Fedora Core 6 HUGE problem - Binary drivers.

[Les Mikesell]

Arthur Pemberton wrote:

>> > When they want a feature in the new kernel. Features I am personally 
>> looking
>> > forward to is the removal of the limit of arguments to exec and dmcrypt
>> > getting write barrier support back.
>> >
>> >> where the next one is only months away? If there is an answer to that
>> >
>> > Your assuming that there will be an nVidia driver for the next 
>> Fedora release.
>> > That isn't necessary going to be the case.
>>
>> But that's not a big problem until updates stop for the current release.
>>    You can put off installing a new release as long as necessary.  A
>> kernel update within a release that breaks needed drivers is a big 
>> problem.
> 
> But, you're ignoring the part that the entity doing the kernel upgrade
> and the entity working on the driver are two separate and independent
> entities.

No, I'm not ignoring that part.  I'm saying that _is_ the problem.  If 
some other OS regularly made incompatible changes without coordinating 
the availability of drivers with releases they'd have been dead long ago.

> Seriously, you don't give Nvidia's devs enough credit, if
> their higher ups cared, their drivers would always work.

Oh, I'm amazed they have kept trying this long. They have to be insanely 
frustrated by something that claims to be an OS but refuses to define an 
interface for drivers.

>> Don't forget fedora's 'other' purpose of evolving to near-verbatim RHEL
>> releases - which then has the problem of frozen application versions for
>> the long, long term between those releases.  I agree that the current
>> fedora disto acting as a fast-changing testbed is a necessary evil, but
>> I wish there were something that used the same packaging and admin
>> techniques that would make a usable desktop - like an FCx release
>> usually becomes for a short period near the end of its life.
> 
> What are you talking about? My Fedora desktop was always usable.

Did you have firewire drives mid FC5?  A good 6 months of downtime might 
have changed your mind.  The Evolution exchange connector was broken for 
about the same interval after a brief glimpse of a working version.  Not 
sure what you've been using....  Some stuff works most of the time.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com