F21/F22: xorg-x11-drv: which for SiS?

[Alex Deucher]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hans de Goede wrote on 2014-09-25 08:45 (GMT-0400):
>
>>>> this package is dead for Fedora 21 and later due to lack of KMS support.
>
>>> Not exactly. My OP here was intended to goto the
>>> devel at lists.fedoraproject.org list, but I copied and pasted the wrong address
>>> from an email that had been sent both places. I later sent it there, and
>>> ultimately was told (by ajax) that lack of maintainer was the reason for its
>>> elimination[1], and not just from Rawhide, but the package is gone from
>>> Fedora 19, 20 & 21 repos as well.
>
>> No it is not, it has been retired for F-21 and later.
>
> I looked for it on all F18, F19, F20, F21 & Rawhide repos I could find, and
> found it nowhere. Had I found it on any of them I wouldn't have looked for,
> found, and installed it from another distro's rpm.
>
>> And as I've already told
>> you in a reply to devel at lists.fedoraproject.org, you are free to step up to
>> maintain it in Fedora and unretire it. I've even offered my help in doing so,
>> and that offer still stands.
>
> I don't, and won't, "maintain" any software packages. My supply of round
> tuits is chronically short of need as is.
>
> I don't program. One language is all I can handle.
>
> What I do do is I routinely test on more than a dozen non-recent, mostly
> single core, mostly 32 bit CPU, computers. One of the newer ones has onboard
> Z7/Z9 (XG20 core), LGA775, and neither AGP nor PCIe slots, a server board. My
> supply of PCI gfxcards include none that make better sense to me to keep in
> my test stack than its onboard Z7/Z9.
>
> Testing is my primary contribution to FOSS, spotting, confirming across
> distros, versions, and/or hardware as necessary, and reporting what FOSS
> evolution, intentional or otherwise, leaves working no longer. It's something
> contributors with only latest/greatest hardware, and virtual machines, cannot do.
>
> The sis and mga drivers are yet more cases of pushing hardware toward
> landfills and recyclers before their suitability to task naturally expires.
> Fedora seems to be the leader in this anti-eco-friendly realm.

Most developers have limited numbers of round tuits as well.  This
older hardware still works perfectly fine with older versions of
distros or distros focused on older hardware.  In many cases the older
hardware can't handle the requirements of the newer distros.
Additionally, older hardware gets tested less and less on newer
distros so there is less and less chance of everything just working
smoothly.  Even if you test it, there's a good chance developers won't
have enough round tuits to actually fix the problem if you encounter
one.  And speaking of anti-eco-friendly, a lot of older hardware uses
more power than newer hardware so it has it's own anti-eco-friendly
costs.  You should be recycling anyway ;)

Alex