that we are making Fedora to be used by people, lets
call these people our target audience. I've been searching the wiki for
a definition of this target audience but I have failed to find it. So
I'm asking it here, what is Fedora's intended target audience?

Regards,

Hans

-- 
fedora-devel-list mailing list
fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

[Thomas M Steenholdt]

Chris Chabot wrote:
>  
>  I thought Linux was all about choice .. so why are we arguing about taking
>  away this choice?
>  
>  ... I'm puzzled ...
>   
Choice is right there to ignore the xorg updates or choose a more 
conservative distribution like perhaps RHEL?

/Thomas

[leomon]

I have to agree that we shouldn't tune out our users at all, but give them
what they want while staying true to the fedora standards as much as
possible.

I'll have to agree that Ubuntu may have Fedora in the Usability spot, but
Fedora still has the chance to be better at that as well.....


maybe there should be some sort of usability committee??

--cjr

On 7/27/06, Chris Chabot <chabotc(a)xs4all.nl&gt; wrote:
>  I have to go and agree with this point as if it came from my own lips.
>
>  With a clear picture of the 'end users' in a developers mind (I play one
>  at
>  work too), you end up making far better end-user software then when you
>  assume you know whats best for them.. often you can be right, but never
>  stop
>  to listen to those pesky users, because even though they don't know what
>  the
>  best solution is for their problems, they do take time out of their day to
>  tell you of their problems.
>
>  The negativity I taste in replies to the AIGLX thread, and in response to
>  Hans's post make me have this underbelly type feeling that some strong
>  advocates of pure open source solutions (a lofty goal as it is!) might
>  sometimes forget the 'users of today's software'.
>
>  Fedora Core has been called a 'incredibly fun technological playground' by
>  some, and I think it sums up one of the things that make it so great;
>  However one should always be open as well to accepting ones weakness, and
>  I
>  think 'userfriendliness' (in the widest meaning of the word) might be one
>  of
>  'our' weak points, even more so if we allow our selves to say 'Its their
>  problem, let them deal with it!', it shows a complete hostility to what in
>  the end amount to the reason why we are in this, the users, the choice and
>  the freedom.
>
>  If all we want to focus on is technological development, and all users be
>  dammed, then a majority of the world will often read about our latest and
>  greatest achievements in the Ubuntu release notes.
>
>          -- Chris Chabot
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
>  [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Hans de Goede
>  Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 14:44
>  To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core
>  Subject: Fedora's intended target audience?
>
>  Hi all,
>
>  I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the sideline.
>  And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
>  strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
>  that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
>  my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers.
>
>  I'm a bit surprised about this, since I find this very end-user
>  unfriendly. The possible dropping of these drivers was what triggered me
>  to write this mail, but the question asked in this mail has be on my
>  mind for a while. When replying please focus on the asked question and
>  if you want to discuss the Xorg 7.1 update for FC-5, please do that in
>  the AIGLX thread and not here, thank you!
>
>  I've been putting much of my spare time into Fedora, because I believe
>  in opensource and want to help and because I believe Fedora is a good
>  distribution. I've got friends, my wife, my parent and here parents all
>  running Fedora.
>
>  I think in our effort to make the best opensource OS we're loosing sight
>  of one very important aspect: the people for who we make that OS.
>
>  Lately I've heard saying that Fedora is a testbed for new RH technology
>  (which IMHO is partly true and partly is what makes it great!) and that
>  its a distro by developers for developers. Know I'm very much hoping
>  that the statement by developers for developers isn't true, because then
>  I've been spending my time working on the wrong distro, as I want to
>  work on a distro targeting a larger audience then just developers.
>
>  So lets see what our officially state goals are, the frontpage of
>  http://fedoraproject.org says:
>  Fedora Core is an operating system and platform, based on Linux, that is
>  always free for anyone to use, modify and distribute, now and forever.
>  It is developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and
>  maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards.
>
>  Then on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview there is some more about
>  our goals in much the same line. So Fedora is all about opensource,
>  freedom and choice. Good!
>
>  But Fedora as an OS is meant to be used by people, right? I mean what
>  good is it to create "the very best in free, open source software and
>  standards." OS, if almost noone is using it?
>
>  So I'm assuming that we are making Fedora to be used by people, lets
>  call these people our target audience. I've been searching the wiki for
>  a definition of this target audience but I have failed to find it. So
>  I'm asking it here, what is Fedora's intended target audience?
>
>  Regards,
>
>  Hans
>
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>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>
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>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>

[Chris Chabot]

Following the thought of 'I am not the one who installed...'

