NVIDIA Talks Of Optimus Possibilities For Linux

[curaga]

Charlie (SemiAccurate) has been converted for a while now, and doesn't look like the big names listen to him much.

Or like what happened to Kano, he found a big GL bug, AMD didn't listen until C't reported the same much later.


I guess we need AMD and friends' etc marketing depts to understand the true influence of Michael, Charlie, Kano etc

[chithanh]

The hardware review websites are grouped in tiers according to the number of page impressions.

The tier 1 sites are Anandtech, Tom's Hardware and HardOCP.
Tier 2 sites include e.g. Beyond3D, TPU, HotHardware, VR-Zone, ... and various regional sites like hardware.fr or ComputerBase
SemiAccurate can hardly be called a tier 3 site.

Tier 1-2 receive lots of attention from AMD/Intel/NVidia, tier 1-3 are usually seeded with hardware before launch. (That should tell us where Phoronix is according to hardware manufacturers...).

So if Charlie criticizes some product for lack of Linux support, almost nobody will care. On the other hand, if one of the tier 1 sites or a number of tier 2 sites started basing their recommendations at least in part on Linux open source drivers, then you'd see things moving.

[chithanh]

Don't confuse the OEM companies with hardware that was destined for OEMs but ended in the retail channel instead.

[curaga]

Actually rather curiously, according to alexa.com phoronix gets almost exactly 10% of the daily visitor hits of Tom's. That's huge, a lot more than I thought.

[bridgman]

man i hate this "bridgman" bullshit.

in my 20 years of computer history i never get a graphic card from a OEM !

i buy like 20 graphic cards in 20 years but always "retail" versions.

people who really believe this bullshit are really brain-death!

people with a single brain-cell buy the hardware in retail versions and build there own system.

thats because you don't need to send the complete computer if 1 part is broken you just need to replace the part what is REAL broken.

i go this professional way like 15 years now and it shows always its the best way.

OEM's always put shit into your computer! and OEM's always give a shit about you!

Remember, "giving a $hit" means you *do* care in English. When you want to say "don't care" you would say "don't give a $hit".

Even buying retail cards, you're not buying the chip directly from AMD but buying a card from an OEM board manufacturer, aren't you ?

[bridgman]

......... damn... thank you very much...... i know it but writing is so much automatism... and cure such a wrong language usage is hard.

I'm pretty sure it's a bug in the language...

right but not for all my cards i had a "radeon8500" back in time ATI build there own cards...
but today its this way.

Yep, I agree that back then you could buy a retail ATI card, same way you can buy a retail AMD CPU today. Today all our consumer graphics cards are built and marketed by our board partners, and we only sell workstation boards directly.

but this makes no difference because the OEM board manufacturers do not make the drivers and the Retail cards are not OEM by "definition"

yes yes you still try to imagine this to me (OEM board manufacturers=OEM) no this is just wrong

for me (OEM=complete systems) and not "Retail hardware"

Ahh, so you don't mean "definition" you mean "your definition"... works for me.

and no i don't have to deal with the board manufacturer company to get a better driver! because AMD is writing the drivers! because of this your point is complete nonsense!

Remember the discussion was about whether a retail customer "buys from us" or buys from a <let's not call it an OEM> board manufacturer who buys chips in large quantities, understands their priorities for driver and OS support, and passes those priorities to us, just like a "complete system" manufacturer.

[Kano]

@bridgman

Your complete OEM discussion is pointless. You can buy RETAIL FM1 cpus from AMD, boxed, absolutely no OEM involved. Which virtual OEM you would have to talk to when you want to use the GPU part?

Intel sells the same, they know they have to provide a driver, so they provide one.

It is not acceptable that AMD sells hardware which can not be used by Linux users the day you buy it. If you can not provide oss drivers, then provide binary drivers, no problem at all. But those have to work. And they have to work with current upstream not with legacy code.

[bridgman]

You can buy RETAIL FM1 cpus from AMD, boxed, absolutely no OEM involved. Which virtual OEM you would have to talk to when you want to use the GPU part?

Good point. I'll ask around about how customer preferences for those sales get rolled up.

It is not acceptable that AMD sells hardware which can not be used by Linux users the day you buy it. If you can not provide oss drivers, then provide binary drivers, no problem at all. But those have to work.

We don't (sell hardware which can not be used by Linux users the day you buy it), and we do (provide binary drivers). The problem right now is that those drivers aren't getting through the system and board manufacturers to end users like the Windows drivers do, so for now we need to do a better job of posting them at launch time ourselves. The "retail APU" point you made might also help there.

And they have to work with current upstream not with legacy code.

Most users live somewhere between "current upstream" and "legacy" - certainly supporting a wider range of kernel and distro releases will reach a wider range of users but not sure I agree the binary drivers "have to work" with current upstream on launch day.

I'll certainly agree with "it would be *better* if they worked with current upstream" but going forward the open source drivers should cover that anyways.

[smitty3268]

Most users live somewhere between "current upstream" and "legacy" - certainly supporting a wider range of kernel and distro releases will reach a wider range of users but not sure I agree the binary drivers "have to work" with current upstream on launch day.

I'll certainly agree with "it would be *better* if they worked with current upstream" but going forward the open source drivers should cover that anyways.

99.9% of these support upstream complaints would go away if you supported the current version of Fedora at launch time. That's all you need to do.

I'm not holding my breath on that happening any time soon, though, when you can't even provide proper Ubuntu support on time.

[crazycheese]

Nice talkin and all, but I don't think Mr. Bridgeman is in position to change anything. This is the only single problem I have with AMD (which is the source of all other problems).