On Wednesday, August 19, 2015 09:21:49 AM Stéphane Graber wrote: > On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 02:13:16PM -0400, Jorge O. Castro wrote: > > Hello tech board, > > > > It is my understanding that most of you are either at DebConf or > > LinuxConf, so I thought I'd start the conversation via mail, here's > > the context: > > https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2015-August/004693.html > > > > A bunch of us have organized and are now publishing the drivers at > > ppa:~graphics-driver. While this will help advanced users by > > consolidating third party PPAs into one more organized one, it doesn't > > so much for the new user who is experiencing this new world of gaming > > on Linux. Two out of the three contributors to this PPA are well-known > > and trusted Ubuntu developers with years of contributions to Ubuntu. > > > > I wanted to ensure that we got feedback from game developers > > themselves, which is why we asked Feral and Aspyr to leave their > > feedback directly. The thought is, if we can make Ubuntu rock for > > these guys, then the rest of us get the benefit of that work. > > > > I'd like to propose the following: > > > > - An additional entry in the graphics driver dialog that says > > something similar to "The latest upstream driver from Nvidia), this > > selection would never be the default. > > - The user accepts a way to acknowledge that these things are a > > community best effort and are provided as-is, with no expectations of > > support. > > > > We would then update the PPA according to Nvidia's upstream release > > schedule. I realize that this request is pretty much the antithesis > > of everything we know about shipping a well supported desktop > > operating system, so I'd like to kick off with some of my reasoning: > > > > - The rate of first class AAA game titles for Linux is increasing, and > > a great deal of those games are requiring the latest drivers. > > - There is a bunch of things happening in the gaming space, like the > > Vulkan API and VR, which will mean that this space will probably > > start to rev faster, not slow down. > > - SteamOS is for console OEMs. For desktops and laptops, Valve tells > > people to use Ubuntu. > > - The demand for these drivers will cause people to do things to get > > them, including xorg-edgers, manually installing drivers (which is a > > terrible user experience), > > > > Looking forward to the discussions, thanks for your time! > > I'm personally -1 on this. > > Ubuntu SRU rules specifically allow newer versions of such packages to > be uploaded to the supported Ubuntu archive when needed for hardware > enablement or fixing bugs, which it sounds like would match your use > case perfectly. > > Furthermore, all Ubuntu flavours must be built entirely from the Ubuntu > archive and current policy (and one that I think makes sense) is that > packages aren't allowed to add external (to the Ubuntu project) > repositories. > > Adding such an option would lead to a repository which people would > assume is somewhat "supported" by Ubuntu in the sense that should there > be negative interactions between that repository and archive packages, > people will file those bugs on Launchpad and may not be very happy when > we mark them all Invalid as they're running "unsupported software". > > > So I'd very much rather you go through the normal process for this which > is to SRU those newer drivers as needed. If a driver doesn't fit the > existing SRU rules for hardware enablement and bugfixing, you should > still be able ot get it into the backports pocket, all of which uses the > official Ubuntu archive infrastructure.
+1 to Stéphane's -1. This has come up before and I think his response is entirely correct. "Because games" is not a good reason to throw all this out. Scott K -- technical-board mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/technical-board
