Re: Need xserver-xorg 6.8.2 debs (was Re: Xorg not working with Matrox G550?? MGAGetBOARDHANDLESize)

[Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl>]

Bill Moseley wrote:
> What the hell is going on with Xorg?  I did a dist upgrade again to
> xserver-xorg 6.9.0 and again I can't get X to start.
>
> Last time this came up I had to downgrade xserver-xorg to 6.8.2 but
> now I don't have that .deb around any more.  Where can I grab the old
> packages?

It should be possible to install it from the Debian snapshots archive if
you add the following two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://snapshot.debian.net/archive pool xorg-x11
deb-src http://snapshot.debian.net/archive pool xorg-x11

> Seems like the driver that comes with xserver-xorg requires the
> mga_hal driver.  So I install the driver from the Matrox site then I
> get an "undefined" symbol error for "MGAGetBOARDHANDLESize"
>
> Then I see a bug report that says:
>
>   http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=345497
>
>     This user was using the proprietary mga_hal driver, which we can't
>     support.  Closing this bug, which he's fixed by removing this
>     module.
>
> Does that make sense to anyone?

Debian maintainers, kernel developers, etc. flat-out refuse to have
anything to do with a problem which involves closed-source modules.
This is not necessarily because of "politics"; they are just being
pragmatic. After all, they might otherwise spend considerable time to
chase down the bug, only to hit a brick wall once it is clear that the
error is caused by the closed code. Therefore the rule is: If you have a
problem with a tainted system and the problem goes away as soon as you
unload the proprietary drivers, then the bug is closed immediately.
Furthermore, the developers tend not to care very much if upgrades to
the open code break some of the closed modules. (They can't care because
without the source code they have no way to know how and why the driver
will break.) XOrg is a fast-moving target at the moment, since many
people are eager to add a lot of improvements which were held back for
years by the politics of the XFree86 dictators. Nobody is willing to
wait until all the closed-source modules catch up. This can of course be
problematic for owners of hardware which has no fully functional open
source drivers, but the blame for this lies with the hardware vendors
who refuse to publish their specs. In your case I am afraid that you
will probably have to stay with XOrg 6.8.2 until Matrox decides to
update their code so that it works with the newer version.

Regards,
          Florian