Bug#372067: xserver-xorg-video-mga: Please explicitly say in the package description and man page what the driver is capable of
On 5/7/07, Brice Goglin <Brice.Goglin@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
forcemerge 372079 372067
thank you
hey, thanks for taking an interest.
> I have not been able to determine whether this package is *supposed* to
> work with DVI output on a Matrox G550 card. Does regular single-head
> DVI operation require special Matrox modules?
Some problems have been reported [1,2] and should be fixed. I just pingued
your bug #372079 to know its status. I don't think it is a documentation
issue.
not sure i agree with the last statement. if it is known not to work
because of bugs, users need to know enough details (without wading
through bug reports) so that they don't get bloody concussions from
banging their heads against a brick wall. the ambiguous wording in
the man page imho invites those concussions. please, save the
foreheads.
(parenthetical note: i speak from experience. my non-working dvi
output on my pretty-common g550 video card has been a thorn in my side
for a really long time (years) and has led to this situation:
o i have to use xfree 4.2 with an outdated proprietary sourceless driver
o i have to keep many other packages held back to be consistent with that
o i therefore can't even use firefox, much less iceweasel, because
an infuriating bug,
apparently but not necessarily in a version of a gdk library that
cannot be upgraded,
decides to deliberately crash, randomly and frequently, instead of
simply failing the operation apparently not supported by xfree
("server does not implement
operation" or some such).
i *don't* mean to complain about this, because everybody is a
volunteer and matrox is apparently making it really difficult for
people. i wish i could help more. my purpose in mentioning this is
to inform you that it is *not trivial* for a user to debug and fix
this sort of thing when his or her computer use is physically limited
(not everybody can do the typing required for debugging) or technical
expertise is limited. my main point is that it is worse when it's
hard to get a straightforward answer on whether it is even possible.
i don't know whether ubuntu's decision re drivers is relevant or not,
but it is imho understandable that ubuntu starts to look attractive if
the only alternative is to buy another video card. but other than
this one thorn, debian works ok....
end parenthetical note.)
perhaps you mean that it is not JUST a documentation issue?
> If the driver is slowly picking away at the closed-source, kind of
> working and kind of not but expected to improve and would users please
> report bugs -- that sort of thing -- that would be good to mention.
There are bugs, sorry, and few people to debug them or fix them, so it
takes time to get them fix. If DVI still does not work for you with
latest upstream, you might want to discuss this upstream and maybe even
help them debug/fix.
are you saying i should try again? if so, i'll try a fresh etch
install and the installer's x conf. i have been following the driver
version numbers and i don't think i saw any changes that might be
relevant. perhaps i missed something? it still seems like the man
page is ambiguous on whether single dvi is expected to work or not.
it still seems like it's not going to work.
perhaps i should try installing the ubuntu .deb for the driver if etch
doesn't work.
please do not close these bugs yet!
again, thanks for looking at this.
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