I figured out how to get my wireless connection back, but the NVidia drivers are still a mystery. I don't care about free software idealism, I care that my shit works.
Are we not seeing the connection here? This is why anyone bothers to write drivers for devices that already have binary-only drivers. It may work right now, but if something changes in the future, someone needs the source code to fix it. Free software is pragmatic in the long run.
(Disclaimer: I spent way too much time a little while ago getting some random binary executables from the Linux 2.0 days -- dynamically linked, 32-bit -- to run on a fresh Ubuntu 8.4.1 installation. The source code had been lost.)
To be fair, the Ubuntu quality assurance process seems somewhat shoddy. On stable releases, I've seen 2 rather serious issues with minor updates.
In one update, Ubuntu pretty much broke the PCI detection code in X, so that X always thought that there were no cards. Luckily, it was only a matter of waiting several hours for a fix, and updating from a text console.
In another update, the Canadian english localization completely broke KDE, making it segfault on startup. Again, wait a day or two and update from a text console.
Right now I'm on vanilla Debian (unstable branch) and I find that it has had less critical breakage than Ubuntu's mainline branch. I'm not sure how Ubuntu should update their QA process, though.
Maybe I just have had good luck with it, but I have never had problems like this with any version of Ubuntu since 6.04, but I'm also not running intrepid yet.
I have. Up until this last summer, when I got a new computer, I'd either have problems with my video drivers or with my sound card. It was an absolute pain.
[+] [-] etal|17 years ago|reply
Are we not seeing the connection here? This is why anyone bothers to write drivers for devices that already have binary-only drivers. It may work right now, but if something changes in the future, someone needs the source code to fix it. Free software is pragmatic in the long run.
(Disclaimer: I spent way too much time a little while ago getting some random binary executables from the Linux 2.0 days -- dynamically linked, 32-bit -- to run on a fresh Ubuntu 8.4.1 installation. The source code had been lost.)
[+] [-] davidw|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orib|17 years ago|reply
In one update, Ubuntu pretty much broke the PCI detection code in X, so that X always thought that there were no cards. Luckily, it was only a matter of waiting several hours for a fix, and updating from a text console.
In another update, the Canadian english localization completely broke KDE, making it segfault on startup. Again, wait a day or two and update from a text console.
Right now I'm on vanilla Debian (unstable branch) and I find that it has had less critical breakage than Ubuntu's mainline branch. I'm not sure how Ubuntu should update their QA process, though.
[+] [-] kingmaker|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icco|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unalone|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadytrees|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liamQ|17 years ago|reply