Re: [Tails-dev] New support page /support/known_issues/graph…

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Author: intrigeri
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] New support page /support/known_issues/graphics
Hi,

sajolida:
> intrigeri:
>> sajolida:
>>> - Does it make sense to link to Redmine tickets? For example, #11095 for
>>> Radeon HD was closed because we had nothing else to do but the problem
>>> still exist.
>>
>>> Is it worth making this information visible to users?
>>
>> Only if the ticket is still open i.e. we think we can do something
>> about it: then the user can "Watch" the ticket and learn about new
>> experimental ISOs they can test etc.


> If we want to only link to open tickets and not closed ones then this
> information will likely get quickly outdated. I'm afraid that linking to
> closed tickets (by lack of maintenance) might lead to serious confusion
> as it could either mean that the problem is solved or that the problem
> cannot be solved...


I'm not sure: in many cases, we simultaneously decide to drop the ball
on fixing the hardware support issue ourselves and to document the
known issue (and workaround if there's a known one), and then we know
that the ticket will be closed once the known issue is documented ⇒
the known issue should avoid linking to the ticket.

So the only situation when this info will get outdated is when we
decide to document a known issue strictly before we drop the ball on
tracking/fixing the actual problem ourselves, and thus track the doc
writing and the hardware support issue on different tickets. I think
we're doing this less and less and with my FT hat on, I plan to keep
doing it less and less: researching graphics hardware support issues
is a huge time sucker and most of the time we don't get anything out
of it other than what the initial hour of research (that leads to
documenting a workaround or the lack thereof) already gives us.

>>> - Is the "(rev XXX)" part of the graphics card description relevant?
>>
>> It's relevant: different hardware revisions of the same commercial
>> name may behave differently.
>>
>>> If so I'll have to talk about "name, ID, and revision" instead of only
>>> "name and ID".
>>
>> It depends of what you call the name. I think the name includes the
>> revision and cards with different revisions should have different PCI
>> IDs. But I'm not an expert at this and I did not check. Should I?
>>
>> Anyway, your question seems to be about "Mention in your email […]
>> [the] name and ID of your graphics cards". In this context, I believe
>> the name will include the revision (and if it does not, then I don't
>> know how the user would find this info to report it to us, so well).


> The output of `lspci -nn` is structured like this:


> $VENDOR_NAME $PRODUCT_NAME [$VENDOR_ID:$PRODUCT_ID] (rev $REV)


> So far, I've called in my documentation:


> - "name" → $VENDOR_NAME $PRODUCT_NAME
> - "id" → [$VENDOR_ID:$PRODUCT_ID]


> The "revision" comes after the "id" in the output so I would have to
> name it explicitly as it's not side-by-side with what I'm calling "name"
> so far.


OK.

> But I'll improve my draft and ask you to review it. It might be easier
> to build a common understanding :)


Sure!

Cheers,
--
intrigeri