Subject: Re: bug#36786: Warn of AMD GPUs unusable with Guix System

From: "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 22:03:26 +0200

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 05:56:23PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]> skribis:
> > While my patch before addresses AMD-specific tweaks in the manual
> > under Hardware Considerations, it is not enough if on the *download
> > page* Guix is claimed to run on “an i686, x86_64, ARMv7, or AArch64
> > machine“ without saying linux-libre *on some hardware, is not
> > supported* and referencing the Hardware Considerations section and
> > h-node, I think.
> 
> Well, ‘Limitations’ and ‘Hardware Considerations’ are the first sections
> one see when following ‘Installation Instructions’ at
> <http://guix.gnu.org/download/>.  We can always move things one level
> higher, but eventually everything ends up at the top level.  :-)
> 

I would rather see a more prominent link to the manual and h-node
where on the downloads page it says “runs on i686, x86_64, ARM”,
because I suppose many people do not read the manual until they know
they need to, and instead expect things to just work, especially now
that there’s a graphical installer.

> > >From e88ee68c09266e1d09d24ff0d1b6ec6a4708841b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > From: Florian Pelz <[email-masked]>
> > Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 23:02:21 +0200
> > Subject: [PATCH] doc: Mention AMD Radeon workaround when TTYs are not redrawn.
> > 
> > * doc/guix.texi (Hardware Considerations): Describe workaround.
> 
> […]
> 
> I think this doesn’t fit well here: the previous paragraphs are about
> RYF, h-node.org, and the more general issue.
> 
> Like Ricardo wrote, since this is not Guix-specific, it would be great
> if we could link to other resources on this topic.  Are you aware of any
> such on-line resource?
> 
> If there’s no such thing, then we should definitely add this
> information, but perhaps we should move the paragraph a bit higher (next
> to Wifi), and possibly turn Wifi into an item of this list.  WDYT?
>

Yes, I agree this is not a good place in the manual.  However, I
thought of it more as a list of hardware-specific *and* Guix-specific
tweaks.  Note that the patch does not mention Xorg not working on some
AMD GPUs (h-node is the place for that, even though currently it does
not yet list many AMD Radeons), instead the patch is about
hardware-specific tweaks that can be made.  For example, a
recommendation of thinkfan for Thinkpads could be placed in such a
section too (once there is a Guix service for thinkfan; I do not know
how important thinkfan is and do not own a Thinkpad, it is just an
example).  The Arch wiki for example has articles on various specific
kinds of hardware.

Regards,
Florian