[ubuntu-x] PowerPC bugs

[Colin Watson]

[Please could you use line-wrap in your mails?  They're very difficult
to read this way in my mail client ...]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 12:38:05PM +0100, o jordan wrote:
> I am keen too to get proper fixes and that is why bugs have been
> raised against all the appropriate packages.  However, a lot of the
> problems are long term ones, for example
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/725580 .  Some
> though are recent e.g.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/1058641
> .  The problems are not PowerPC specific, but the difference is
> non-PowerPC hardware has better fallback options, for example the vesa
> or proprietary drivers.  Neither of these things are available on
> PowerPC.  My proposal is just to create a useable fallback option,
> something that isn't automatically available at the moment on PowerPC
> for some nouveau users.

I'm sorry.  I know you're trying to get this fixed and I'm sympathetic.
But I don't want to end up in a position where I break something else as
a result, and I'm simply not willing to be held responsible for that
since this is not a field I understand well.

I'm not asking that you get the kernel or X teams to apply a proper fix,
necessarily.  All I'm asking is that you get somebody from those teams
to ack the proposed changes to the boot menu; that way I can have some
confidence that they won't cause some other problem that I have no way
to predict.

Get a member of the kernel or X teams to sign off on a proposed boot
menu change, and I'll apply it.  It would help if this could be as brief
as possible - while I appreciate that you've gone to a lot of effort to
provide many bug references, I'm afraid I simply don't have time to read
through lots of bugs on linux and xserver-xorg-*, given that this is not
my field and so it takes a lot of energy to understand long
back-and-forth threads!  The longer the mails, the less likely I am to
manage to absorb anything beyond the third paragraph or so, given how
much I have to do before the 12.10 release.  I think this may go for the
other developers in question - you really need to be as concise as you
can.

I'm afraid I am finding the long e-mails on many different but related
subjects frustrating and impossible to absorb properly.

> On previous versions of *Ubuntu I believe you could still use ubiquity
> in 16 colours.  Now it doesn't even work in 256 colours
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1040544 .
> Presumably the problem is in whatever widgety thing it uses.

Any problem with this is certainly in some underlying toolkit and should
almost certainly not be assigned to ubiquity.

> I think you could replicate the problem on non-PowerPC hardware by
> forcing a 8 bit colour depth.

This would be a good thing for somebody to test directly, then.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]