-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Bruno Prior wrote: > Buchan, > > As was explained earlier in this thread, plenty of people have 9.2 now, > because it is being included with various linux magazines. I don't know > about the Spanish one, but the Linux Format DVD looks pretty official to > me - there is a full-page advert for MandrakeClub in the same issue, so > I assume Mandrake knew about its inclusion. > > What is happening is that magazines like Linux Format, who have a pretty > positive impression of Mandrake's user-friendliness, have included 9.2 > (original, without updates, due to publishing timescales, presumably) > and encouraged people to give it a go. Many of these are inexperienced > linux users, and are running up against the usual problems - most > commonly patchy support for video hardware. Mandrake and Radeon has been > a bad combination since at least the Radeon 7500. And it's a copout to > say it's because of ATI's attitude to Open Source drivers (not that I > expect you will) because other distros handle this aspect better than > Mandrake.
Sure, for the Radeon 7500, there is no excuse (but AFAIK it should work fine out-the-box on 9.2), but for newer Radeon's, there isn't much we can do, since no free software driver supports them yet. > And, as has been discussed in other threads, what really needs > to happen if new users are not to be put off, is that X configuration > falls back to a basic default (VGA or Vesa @640 x 480, say) or the > console interface to XFdrake, rather than simply fails and dumps the > user at a console. > > You could see this for yourself if you check out the Linux Format Help > forum, but as a taster, here's a quote from a thread titled 'Install > Mandrake 9.2 with ATI Radeon 9600 card?': XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. > > " Well listen guys, I've given up. After struggling through to a root > prompt, then downloading the drivers from ATI, I tried following the > install instructions. > Now believe me, this is no exaggeration: There are 664 lines of > instructions on how to install the drivers. 664 lines! And they aren't > the easiest of instructions to follow either, here's a small random > snippet: This is ATIs problem, if they can't sort out their driver installation routine for non-free software. They are the ones providing bad support for their products. Most NVidia newbies don't have this problem. > "Since the rpm program does check any sort of dependencies to system > libraries you might observe that you are requested to install certain > revisions (or compatible versions) of other packages in order to install > the driver package. Advanced administrators can decide to override > specific dependencies by the "--nodeps" switch as described in the RPM > manual pages, but in general those dependencies should be fullfilled". > Sweet mother mary. I know you'll all flame me for saying this (the Linux > community isn't known for being very subjective ) but Microsoft has > nothing to worry about! > Say what you like, but this is archiac stuff. Sorry folks, this won't > cut it. Windows is years ahead. " > > And this guy isn't the only one feeling this way. So you can say that > all bar one bug has been fixed by now, if you like, but that doesn't > make any difference to the fact that 9.2 in its unadulterated state got > into the open with far too many faults. There is currently nothing that can be done about this issue. Nothing. Unless you are volunteering to write a free software driver that supports these cards. > It's no consolation to newbies > that many of the bugs are fixed, because they are dumped at a console > with no idea how to install these fixes. If people get bitten by the LG > issue, that will only add insult to injury. And whether or not LG > replace the drives (is that confirmed?) Steffen Barzus had his device replaced, no-one has reported *not* having their device replaced. >, you can bet that Mandrake will > get a reputation (deserved or not) for breaking hardware. And, so will Gentoo (who had the same issue on one of their releases and on their America's Army bootable game CD). But, the bug would not have been discovered this early without Mandrake, Gentoo only found the source of the problem after Mandrake 9.2 was released. It's unfortunate, but this would have happened to some distro (whoever merged packet writing first), since it's very unlikely the problem would have been found by people manaully patching packet writing into their kernel (the patch has been available and in use for a long time). > > It seems to be a fond idea of some contributors that fixing a raft of > problems in short time after release gets round the fact that the > problems were there. No one takes that attitude with bugs in Windows or > hardware faults. So, I guess no-one applies service patches etc (some of which cause bigger problems, such as XP SP1 messing up virtual memory management)? > And they won't take that attitude with Mandrake, and by > extension (as you can see from the above quote) linux. This is what I am > worried about. It doesn't matter whether the people who make these > comments should have known better - they didn't. And that damages the > perception of linux as a whole. > > Anyway, this issue has been done to death in other threads, and I won't > extend the pain by carrying on the argument beyond this post. I just > wanted people to see that the faults in the initial 9.2 release were > causing real-life damage amongst less sophisticated linux users than > Cooker subscribers. And that this damage hurts more than Mandrake - it > hurts linux. Well, the only additional issue you have mentioned (besides the LG issue) is totally out of our hands. No distro can currently support the latest Radeon cards without free software. So, users should either bite the bullet and install the ATI drivers manually, buy the release, or join the club and use the packages there (and hope they have been updated for the new kernel too). - -- |--------------Another happy Mandrake Club member--------------| Buchan Milne Mechanical Engineer, Network Manager Cellphone * Work +27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x202 Stellenbosch Automotive Engineering http://www.cae.co.za GPG Key http://ranger.dnsalias.com/bgmilne.asc 1024D/60D204A7 2919 E232 5610 A038 87B1 72D6 AC92 BA50 60D2 04A7 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/r2HkrJK6UGDSBKcRAllwAJ9Q2/RA+u6xwzUkdtVv3/OhaEblKgCgw3br Q7lQjkLv5xJJAKhCkgGIPRE= =Tdbh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
