Without flames, and understanding how evil binary drivers are, should I expect a significant delay and lots of screwing around between the release of FC4 and the nvidia drivers working? (I like to call this the nvidia dance.)

This isn't a question for Fedora. This is a question for Nvidia. While it would be great to have nvidia's drivers documented and as part of the kernel and xorg, this isn't likely to happen any time soon.

Questions regarding how soon Nvidia will release working drivers for GCC4 and FC4 are questions only Nvidia can answer. Asking on this list is only likely to stir up a flame war regarding the evils of binary drivers which then moves to debate about the pros and cons of vi and emacs and finally fading out to a quick discussion on whether KDE or Gnome is the true desktop (along with a couple of interjects that people should look at XFCE).

Meanwhile, Nvidia will continue to plod along with development of their binary driver, happily oblivious to the thousands of unnecessary emails members of this list and others have received that shed no real light on the question.

Hope that helps.

R.

Charles Lesh wrote:

Hey all:

I've been happily using FC3 with binary nvidia drivers for a while.

I've also been playing with rawhide, which is sweet, but a no go with binary nvidia drivers.

If I remember correctly, FC3 test releases and the initial release itself could not handle the binary nvidia drivers due to changes in the kernel.

Without flames, and understanding how evil binary drivers are, should I expect a significant delay and lots of screwing around between the release of FC4 and the nvidia drivers working? (I like to call this the nvidia dance.)

That depends on what Nvidia's response was when you asked them how long it will take them to build a driver that is compatible with FC4.

I assume their response to such inquiries will be "no response", and rightfully so. They don't support beta OS releases. They wait for an OS to actually be released first, so they have a stable base to test their drivers on, like most companies would. Once FC4 is released, they will no doubt rebuild their driver on it, and begin their internal QA testing procedures, and fix any bugs/glitches in the driver that are discovered, as well as adjusting the driver in whatever ways they need to adjust it for it to work with the FC4 kernel et al.

In other words, more or less the same procedure that has happened in every previous OS release, and will happen in every future OS release for every Linux distribution out there that they intend to provide driver support for.

I wish I didn't need the binary driver, but I have a laptop, and have found no other way to drive a second monitor ('twinview"), which I need to do when I give presentations. Sadly, this why windows is still on one of my partitions.

Install an OS release that Nvidia actually supports, such as FC3 (or Windows if you prefer), and be happy. If you want to use FC4, you really have no choice but to wait until Nvidia provides a driver that they support on FC4. In some cases, you can get lucky and find they've released a newer driver that unofficially happens to work on newer OS builds, but that's the exception and not the rule.

The same rules apply for ATI proprietary drivers, winmodem drivers, or any other proprietary kernel modules. They'll work when their respective vendors decide to support the new OS release, and fix and rebuild their drivers, and generally not until that time.

Hope this helps understand the process more clearly.

Take care, TTYL