lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/02/2012 01:03 PM, o jordan wrote:

> There is absolutely no reason to fail PPC over the radeon issue.  It
> is not a big deal.  It is easy to fix.  The workaround is documented
> (and had been when the problem started back in August). Can we please
> put the radeon/nouveau problems into perspective.....

Sure we can... it means user friendliness regresses about 19 years.  In
1993, this "just write your own Xorg.conf" sort of thing was expected
(back then it was named XF86Config, I think).  I know about that,
because I was doing it back then :)  So, yes, let's put this into
perspective -- it is a 19-year regression of X usability in Linux.

Is that the perspective you were thinking of?

> So far you've only identified one nvidia card on one machine that
> doesn't work.

I think it is now two, wxl's and mine.  How many PPC testers with
nVidia-cards do we need to find all of a sudden, to convince you that
maybe there is an issue?  If I spend $1500 on ten machines from eBay,
will you then take the issue seriously?

> It is hardly uncommon for the nouveau driver not to work with nvidia
> cards.  How often do you read 'nomodeset' being suggested to people,
> yet the ISOs of 'official' architectures were still released?

Far too often!  As a community, we should be ashamed of ourselves for
this sort of nonsense. Users should not have to deal with such arcana!

But for newcomers, at least frame buffers on x86/xmd64 "PC" machines
tend to work well enough to do an install, and then use the machine for
basic 2D "desktop" operation.  Which does not currently seem to be the
case on PPC.  That's a critical distinction.

> The difference with PPC is that
> 'nomodeset' will throw you into a 16 colour setup.

One that is unusable, in which text is not readable.  That's not a
*usable* 16 color setup.  I'm old enough to have used CGA and EGA video
cards in PCs.  They did not look like this.  Text was readable.

> This is because the openfirmware framebuffer is limited to just 16
> colours (in other words it is a limitation of the PowerPC hardware).

And that would be almost acceptable in an emergency, *if* the resulting
GUI were in fact usable despite its limited colour palette.  But it is
not.  At least, not in my experience.  If it were, say, 4-bit greyscale,
it might at least be readable.  But it isn't.

> It is possible to workaround this using a different framebuffer (and
> I'm again like a broken record here ..... the instructions are in the
> PowerPC FAQ).

They are?  Presented in a way that the average user can understand and
implement?  A computer user moving from, say OS 9 or OS X?  Did they
have to deal with this kind of configuration stuff in OS X to get a
working graphical screen display?  I don't think so.

> It is easier to do this using the alternate CD, but it is also
> possible using the live/desktop ISO.  Nouveau and radeon are not the
> only cards used by PowerPC.  Early Apple machines used Ati Rage and
> Rage 128 cards and these are the machines that Lubuntu is best suited
> for.

So not-so-early five or six year old 512MB or 1GB RAM Apple Powerbook
G4's with a nVidia card should use what?  Ubuntu 12.10 for PPC?  Oh, it
doesn't exist.  Fedora?  Debian?  Please advise.  Perhaps we should add
this info to the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ, too?

> As far as I'm concerned the current PowerPC setup is the best it
> can be.

OS 9 did better.  OS X did better.  Earlier versions of Ubuntu did
better, I think.  So what makes you think the current situation is "the
best it can be"?  What is your reference point for ease of use, and for
what displayed graphics on this hardware are supposed to look like, that
allows you to confidently say this?

> The only change I still would like is for the boot message to be
> reviewed.   In my email to Colin Watson I said that no boot parameter
> should be suggested, but instead people directed to the PowerPC FAQ
> and Known Issues pages were they can get detailed and current
> advice.

If I can't get it working in an hour or so, with around 30 years of full
time computing industry experience, 20 years using Linux, and a B.Sc in
Computing and Information Systems, what chance will the average Mac user
have of understanding and making appropriate use of these documents?  I
suspect if I spend another few hours tinkering, I might find a way...
but should I really be expected to do that??  I may have time Friday
evening or Saturday to make another attempt... no promises.

No promises because, even if I do find a great way to make this work
really well for me, it won't get incorporated into 12.10 anyway...
because you firmly believe "the current PowerPC setup is the best it can
be" !!  I'm not doing this for me (this is borrowed hardware, borrowed
to try and help out with testing, and in any case a shell and Emacs is
all I really need, at least 98% of the time!).  I'm doing this to try
and help Lubuntu.  Only to be written off as too dim to read the FAQ.

If this is the new level of user friendliness one should expect from
Ubuntu in 2012, I might as well revert to Debian.  It's easier!

> I repeat again, there is no reason to fail PowerPC
> that you have identified. Regards Adam

Once more, repeating again is both superfluous and unnecessary :) :)

Ubuntu QA needs to determine (and clearly document) what lengths it is
acceptable to have users go to, to get a desktop OS installed and
working on their hardware.  If it requires editing /etc/modules,
building nv packages from source, creating and editing Xorg.conf files,
etc., as the PowerPC FAQ seems to be suggesting, then IMO a release is
insufficiently friendly to be worthy of being called an official Ubuntu
desktop release.  But I'm not Ubuntu QA -- and perhaps that is a good thing!

According to www.ubuntu.com: "Ubuntu gives you a clean and streamlined
experience...".  That is the claim being made.  Do you think the current
state of Lubuntu 12.10 Desktop on PPC lives up to it?

Jonathan