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Fedora 9 Useless?

Submitted by anewcomb on Mon, 2008-05-26 22:47.
This is probably the first time I have been disappointed by a Fedora release, and the reason is pretty simple. Nvidia stock drivers do not work. I know there are a lot of great new features in this release and I would love to check them all out, but I can't because Fedora included a release of X that is not supported natively by Nvidia yet. My particular video card only really works well with the native, proprietary drivers installed so this is a big setback for me. It is beyond me why anyone would put out a major release without proper Nvidia support in 2008. I can understand if this was 1998 or even 2002, but come on folks it's 2008! I have tried the workarounds in my test partition running F9, but they don't even give you 3D support. Until now I have really wanted to stick with Fedora on my desktop and Ubuntu on my laptop so I could compare the two and be familiar with both distros, but I am seriously considering jumping to Ubuntu on my desktop at least until F10 comes out in six months. I will wait a few weeks to see if this gets resolved, but after that I don't think I want to wait any longer.

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Nvidia drivers

Submitted by Allix Davis (not verified) on Fri, 2008-06-06 14:21.
Fedora is all about free software, complaining about the Nvidia drivers would have been appropriate.

You really ought to blame NVIDIA, not Fedora

Submitted by Troels Just (not verified) on Fri, 2008-06-06 14:28.
Aaron, I must say I am quite disappointed to see you blaming Fedora for something that they fundamentally cannot fix. This is all NVIDIA's responsibility since they don't want to release their driver as free software. Fedora makes extremely clear, that they do not include or support NVIDIA's proprietary driver: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#NVIDIA_Accelerated_Graphic... The reason NVIDIA's driver used to not work with Fedora 9 (As of May 28th, NVIDIA has released an update that "Added preliminary support for X.Org server 1.5"), is because of the rapid development of Fedora and X.Org itself. Fedora 9 includes a pre-release version of X.Org 7.4, which contains version 1.5 of the X server (1.4.xx), and some ABI changes caused incompatibilities. How could this ever be Fedora's responsibility? Suggesting that it's Fedora's responsibility to support something they don't support sounds utterly ludicrous to me. People who don't care about the freedom aspect of free software (I am not suggesting that you don't care about it) might go on to argue, that they don't care and that it's Fedora's fault and that they just want things to work and blah blah. Fair enough. But do you honestly want to stifle the rapid development of free software, which is what differentiates it so fundamentally from proprietary software, by always catering to, and appeasing big companies like NVIDIA because they only want to play the game by their own rules, and not everybody else's rules? I personally would hate to see a release of Fedora delayed purely because NVIDIA feels that it's OK for them to violate the GPL, and not free up their driver code. Fedora is even more firm about not including proprietary software, than Debian is, and if that is not the sort of distribution that you prefer, then I seriously think you're using the wrong one. Just my two cents.
anewcomb's picture

Thanks for the post Troels.

Submitted by anewcomb on Fri, 2008-06-06 20:56.
Thanks for the post Troels. I know where you are coming from. And I can respect what you are saying. However, for me personally I use my desktop for running games and editing video. I have to have 3D support, and the only way for me to get it is with proprietary drivers. If and when I can get a free version that works you bet I will be using it, but until then I am not too proud to use the proprietary one. It actually makes some sense that Fedora wasn't too concerned about waiting for Nvidia to catch up to them as you suggest above. Not only are they focused on free software, but they are also using Fedora as a test bed for RedHat. RedHat doesn't care too much about 3D graphics since it is mostly run on servers that don't even have a primary display attached. However, I know I am not the only one who is a little pissed off about this. Also I am concerned about people who are trying out Linux for the first time only to find that they can't even get a proper gui because the "free" drivers don't support the card they are using (this is what happened to me on first boot after installation was finished). Luckily I know how to deal with it, but they will not. Just to be clear, I am not blaming Fedora for not having including a proprietary video driver. I am blaming them for putting out a bleeding edge version of X that they knew would not work with the proprietary drivers from the leading video card chipset manufacturer in the marketplace today. Aaron

Lame Excuse

Submitted by critofur (not verified) on Fri, 2008-08-15 23:57.
Absolutely Fedora 9 should not have been released without the option EASILY adding working 3d for nivida. Simply absurd. No matter who's "fault" it is, it simply shouldn't have been considered ready for release without such a fundamental feature. At the VERY LEAST put up in bold letters that this is missing, and, that if you have an nvidia card, you should probably go with Fedora 8 instead?

Well, that's Fedora

Submitted by Paul (not verified) on Tue, 2008-07-15 11:30.
The thing about Fedora is that it's really cutting edge software that's free of proprietary drivers. If you really wanted proprietary drivers, you really need to pick another distro or learn to put up with the proprietary drivers. Until they have a decent Nvidia 3D open source driver, Fedora is not for you.

Totally agree with you

Submitted by moodboom (not verified) on Thu, 2008-08-07 09:34.
I wasn't as forgiving when I hit kernel snags in Fedora 7. http://news.thedigitalmachine.com/2007/08/07/server-destruction-die-fedo... Great show, by the way!! (wow, your captcha challenge is tough, took me 10 tries haha)

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