Kevin Kofler wrote:
Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
> And what you are saying is that someone can't get support for the video
> card in his/her brand spanking new computer that they just bought at the
> computer store....assuming it has the latest and greatest video card
> from whatever manufacturer. Weird.
"whatever manufacturer except Intel" whose desktop/laptop class GMA chips
(i.e. all except the GMA 500 / Poulsbo) all just work, even the current
latest one.
But other than that, yes, we're saying that and it's not weird at all, it's
just how things are. Drivers don't magically appear instantly.
> When I bought my laptop, I didn't worry about video.
And that was your mistake.
> It was all supposed to "just work".
If you expect that, you need to check what hardware you're buying.
> The good news is that now GoogleEarth runs with the stock radeon driver,
> but I can't tell you exactly when that happened because there was no big
> fanfare about it when it happened.
Assuming it's an r5xx series card (it can't be r6xx or higher because you
said the Catalyst driver doesn't support it anymore), Fedora 9 updates /
Fedora 10. It was added in this update:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2008-July/01195...
which says "adds r500 support" spelled out black on white in the update
notes.
If it's an r3xx or r4xx, even earlier. Please tell us the exact model ID.
I give you a free suggestion, which developers will promptly shout down as
"admitting our video support sucks," and that is to put a 2nd entry in
grub.conf, label it stable graphics mode, and do whatever is needed to get the
kernel to leave the video the hell alone and use vesa.
I don't want to run 3D, or fancy graphics, or play games, I want to have working
X, and not have it crash all the time, get kernel panics, or have to do boot
time editing by hand to get X or run in runlevel 3. Current Linux video works
better and better on fewer and fewer cards, and it's not just Fedora. Time to
give the user an out.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot