Guess what? Yet another disgruntled Fedora+ATI Customer

[m4rgin4l]

then don't complain that the ati drivers don't work! If you use pre-alpha X you can not expect the ati-drivers to work! And the nvidia drivers are a bad example because:

they replace big parts of X
there are enough instances where nvidia was/is broken too!

and the PATH yanking - not needed with gentoo. So on the java front it should be easier than fedora

Why shouldn't I expect the drivers to work? My notebooks (a Dell and an Eee PC) have an Intel driver that works fantastic, and the NVIDIA drivers work too, and if I had an earlier ATI model, maybe the open source driver would work as well. Anyway, I get your point, I won't complain any further (at least here).

Judging from the latest news, I guess that a broken Linux driver is the least of NVIDIA's concerns right now

I'll check Gentoo's suppor for multiple JVMs. Most likely it can be ported to Fedora. Thanks for the tip.

[energyman]

then don't complain that the ati drivers don't work! If you use pre-alpha X you can not expect the ati-drivers to work! And the nvidia drivers are a bad example because:

they replace big parts of X
there are enough instances where nvidia was/is broken too!

and the PATH yanking - not needed with gentoo. So on the java front it should be easier than fedora

[m4rgin4l]

a) maybe, but there is no good reason to base a whole distro on half finished stuff. Other distros are much better in that respect.

b) but does it 'mangle' on the fly or do you have to relog/start a new term?

a) That's the whole point of Fedora! Some of us actually DON'T MIND THAT THEY SHIP BROKEN STUFF. Software doesn't magically heal itself (at least not yet), so someone has to let know the developers that the package is broken.

The thing is that sometimes they screw up a little, sometimes they screw up BIG F******G TIME, that's something you have to live with if you like ANY distro. Hey, at least they didn't break OpenSSL to generate predictable keys (just kidding).

By the way, I had to work with Gentoo for a year and I really liked it, specially the documentation. I'm not a fan of compiling and optimizing every single package of the system, though.

b) On the fly, I yank the old $JAVA_HOME/bin expression from the path and put the new one in its place.

[energyman]

a) maybe, but there is no good reason to base a whole distro on half finished stuff. Other distros are much better in that respect.

b) but does it 'mangle' on the fly or do you have to relog/start a new term?

java-config -L
The following VMs are available for generation-2:
1) Blackdown JDK 1.4.2.03 [blackdown-jdk-1.4.2]
2) Sun 32bit JRE 1.6.0.07 [emul-linux-x86-java-1.6]
*) Sun JDK 1.6.0.07 [sun-jdk-1.6]

java -version
java version "1.6.0_07"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_07-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0-b23, mixed mode)

a) maybe, but there is no good reason to base a whole distro on half finished stuff. Other distros are much better in that respect.

b) but does it 'mangle' on the fly or do you have to relog/start a new term?

java-config -L
The following VMs are available for generation-2:
1) Blackdown JDK 1.4.2.03 [blackdown-jdk-1.4.2]
2) Sun 32bit JRE 1.6.0.07 [emul-linux-x86-java-1.6]
*) Sun JDK 1.6.0.07 [sun-jdk-1.6]

java -version
java version "1.6.0_07"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_07-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0-b23, mixed mode)

java-config -s 1
Now using blackdown-jdk-1.4.2 as your user JVM
energyman@energy ~ % java -version
java version "1.4.2-03"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build Blackdown-1.4.2-03)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build Blackdown-1.4.2-03, mixed mode)

java-config -s 3
Now using sun-jdk-1.6 as your user JVM
energyman@energy ~ % java -version
java version "1.6.0_07"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_07-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0-b23, mixed mode)

[m4rgin4l]

no, I hate people who use pre-release software and then whine that some drivers don't work.


And I still would like to know how do you handle several jdk/jre in fedora and switch on the fly.

a) Someone has to try the newest stuff, otherwise we're all stuck with whatever the distros/hw manufacturers has for a QA department. What generated my original message is that I can't even do that, 'cause neither the closed-source nor the open-source drivers work. You HAVE to complain to let the manufacturers know that they could do better. Granted, AMD/ATI is far better than companies like Creative in terms of linux support, but they're not the best from the technical point of view (the NVIDIA closed-source drivers work).

b) A simple script to mangle $PATH and set $JAVA_HOME. Not rocket science.

[panda84]

no, I hate people who use pre-release software and then whine that some drivers don't work.

Ok, I got it wrong... for a moment I thought you were blaming Fedora for a proprietary driver not working on it.

BTW I found that the latest open source driver from Fedora's Koji should do basic modesetting with 4850.

The package is built for Fedora 10 but it should work for Fedora 9 too I suppose.

I found in this thread that the PCI ID for 4850 is 9442.

Then I found this patch in Fedora CVS repo; as you can see there's:

+ { PCI_CHIP_RV770_9442, PCI_CHIP_RV770_9442, RES_SHARED_VGA },

So I think that installing the latest package from here should make the ATI Radeon 4850 and 4870 work (at least modesetting).

Can someone please have a try?

[energyman]

no, I hate people who use pre-release software and then whine that some drivers don't work.


And I still would like to know how do you handle several jdk/jre in fedora and switch on the fly.

[panda84]

Please stop it energyman: this is not a distro war thread!

You hate Fedora, now we all know that. What do we get out of it? Nothing. So please stop your ranting.

[energyman]

there is one thing to download an rc kernel and another one to make a distri from unreleased stuff and known broken kernel options.

---
Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.
The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

----

see? nothing about 'broken by design' or 'testbed for RHEL'.

Other distris are also 'testing' stuff - without being based on unsupportable, unreleased software.

And if some distri uses unreleased, unsupportable software, nobody should complain if a driver written for released software doesn't work.

EDIT: and I still would like to know how fedora handles different jdk/jre and how do you switch on the fly.

[m4rgin4l]

Well. I just finished installing Ubuntu, and the closed-source drivers work like a charm. Now it's time to take OpenArena or Nexuiz for a test-drive

If AMD/ATI eventually needs someone to test the Xorg 7.4 support (w/ Fedora), count me in.