outdated nvidia drivers in the repository are a serious problem

[João Pinto]

I understand the concerns about the platform stability but according to 
that policy Ubuntu is hypothetically unsupported for all the hardware 
that gets available after the current ubuntu release and for which a 
kernel driver update maybe required.

I know this has been already debated related to other hw support issues, 
in my opinion this decisions should not be lonely driven by the simple, 
justified but "blind" JUST SECURITY rule.
On one end you have different updates which may have a smaller risk or 
higher risk, on the  other end the benefit may range from a small to a 
large amount of users that will be able to use ubuntu.

Maybe the "handicap" on the ability to test such changes for an 
"almost-static" release is beeing over-evaluated ?
Isn't there more people using Breezy available to do testing on isolated 
and(and sometimes very small) changes compared to those required for the 
core  and complex changes on Dapper ?
I understand that the development assigned people has a greater focus on 
changes and testing but they also have more complex changes to manage 
and for which the analysis and resolution of new problems maybe harder 
to isolate compared to the production release.

Please note that my comments are related to the ubuntu update policy in 
general and based on some emails I have read from similar requests on 
this ML. I don't have sufficient technical knowledge to justify that for 
this particular case (nvidia drivers) the upgrade on Breezy should be 
considered.

Best regards,

João Luís Marques Pinto
PTlink IRC Network
http://www.pt-link.net
PTlink IRC Software
http://software.pt-link.net



HC Brugmans wrote:

> <snip>
>
>>
>> My suggestion is that Ubuntu keeps updating the NVIDIA drivers with the
>> latest released version, even in the stable version of Ubuntu.
>>
> The problem with doing this is that once we do it for one 
> package/driver/program, people will use it as an example to demand 
> that another package will be upgraded as well.
>
> Apart from that, the driver is tied in with the kernel and X and 
> updating it means risking stability and security problems, we simply 
> can't test it enough to make sure that it fits our definition of stable.
>
> This would create a nightmare stability and security-wise, and we 
> wouldn't be able to put out a stable, dependable platform for our 
> users to support.
>
> Hidde Brugmans
>