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Description
The restricted driver manager is a quite good utility, especially for new users. But often the automatic driver installation process gets useless if the used video card is not supported by the old driver in the ubuntu repository. The User has to download the new driver from the vendor's website and install it manually. This causes several problems, most irritating might be the required reinstall on kernel updates, not to speak of the lack of comfort for the average user.
And it's not only the support of new hardware, also new features are introduced with newer driver versions (e.g. AIGLX in the fglrx one).
So I think, these drivers should be updated by the update manager, too.
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tromboneman wrote on the 17 Mar 08 at 21:55
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We should be encouraging the use of free (as in freedom) drives, instead of the proprietary ones.
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Auzy wrote on the 18 Mar 08 at 04:37
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This is where we have a rift in linux society.
Half the knobs here aren't accepting that companies like nvidia aren't open, and instead just say that we shouldn't use their drivers, even though they are superior to any open source ones (and you don't win users by telling them to buy ATI instead of Nvidia). I know, because like many others, I need to currently wait for the next ubuntu release to run ubuntu again because my drivers aren't compatible.
If you vote for a stable Kernel ABI/API, you also get the benefit of being able to download the already compiled module off the website, and a suystem could be put in place to detect it, install it, and load it automatically.
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3868/
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ay wrote on the 18 Mar 08 at 06:05
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The kernel is always under heavy development, with reasonable bug fix releases added to the repositories. When this happens, all the drivers just get rebuilt against whatever is going to be released and that's that. You can't possibly fault the kernel developers for this, they do rebuild every driver, that is, the ones they have source for. For this reason, keeping the ABI/API stable isn't really that necessary, especially considering that the non-GPL drivers aren't supposed to exist. When you insmod a non-GPL driver, you're essentially linking object code that uses GPL-only symbols from the kernel. If you're doing that, you're really on your own.
For those stuck with NVidia and similar hardware, you're basically making concessions and will have a poorer experience. That's only NVidia's fault. You can then go out of your way and use additional tools (Envy, etc) to keep things up to date. Also, I kind of take issue with the "their driver is superior" statement: they have documentation, so they can write the driver. If they released the documentation, like AMD just did with the ATI stuff, then a much better driver will be written by the community. As it stands, the open source Nvidia driver is entirely developed through painful reverse-engineering efforts. With Intel being quite open about their hardware and AMD releasing documentation, Nvidia are the only major graphics chipmaker left that is pulling this crap.
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Endperform wrote on the 18 Mar 08 at 14:28
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@ay:
How is it Nvidia's fault that Ubuntu isn't using the latest drivers? You do realize that when you download the Nvidia driver by hand and install it manually, it does compile a kernel module. This is the reason we don't see the latest and greatest Nvidia drivers, since the newest release of the drivers hasn't been through testing.
The drivers included with each Ubuntu release work just fine for most of the users. For some, they want the latest and greatest, which is where helper apps such as Envy come into play. I don't think it's a matter of open vs closed, it's a matter of testing.
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ay wrote on the 18 Mar 08 at 16:59
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@Endperform: because the mainline kernel drivers are built with the mainline kernel and each out-of-tree driver has to be built separately and tested each time. Understandably, the developers don't care as much about taking tons of time to try and test the latest Nvidia blob, especially when you don't know what really changed inside it and what issues might be introduced. These types of drivers are already bad (and questionably legal due to the very compile step you just mentioned, the kernel's symbols are GPL, not LGPL) so I can't fault anyone for not wanting to go out of their way to test their latest versions each time.
Really as it stands right now, if you specifically want these drivers and don't care about the issues involved, you can use Envy or your own approach to updating them. If you want proper support, then don't use these.
On the brighter side, these types of drivers are getting fewer and fewer, which is a good thing. I'm looking forward to the replacement for MadWifi without the Atheros blob as well.
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kulight wrote on the 28 Jul 08 at 17:44
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in my opinion ubuntu needs to work as well as possible even if it means using propriety drivers
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