I think we should all be running rawhide, and forget about these 'releases'
:-)

Ps FC6 isn't so incredibly distant from FC5, so I'm pretty sure with some
minor coaching they can be compiled on FC5

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Thomas M
Steenholdt
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 22:54
To: fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
Subject: Re: Fedora's intended target audience?

Chris Chabot wrote:
>  Then run fedora core 6 test/rawhide, or if your truly not capable,
> compile
>  the srpm's your self? :-)
>   
Why should I? I'm not the one who installed unsupported binary-only 
drivers? This is as silly as suggesting that users of binary-only 
drivers install FC4 until ATI and Nvidia release working drivers for FC7.1.

Besides - I believe the FC6 src.rpm for Xorg 7.1 won't simply rebuild on 
FC5. I have to admit that I haven't tried, though!

/Thomas

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[Chris Chabot]

First we try desperately to educate users that they should always update,
even write pretty applets for it and other programs that make this possible

Then we tell them that they have to master editing config files and learn
about exclude-lists? Sounds puzzling to me still :-)

Choice is encouraging people to upgrade to RHEL, or FC6, taking away choice
is putting things in updates that people without our tech knowledge would
never suspect

Ps, on the list I've seen a few times @redhat.com's suggesting changing to
RHEL, which sounds as good as a solution to me as a @microsoft.com's
suggesting upgrading to Windows XP .. in both  cases they take away some of
the merit of the argument your trying to make

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Thomas M
Steenholdt
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 22:58
To: fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
Subject: Re: Fedora's intended target audience?

Chris Chabot wrote:
>  
>  I thought Linux was all about choice .. so why are we arguing about taking
>  away this choice?
>  
>  ... I'm puzzled ...
>   
Choice is right there to ignore the xorg updates or choose a more 
conservative distribution like perhaps RHEL?

/Thomas

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[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 7/27/06, Chris Chabot <chabotc(a)xs4all.nl&gt; wrote:
>  First we try desperately to educate users that they should always
> update,
>  even write pretty applets for it and other programs that make this possible
>
>  Then we tell them that they have to master editing config files and learn
>  about exclude-lists? Sounds puzzling to me still :-)
>
>  Choice is encouraging people to upgrade to RHEL, or FC6, taking away choice
>  is putting things in updates that people without our tech knowledge would
>  never suspect
>
>  Ps, on the list I've seen a few times @redhat.com's suggesting changing to
>  RHEL, which sounds as good as a solution to me as a @microsoft.com's
>  suggesting upgrading to Windows XP .. in both  cases they take away some of
>  the merit of the argument your trying to make
>
>  
Ok non-redhat person suggesting.. if you are going to run a mission
critical server that is going to need to stay stable, not change for a
couple of years, etc.. then use Red Hat/Centos/Scientific Enterprise
Linux.

Linux is about choice. Some of those choices are choices that a user
gets to make, and some are choices that the developers get to make.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
CSIRT/Linux System Administrator

[Thomas M Steenholdt]

Chris Chabot wrote:
>  Following the thought of 'I am not the one who installed...'
>  
>  I think we should all be running rawhide, and forget about these 'releases'
>  :-) 
Okay, I get the sarcasm, so let me go on to explain what i mean by the 
"I'm not the one who installed..." comment.

There are thousands of scenarios in which an update of whatever 
component breaks other stuff. The distribution should take care that an 
update does not break a component the distribution has provided.
There are just no way of handling every possible breakage caused by 
whatever the user may have installed.

How about all the weird stuff that my site admin threw in /usr/local/*? 
that stuff might break on certain updates, be it perl, bash, kernel, 
selinux or whatever. Even though it shouldn't, there is no way of 
knowing how silly those components may behave. And the Fedora 
maintainers shouldn't loose any sleep (or time) over that.
This, in my mind, is no different from people choosing to install a 
binary-only driver for whatever device. The only difference is that we 
can predict the problem this time. This gives users of said drivers the 
chance to configure yum to exclude the xorg update until the drivers are 
fixed. There is no reason at all, why the Fedora maintainers should 
delay the update because of this.

