Yesterday i installed the amd ati driver (ATI Radeon Xpress 200M) from livna and to my surprise x no longer breaks requiring a reboot. i was beginning to think my hardware was faulty or maybe even the fedora 6 installation DVD. my system has been kept up to date since last year but with no improvement what so ever regarding the VGA card. Recently i installed freespire and noticed that everything was ok and the graphics never once broke up so i decided to the try the ati driver from livna.
i installed the ati driver from livna using yum extender. i received an installation error with a conflict bewteen the i586 kernel which was already installed and i686 kernel which is a dependency for the livna driver installation. i uninstalled the i586 kernel and headers with yum extender and then was able to install the ati proprietary driver from livna. i've put up with the VGA problem since fedora 6 was released and if only i knew a simple install from livna would have done the trick. the picture is now crystal clear and is much brighter than before. all in all it's a huge improvement. i've also noticed with windows XP that even with the latest drivers installed from ati,the graphics are not anywhere near as good as what i have now with fedora. as far as i can see Linux system is far superior to windows. all this time i was waiting for fedora 7 to come out hoping things would be better for my ATI Radeon Xpress 200M Chipset card. now my graphics card issue is sorted, their really is need to rush to install fedora 7. i can sit back and wait for the repositories to fill up. i think maybe their is something to be said about the proprietary driver argument as put forward by Kevin Carmony April 24, 2006. then again maybe fedora 7 will have resolved problems with previous drivers in fedora 6.
"For Linux to thrive, the open source community needs to be better educated on how to legally and successfully incorporate proprietary licensing in those instances where there are not yet good open source options available.
I know there will be some who will abhor the idea of offering proprietary software to be used next to open source, but I honestly believe it's time to take a realistic approach. The world just isn't going to throw away their millions of iPods, or stop watching DVDs. Until viable alternatives emerge, Linux needs to offer a total, usable experience. Freespire doesn't force any proprietary code on anyone, it simply gives them that choice as an option.
Freespire is about choice. The user should be free to decide what software they want to install on their systems, be that proprietary or open source. Linspire continues to fully embrace and supports the open source model. In fact, we honestly wish we didn't need any closed source software, but if Linux is to gain mainstream acceptance it needs to work with iPods, DVD players, and fully support hardware, such as 3D graphic cards, Wi-Fi, sound, and printers. Until there are viable open source replacements, Freespire will provide the choice to users to easily access legal proprietary codecs, drivers and software. By making this available, more people will be exposed to desktop Linux, have a positive user experience and in the end adopt the operating system as a viable alternative to Windows. As the Linux user base grows, so does its circle of influence to facilitate change."
http://www.linspire.com/linspire_let...ives.php?id=27
i think the key point here is "those instances where there are not yet good open source options available".
Freespire is quiet good but despite it's advantages it did not last long on my hard drive. by the way thanks to the people who fixed the bug in kshutdown. my family use it all the time. cheers johnny
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