Fedora 21 Will Try To Abandon Non-KMS GPU Drivers

[Kivada]

?

My point was that there's a disadvantage to buying a Kabini as an open source user over buying the previous iteration. I'm not going to buy anything that uses radeonsi until the quality is equivalent.

You missed the point that someone defending the use of 15 year old hardware doesn't care that much about performance, thus an under performing driver would be less likely to put them off and as the EONS go on that they continue to use that hardware any improvements that the driver receives are free performance increases.

That and the prices are near the same for the kabini hardware as is for the old bobcat series stuff, but the kabini stuff is more capable for a given power envelope making it the better tradeoff to our 15 year luddite.

[duby229]

There's xf86-video-modesetting, but I think it requires another driver to provide KMS...



We still have one PC that is using a GeForce 2 MX400 and 384 MiB RAM (it's not DDR RAM, it's one of those RAMs that were before even that) in the company whose computers I'm maintaining. But it's running a time-frozen Windows XP that isn't connected to the network. The reason why it's still kept around is for legacy connectivity ? it has an LPT port which is required for a label printer we have, and since it's running 32-bit Windows, it is also capable of running 16-bit installers for legacy applications. I even installed an USB expansion card into it (made by VIA, actually) just a week ago, since it is usually given the task of scanning documents as well. Oh, and it also has a floppy drive, which we used for embroidery purposes until last week, when I switched the system to use CompactFlash instead of floppies. Of course I wouldn't even think of running any modern Linux distribution on it and expect it to work.

even windows xp runs like crap on that amount of RAM, unless you've already stopped a bunch of services.

[Vim_User]

even windows xp runs like crap on that amount of RAM, unless you've already stopped a bunch of services.

Slackware or Debian with a lightweight environment (LXDE or simply a WM) and lightweight software will run just fine on such a machine. If you want to use Linux on that just don't use a distro that either doesn't support your hardware or needs more resources.

I don't get all the discussion about this: Fedora orphans a bunch of older drivers. So what? If you need those drivers just don't use Fedora, problem solved.
Some people don't want to admit it and unify all Linux distros, but there are good reasons for distro diversification.

[LinuxGamer]

i'm glad to see them removing them old shitty drivers

[Kivada]

I don't get all the discussion about this: Fedora orphans a bunch of older drivers. So what? If you need those drivers just don't use Fedora, problem solved.
Some people don't want to admit it and unify all Linux distros, but there are good reasons for distro diversification.

Wrong, as the driver devs have already pointed out, these drivers barely build and nobody is testing them, on ANY distro and even if they do work at this point they most likely are little better then the VESA driver since they are essentially unaccelerated anymore due to the total lack of interest in anyone in maintaining them.

It's a case of just because you can doesn't mean you should. For example, you can drink your own urine, it is sterile after all, however you shouldn't drink your own urine, or anyone else's for that matter.

[Ericg]

Would such older, sub 1/2Gb RAM machines be "useful" in less developed countries, and would there be a demand there? (I don't refurbish and I don't live there so genuine question)

1-2Gb, sure. We sell 1Gb all the time. But less than 1Gb? Eeeeeh... thats really pushing it. I don't live there but lets think about this for a second and just work through the "common sense" end of it... Even in less developed countries they still have to do much the same that we do here (office editting, internet connectivity if its available, things like that). And even putting "light" browsers on the machines doesn't help if they are going to "heavy" websites, much the same that putting "light" office suites on them doesn't help if they are editing a "heavy" documents. While they themselves may be 'frozen' or 'limited' in their technological advances they are MOSTLY LIKE still interacting and interfacing with the rest of the world that ISN'T limited.

Put on light UI's, slim the kernel down as much as you can, use "light" apps all you want... there does still come a time when its just time to put these things out to pasture due to external factors and influences.

[duby229]

1-2Gb, sure. We sell 1Gb all the time. But less than 1Gb? Eeeeeh... thats really pushing it. I don't live there but lets think about this for a second and just work through the "common sense" end of it... Even in less developed countries they still have to do much the same that we do here (office editting, internet connectivity if its available, things like that). And even putting "light" browsers on the machines doesn't help if they are going to "heavy" websites, much the same that putting "light" office suites on them doesn't help if they are editing a "heavy" documents. While they themselves may be 'frozen' or 'limited' in their technological advances they are MOSTLY LIKE still interacting and interfacing with the rest of the world that ISN'T limited.

Put on light UI's, slim the kernel down as much as you can, use "light" apps all you want... there does still come a time when its just time to put these things out to pasture due to external factors and influences.

just something that has been annoying me, it's not really a big deal though...

Gb = gigabit
GB = gigabyte
Gib = Gibibit
GiB = Gibibyte

1 gigabyte = 8 gigabits
1 gibibyte = 8 gibibits

I pretty sure that most of these references to Gb and Gib are actually intended to be GB. A half Gb is only 64MB. 1Gb is 128MB, 2Gb is 256MB.

https://www.google.com/search?q=1%2F2Gb&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[GreatEmerald]

even windows xp runs like crap on that amount of RAM, unless you've already stopped a bunch of services.

It actually runs surprisingly well. Remember that it's time-frozen and has no network connectivity, so it shouldn't be running anything network-related, no antivirus/firewall software, has no updates installed etc. For the few tasks it's used, it still performs well.

Also interestingly enough during a lightning storm its PSU got burned out a few years ago (it was a stock PSU, so no wonder). The PSU got replaced, and nothing else was affected, and it's still running as well as before that.

[Ericg]

just something that has been annoying me, it's not really a big deal though...

Gb = gigabit
GB = gigabyte
Gib = Gibibit
GiB = Gibibyte

1 gigabyte = 8 gigabits
1 gibibyte = 8 gibibits

I pretty sure that most of these references to Gb and Gib are actually intended to be GB. A half Gb is only 64MB. 1Gb is 128MB, 2Gb is 256MB.
https://www.google.com/search?q=1%2F...ient=firefox-a

Yes all of those SHOULD be GB not Gb, but I cant edit at this point sooooooooooo... yeah lol

[Vim_User]

1-2Gb, sure. We sell 1Gb all the time. But less than 1Gb? Eeeeeh... thats really pushing it. I don't live there but lets think about this for a second and just work through the "common sense" end of it... Even in less developed countries they still have to do much the same that we do here (office editting, internet connectivity if its available, things like that). And even putting "light" browsers on the machines doesn't help if they are going to "heavy" websites, much the same that putting "light" office suites on them doesn't help if they are editing a "heavy" documents. While they themselves may be 'frozen' or 'limited' in their technological advances they are MOSTLY LIKE still interacting and interfacing with the rest of the world that ISN'T limited.

Put on light UI's, slim the kernel down as much as you can, use "light" apps all you want... there does still come a time when its just time to put these things out to pasture due to external factors and influences.

Yeah, put these things out tp pasture. You know why those parts of the world are called developing? Because they have to develop infrastructure and economy. Which means for them: No, I will not throw away those old machine, just because I can't afford a newer one. I love those 1st world views on 3rd world problems.