Again - I'm sure things like this are dealt with differently on other 
distributions.

/Thomas
>  
>  Ps FC6 isn't so incredibly distant from FC5, so I'm pretty sure with some
>  minor coaching they can be compiled on FC5
>

[Sean]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 14:44:26 +0200
Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl&gt; wrote:

>  I've been following the AIGLX repository discussion from the
> sideline.
>  And I'm a bit shocked by what I'm reading there. There seems to be
>  strong support for releasing Xorg 7.1 as an update for FC-5 even though
>  that will break both NVidea and Ati binary drivers. For the records all
>  my computers have a radeon 9200 running OSS drivers. 
It shouldn't break any systems that are properly configured.  There
are a few ways (already mentioned) for 3rd party repos to ensure that
this X update doesn't cause any problems for their users.

[snip]
>  I think in our effort to make the best opensource OS we're
> loosing sight
>  of one very important aspect: the people for who we make that OS. 
Don't think anyone is losing sight of the people for whom the OS is made.
The discussion is about who is responsible for dealing with problems arising
from the use of binary only drivers.  It's been stated time and again that
nobody is trying to break binary-only drivers.  But if a problem does arise,
it's the responsibility of those providing binary-drivers to ensure a
user-friendly experience.
 
[snip]
>  But Fedora as an OS is meant to be used by people, right? I mean
> what
>  good is it to create "the very best in free, open source software and
>  standards." OS, if almost noone is using it? 
Lots of people want to use it.  The fact that some people also want to
use bianry-drivers should not change the core goal you quote.
 
>  So I'm assuming that we are making Fedora to be used by people,
> lets
>  call these people our target audience. I've been searching the wiki for
>  a definition of this target audience but I have failed to find it. So
>  I'm asking it here, what is Fedora's intended target audience? 
The target audience is anyone who finds Fedora useful :o)  In my opinion
it is the very best open source distribution.  It shows just what can be
achieved without any proprietary or encumbered technology.

Sean

[Sean]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 22:54:19 +0200
"Chris Chabot" <chabotc(a)xs4all.nl&gt; wrote:

>  With a clear picture of the 'end users' in a developers mind
> (I play one at
>  work too), you end up making far better end-user software then when you
>  assume you know whats best for them.. often you can be right, but never stop
>  to listen to those pesky users, because even though they don't know what the
>  best solution is for their problems, they do take time out of their day to
>  tell you of their problems. 
You're right we should listen to the end users to learn what needs to be worked
on next etc.  And users are listened to pretty well, from mailing lists to 
Bugzilla and other forums.  But sometimes users have to listen too ;o)   Fedora,
from the very start has been about providing the best open source solution that
can be provided.  Users that aren't satisfied with what can be provided today by
pure open source aren't likely to be happy with Fedora.  The needs of such users
just can't be met by Fedora today, we all need to accept that.  

Fedora can't be all things to all people.  Fedora is meant for people who
want to use the very best open source solutions that can be provided
today.  That has been stated very explicitly from the start.

[snip]
>  If all we want to focus on is technological development, and all
> users be
>  dammed, then a majority of the world will often read about our latest and
>  greatest achievements in the Ubuntu release notes.
>   
There is absolutely nothing wrong with people going to Ubuntu if it suits
their needs better.  Ubuntu feeds fixes to open source software back into
the system and it will appear in Fedora as well.

What would be sad would be Fedora giving up it's focus on sticking to
only free and open software and becoming just another Ubuntu.  There is
room for both to exist, because they are different and serve the needs
of different communities.  Let us not desert the users that Fedora is
meant to serve.

Sean

[Sean]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:55:43 +0200
Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl&gt; wrote:

>  No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow
> over
>  (Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
>  that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
>  end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
>  this hurts the end users. This xorg update is but one example. 
The xorg update isn't an example of hurting end users.  It's an example
of putting better software in the hands of more users.  That's the same
reason that _any_ updates to FC5 happen.

I'm not sure what other problems you're including in your accusation but
they should be brought up so that they can be addressed.  Remember though
that even though there are many developers that are involved with Fedora
it is mostly a packaging operation of the best that developers have to
offer.  The point being that many problems aren't best addressed by Fedora
packagers but rather by the individual application developer communities.

>  Also I'm not alone in this, I've received private mail
> backing me, but
>  people are afraid to back me publicly because they have tried to discuss
>  this in the past and instead of having a healthy discussion they got flamed. 
It's a mistaken impression that we need to address for sure.  People should
be able to see that Fedora is intending to deliver the best open source
software possible.

>  The name of that page describes perfectly what it is a list of
>  Objectives. A good list, which with I can fully agree, but it doesn't
>  properly define our target audience. The closest to a target audience
>  definition I can find on this page is: "built for and by a community"
>  
>  Which I find a rather narrow definition, so people who do not contribute
>  are not part of our target audience? Them I'm most definetly putting
>  large amounts of time into the wrong distro. 
I think that phrase was included to acknowledge that no distribution
can be all things to all people.  That Fedora will be built to meet
the needs of the community that builds it.  If it meets the needs of
others then that's great.

Sean

[leomon]

What I'm seeing here is a failure for people to understand that this
discussion is not turning out to be about Fedora's target audience, but
infact a battle over those who don't realize that Fedora is intended to be
an OSS Pure distro that does not include proprietary software(display
drivers) which this X.org update could potentially(definately) break
end-user's machines. I think that this discussion is void. The fact of the
matter is Fedora shouldn't have to worry about breaking software that
RedHat/Fedora does not include at install. Why worry about those that like
to toy with their systems anyway? They can chose not to install the update
untill nVidia/ATI (AMD exscuse me) decide to release a compatible driver.
It's no worse than doing kernel updates where you have to reinstall the
driver anyway.

--cjr

On 7/27/06, Sean <seanlkml(a)sympatico.ca&gt; wrote:
>  On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:55:43 +0200
>  Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl&gt; wrote:
>
>  > No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow over
>  > (Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
>  > that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
>  > end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
>  > this hurts the end users. This xorg update is but one example.
>
>  The xorg update isn't an example of hurting end users.  It's an example
>  of putting better software in the hands of more users.  That's the same
>  reason that _any_ updates to FC5 happen.
>
>  I'm not sure what other problems you're including in your accusation but
>  they should be brought up so that they can be addressed.  Remember though
>  that even though there are many developers that are involved with Fedora
>  it is mostly a packaging operation of the best that developers have to
>  offer.  The point being that many problems aren't best addressed by Fedora
>  packagers but rather by the individual application developer communities.
>
>  > Also I'm not alone in this, I've received private mail backing me, but
>  > people are afraid to back me publicly because they have tried to discuss
>  > this in the past and instead of having a healthy discussion they got
>  flamed.
>
>  It's a mistaken impression that we need to address for sure.  People
>  should
>  be able to see that Fedora is intending to deliver the best open source
>  software possible.
>
>  > The name of that page describes perfectly what it is a list of
>  > Objectives. A good list, which with I can fully agree, but it doesn't
>  > properly define our target audience. The closest to a target audience
>  > definition I can find on this page is: "built for and by a community"
>  >
>  > Which I find a rather narrow definition, so people who do not contribute
>  > are not part of our target audience? Them I'm most definetly putting
>  > large amounts of time into the wrong distro.
>
>  I think that phrase was included to acknowledge that no distribution
>  can be all things to all people.  That Fedora will be built to meet
>  the needs of the community that builds it.  If it meets the needs of
>  others then that's great.
>
>  Sean
>
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>  fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

Alan Cox wrote:
>  On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:28:11PM +0200, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
> wrote:
> > Name one case where he went and removed a driver from a previous kernel 
> > release.
>  
>  pwc 
I followed that particular episode but cannot remember reading about 
someone actually pulling tarballs of previous kernel releases off 
kernel.org and reuploading them with pwc removed.

Regards,
   Dennis

[Peter Gordon]

David Nielsen wrote:
>  They support X.org on the following platforms: Linux and FreeBSD,
>  however the fact that they can't follow X.orgs release schedule is not
>  our problem. It is an open platform so API changes can't catch them by
>  surprise. 
Even more specific: The support only Linux and FreeBSD on x86 and x86-64 
platforms. On any other hardware, such as PPC, with an NVidia card, one 
is forced to stick with the 'nv' driver.

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