Fedora 21 Will Try To Abandon Non-KMS GPU Drivers

[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.

[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.

[LinuxGamer]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Kivada]

As you correctly wrote it is necessary to use external software to watch videos. But that is typically not the purpose of keeping such old machines running. The purpose is to allow them to continue doing what they were doing fine in all those years.
Netsurf handles animated gifs fine too, even on low-end boxes. If you think it becomes unbearable, install an ad-blocking proxy.

As I said, the boxes aren't for someone that reads this site, they are for people that don't know what they are doing but need a computer for whatever reason but don't need something Windows specific.

This was in the late 90's, most students didn't use the school computers for much, even fewer had an email address. The self policing was looking out for the guy walking out the door with an iMac, a projector or a 30" TV.

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.

Yeah, well what you describe the box may as well be a "black box" embedded system at this point like the electric motor diagnostic systems my old neighbor built for the company he worked for, the company made vacuum cleaner motors. Used off the shelf systems, but added connectivity to a few different tools and had the shop's maintenance guy whip up a custom housing for it all, they'd just stick the motor in and if the sensors didn't detect anything wrong with it the screen flashed green for it or red for a bad one, the bad ones would go to an almost identical testing machine, this one however would give actual feedback data to the user to repair the motor and those employees had to receive additional training to understand what they where reading.

[curaga]

You act like that wouldn't still be faster then what he was claiming to be running, The HD8330 with current state OSS drivers would still be far faster then a Rage128 from around 15 years ago.

?

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.

[chithanh]

And if you want to watch a video?

As you correctly wrote it is necessary to use external software to watch videos. But that is typically not the purpose of keeping such old machines running. The purpose is to allow them to continue doing what they were doing fine in all those years.

Nor does it appear to have ad blocking so that when a site loads 700 .gif ads it doesn't eat all of your aforementioned 256Mb of ram.

Netsurf handles animated gifs fine too, even on low-end boxes. If you think it becomes unbearable, install an ad-blocking proxy.

Clearly you didn't live in the same area that I did, here the students stole or vandalized every piece of equipment, no matter how new or old it was, the school had gear ranging from Apple IIe's and 286 boxes all the way up to indigo iMacs.

Vandalism would invariably happen, and in the two days it took for staff to notice, get another 386 from the attic (from the two dozen or so), insert the boot installation floppy and wait for the install to finish, the students would have one fewer terminal to browse the web, check their emails or communicate via instant messaging. So there was remarkable self-control among the students because those who decided to kick the computer off the table, cut the mouse cord, pour soda into the keyboard, block the PSU fan with a stick or decorate the screen with permanent ink were soon met with contempt by their peers.