Bug 756949

Summary:	Should not make a release without support from major hardware vendors
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	eyurtese
Component:	xorg-x11	Assignee:	X/OpenGL Maintenance List <xgl-maint>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	16	CC:	airlied
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Reopened
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2011-11-28 20:22:20 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description eyurtese 2011-11-25 09:27:43 UTC

When Fedora 16 was released, many people with Radeon cards had problems due to drivers from AMD being delayed which supported new release.

There are not so many major GPU producers which support Linux in either case. (I can only think about Nvidia and AMD who provide Linux drivers at this point).

Sure enough, the easiest way would be to ignore this. But can you imagine if Microsoft released a Windows version which worked only with generic driver for your graphics card? Why Fedora should give so much less value to customer satisfaction?

I think this issue deserves at least a little bit consideration. There shouldnt be releases which break major hardware support.


If you would decide that it is nonsense to wait for support from hardware manufacturers. Fedora installer/upgrader should still check for the known compatibility of existing major hardware in a system and give a warning before continuing. This would at least stop people having the 'every fedora upgrade brakes my system' feeling.


There are options to avoid these problems. Please consider implementing it!

Comment 1 Dave Airlie 2011-11-25 09:51:00 UTC

This isn't a bug. Major hardware vendors don't implement support until OSes ship that break their drivers. They are no proactive, they are reactive.

Nothing to be done here about it. You can raise this on the devel.org mailing list but a bug here isn't any use.

Comment 2 eyurtese 2011-11-25 11:37:52 UTC

We all know that what you are saying is not true. I am not sure if you are trying to feed false information on purpose or not.

For example ATI/AMD released WHQL certified drivers for Windows 7 in July 2009, it is like 2-3 months before the retail version was out on October 2009.

Not to mention, they actually had functioning drivers way before WHQL certified drivers even.


In the case of Fedora, there werent functional drivers from ATI/AMD even after the release of Fedora 16.

This is not the same case where they find a 'bug' after the release of an OS when the OS becomes used by masses, which surfaces a previously missed problem.


I would say this is a very serious bug since the newer release actually reduced the performance of existing systems, especially this specific case since it effects a mainstream hardware product.

Comment 3 Dave Airlie 2011-11-28 20:22:20 UTC

Okay don't believe me, i've only be maintaining drivers in Fedora for years and spend time discussing release plans with AMD/nvidia. These vendors only care in the Linux space (what you talking about Windows for??) about two OSes, RHEL and Ubuntu. Fedora only gets updated drivers from the vendors when they need to fix the drivers for Ubuntu or RHEL.

Anyways still not a bug anyone in Fedora can do anything about. We track upstream X.org releases.

Comment 4 eyurtese 2011-11-29 07:33:29 UTC

It was just another "OS" as an example of satisfactory results in a similar matter. 

I am sure from pre-release versions it was known that this driver need fixing. So they needed to fix the problem. Why didnt Fedora wait before making the release?

In either case, I know you cant force vendors to supply something. But Fedora could probably have a database of functioning hardware perhaps from beta testers etc. before the release and the upgrade software can check the existing hardware against it. 

Sure enough, this information can be used for several purposes (and easy enough to collect). The question is do Fedora care if people's systems becoming useless after an upgrade or not. That is not going to increase your user base after all.