[haiku-development] Re: R1 (Final) General Interest poll closed. Results posted. ...
- From: Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:50:41 +0100
Am 14.12.2010 21:08, schrieb Adrien Destugues:
I suspect a large percentage of the poll-takers don't even know if
their hardware is supported by one of Haiku's existing video drivers,
and as a result were unable to make an informed choice on that
particular question.
I think it's cheating to ignore the result telling people 'anyway, you
didn't understand the question'. A lot of people have or had problems
with video mode setting. I know my work on intel_extreme helped some of
them (including myself).
People were allowed to tell they didn't understand the question. So,
why would they have checked an answer anyway ?
In my original mail I had not claimed people didn't understand the
question. I did raise some issues, though, that might exist with this
particular poll result, but I don't feel like repeating them again.
We have to face it : there are some hardware problems still here, and
it's part of what prevented BeOS from being really successful back in
the last century. We have to take it into account and set up a plan of
action. Or, we may decide to ignore it anyway, but I don't think that's
a good move.
Sure.
For intel_extreme and radeon the problem is not so hard to solve : the
hardware is well documented, and there's xorg code at hand for
reference. For nvidia, I don't think there are available specs (unless
I missed something), so it's a bit more difficult.
Yes, it's more doable with specs. But you neglect the issue that someone
actually needs to do the work. Whether it's possible at all is less
interesting. The whole context of the poll is how long should R1 be
delayed, there is no doubt that it would be nice if Haiku ran on all
hardware with zero issues.
While Haiku may happen to work on your computer, I have a 0% success
rate on mine (a Dell inspiron 1525 and an IBM Thinkpad T60). Both had
problem when I got them and I had to fix the driver to get them
working. It's worth noting that a lot of other devs are using T60s and
have no problem with them. These two computers are built around the
GMA965, which is now rather old and deprecated. I think any new
computer you can buy will have unsupported video hardware. Seeing that
R1 is not happenning now, the situation will be even worse when we hit
the market. And the OS not being able to show up in the right video
mode is a good reason to not keep it around on modern flat panel
scrrens (on CRTs it was is not a problem as big).
It is interesting you mention your T60. Have you tried removing the
intel driver? Was the native panel resolution not in the VESA list? At
least I remember a lot of tickets mentioning that running in VESA works
just fine (via save mode options). Sure, there are some people who then
can't pick the native resolution and it's a no-go on LCD. My whole point
was that the poll result itself does not tell how many of the people who
voted pro native drivers would have been helped exactly by removing the
native driver and running in VESA, for example. You simply can't tell by
the poll results, but this exact sitation is definitely real.
With the specs available, and the hardware at hand, writing a driver is
not a very long task if you only do mode setting and framebuffer
access. I think we could get the hardware founded by the NPO or even
lended by users willing to get the driver done. In some cases it may
even be possible to work remotely using ssh to a user's box.
You are not being realistic about how hard it is to find someone to do
this work in the first place. If it was so easy, don't you think we
would have more native drivers already?
Best regards,
-Stephan
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