Am Freitag, 17. Februar 2006 14:06 schrieb Kurt Garloff: > Hi Hans-Peter, > > On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 07:50:51PM +0100, Hans-Peter Jansen wrote: > > Am Dienstag, 14. Februar 2006 18:06 schrieb Marcus Meissner: > > > This is btw one reason for the packagemanager changes, that this > > > package installation from multiple external sites is possible. > > > > Hmm, how do you download something, if the e.g. AVM DSL/ISDN Combo Card > > driver is missing (like it's the situation here), and that's the only > > way to internet? > > > > Sure, hopefully you already ordered the big fat red warning sticker for > > the boxed product which explains, that things which just worked before, > > won't do anymore! > > This is not new. > > We've always been fighting to get as much support for new hardware in > by e.g. using the latest kernels, trying to add newer drivers from > various sources and integrating them. > And along the way, sometimes a piece of hardware stopped working, as > the driver had not been ported to a newer kernel or because tests > exposed that it was more a danger to the user than a help. > > > While I understand SUSE/NOVELLs standpoint concerning nongpl > > modules/packages, I also see, that you're in fact loosing a unique > > selling proposition, like Sven Schmidt noted by imposing a chicken/egg > > problem to your users, which can only be circumvented, if carefully > > planning an install/upgrade process. > > I don't think that increasing the amount of supported hardware by > a small amount by violating the rules of the community by supplying > non-GPL kernel modules is the right differentiator. > I think that fighting to get more hardware supported with GPL drivers is > the better way to go. This is the strategy that the creators of Linux > are setting and Linux has come to where it is now by most people > supporting this. SUSE has always been supporting this as well -- just > it has been somewhat generous with exceptions.
I think the problem isn't that openSUSE are aiming to remove non-GPL drivers from the Kernel. This is a good aim. The problem, at least for me, is just in the way it is being communicated, or not. It appeared, for me, as part of the last IRC meeting as fait-acomplie: openSUSE are dropping all non-GPL drivers forthwith, no discussion, no announcement of how this would affect existing users and not that it would be from the next version (10.2), but the currently developed version due for release in the next couple of months. No information on how they were going to cope with non-GPL drivers that couldn't be replaced in time for release, no information on whether we would still be able to get/install the packages through YOU or as extra packages in a YAST repositories or whether we would need to scavenge the net for binaries and compile them into custom kernels for ourselves. And also that it was let-slip, as opposed to announced formally, when Beta 4 was due for release, I would expect such a major change to be announced as the first alpha for 10.2 would be announced, so that suppliers who currently have non-GPL drivers had a decent amount of time to ramp-up a development stream to work on a solution. The way it came out, it looks like everybody has "a few weeks" to get all of this sorted. Of course, this is just how it appears to the "public", when the decision was made and when the suppliers were informed is another matter. I've only been on the lists for a month or so, so sorry if I missed this being announced in November or December, for example, although looking at the mail subject lines in the archive nothing sprang out about it, and it hasn't appeared on any news feeds I subscribe to, and something like this would be fairly big news I would have thought. That is why companies like Novell have a PR department, although the fiasco they caused with using Gnome desktop as a default for Novell Linux isn't reassuring... > SUSE has invested some work to support such exceptions in the past. > Are you telling me that the handful of drivers that we can not support > any more the same way we did are the key differentiator that made you > chose SUSE Linux? Yes. All, or most, distros can be made to use KDE or Gnome, they can all run the same apps. The key differentiators for using SUSE for me were: a) It works, it recognises and installs all of my hardware without me having to scavenge the net and search out drivers and rebuild kernels. I've been using SUSE since 2001 and I haven't had to touch gcc for anything that I've needed so far, only for my own work. b) Auto-scripts for things like loading the nVidia drivers during install (well, this is an extension of the previous point), but the OSS nVidia drivers don't, or didn't, support 3D and dual-head. Without the official nVidia drivers, I wouldn't have a desktop. That SUSE automatically installs all of that for me is a big reason to stay loyal to it. c) YAST, I find it very easy to use and configure many aspects of my machine. For some aspects, there are better tools, but having everything "under one roof" is very useful. d) It just works... Well, apart from on my new laptop, which has an ATi Radeon Mobility X700 chip and the OSS Radeon driver cannot seem to control this chip and get it to display anything, I had to download and manually install the ATi fglrx driver, but on over 20 different machines I've installed SUSE on, this is the first time that SUSE hasn't just installed and worked... With my old laptop I tried SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and a couple of others. SUSE installed, and worked. The rest stalled the installation at some point and required manual intervention to complete the install, something I wouldn't expect from an installation package from the mid 80's on. That said, Marcus Meissner from SUSE did respond that they are working with the likes of ATi and nVidia to solve these problems, so lets hope that they have a solution in time for 10.1 release. > I actually believe that we improve on the driver side rather than > making it worse by allowing others to provide kernel modules that > cleanly integrate into the system and survive kernel updates. > This way, more parties can contribute kernel modules and not everything > needs to go via the bottleneck of our kernel team. It is a great goal, but the information that has trickled out through "unofficial" sources (i.e. there has been no official statement on how this will affect users, just a few lines in the IRC log on KPM packaging, and what appears like FUD from an AVM source) is causing uncertainty, and it gives the impression of: "We are going to do this, and to hell with whether it plunges SUSE back into the dark ages of hardware support in the short term." I'm sure this isn't what they mean, but without an official statement they are letting AVM and the likes implant FUD in this direction. The PR department for Novell/SUSE/openSUSE really need to get their act together in this. (And if openSUSE haven't assigned somebody/a team to act in this role, they really should think about it, releasing this sort of information in a controlled manner, and in a format that is understandable to the average user, is really important these days.) <snip> Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
