Description of problem: I just put together a new motherboard, a new 1440x900 monitor, and a new FC6 install. I try to stay away from proprietary drivers because they've caused me nothing but problems in the past. I expected to have trouble with my 1440x900 monitor and I did (but that's a different issue). The problem is that the release notes don't say anything about proprietary video drivers. However, even a casual web search for how to fix up a 1440x900 display under Linux will result in plenty of web pages that discuss various proprietary drivers. So now the new Linux user is puzzled - if this driver is necessary, how to get it? Which copy to trust? Why wasn't it on the install media? Why won't yum just fetch it? I think the Release Notes owes the new user at least a short mention of proprietary video drivers and probably a pointer off to some place that describes them in more detail. Otherwise, the casual user will simply follow one or more of the sets of directions from the web, download a driver and go on, potentially screwing up some other part of his/her install (like libGL). At fedoraproject.org, Mike Harris spells out a lot of the pitfalls that come with these drivers so it's clearly a widespread problem. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Read release notes... Steps to Reproduce: 1. Find Linux newbie 2. Install FC6 on odd hardware 3. Stand back and watch Actual results: Screwed up libGL Expected results: I'd rather use free drivers but that doesn't look likely any time soon. Second choice would be to have a known good site to get these drivers from and a pointer in the release notes that tells me about it and why it is better than some random site. Additional info:
Release notes are for release specific information. Not general help. We did provide a link to the note on 3rd party drivers from our release notes in FC5. Seems that got missed out for FC6. I have added them back to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Xorg However note that Fedora is a completely Free software system and we dont want to encourage the use of proprietary drivers not to mention potential legal issues with liability and non-gpl compatible drivers. Please do open a separate bug report against Xorg with detailed information on the monitor resolution issue. In many cases, we can fix the drivers or the hardware detection process to do the right thing by default. Thank you.