[ubuntu-x] Status of kernel X drivers

[Bryce Harrington]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:38:07AM -0500, Chase Douglas wrote:
> A second proposal I'd like to make would be integrating some of these drivers 
> into jockey. Right now jockey proposes proprietary, marginally supported drivers 
> for ubuntu. This is similar to lbm in that the drivers provided are not 
> supported to the same level as the default modules provided by linux-image. 
> There are many cases, however, where the lbm drivers may solve issues for ubuntu 
> users. Unfortunately, lbm is not really advertised anywhere. I believe it would 
> be useful for users to have the option through jockey to install backport 
> modules, with all the disclaimers of level of support. This helps us not only by 
> providing a possibly better experience for end users when lbm fixes their 
> issues, but also through testing. We would be more likely to see bug reports 
> like, "My hardware doesn't work in lucid until I install lbm". We can find and 
> vet individual fixes more easily and integrate them into the linux-image package.
> 
> This would be very useful for cases where the intel drivers in linux-image can't 
> be fixed due to non-trivial backporting of patches, but the updated drivers 
> could still be provided through lbm. Jockey could look for graphics chipsets 
> that we know function better through lbm and then suggest them to the user just 
> like it's done today for proprietary drivers.

That's not a bad idea.  I was wondering myself how we'd expose the
availability of new lbm bits to end users, and this approach seems quite
sensible.  Pitti, what are your thoughts on this proposal?

Bryce