The Truth About AMD's Development Cycle

[Michael]

It's out!

Read all about it: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=10083

This thread is being closed and a new one will open for the discussion.

[emparq]

I am very happy to report that AMD has signed off on the article last night. There is now nothing else holding us back from publishing the truth about ATI/AMD Linux.

The article is in the publishing queue for June 1st (tomorrow) by mid afternoon.

Good to hear, looking forward to finally reading it.

[Moustacha]

awesome, can't wait to read it!

[Michael]

I am very happy to report that AMD has signed off on the article last night. There is now nothing else holding us back from publishing the truth about ATI/AMD Linux.

The article is in the publishing queue for June 1st (tomorrow) by mid afternoon.

[rolz]

whaa i was so hiped to see that michael had the last post when i checked

but for now i'll just keep going, "almost there almost there"

[Michael]

there should be another article - what's the root of the problem with fglrx?

i mean, you said that there are devoted developers. and there are some betatesters (no idea how manym though), and even community bugzilla which seems to have some of ati's attention. that mix shouldn't give bad results.

but it somehow does.

the only thing we can be sure about fglrx are X/kernel fixes, although not always timely.

other than we get some obligatory bugfixes, some new (also obligatory) bugs.
new features are far and between, and they're usually different from what majority of people would expect, at least lately.

the last two features i was glad to have were : introduction of opengl2.0 support in january 2006 and textured video support (no idea when it was implemented).

Some of these questions have been answered in this upcoming article.

[yoshi314]

there should be another article - what's the root of the problem with fglrx?

i mean, you said that there are devoted developers. and there are some betatesters (no idea how manym though), and even community bugzilla which seems to have some of ati's attention. that mix shouldn't give bad results.

but it somehow does.

the only thing we can be sure about fglrx are X/kernel fixes, although not always timely.

other than we get some obligatory bugfixes, some new (also obligatory) bugs.
new features are far and between, and they're usually different from what majority of people would expect, at least lately.

the last two features i was glad to have were : introduction of opengl2.0 support in january 2006 and textured video support (no idea when it was implemented).

[Svartalf]

I am just going to say it now... that there is pure bull shit.

I'll heartily concur... The malaise is definitely NOT due to a lack of enthusiasm or caring on the part of the developers.

[Michael]

As it happens, the developers in charge of making graphics work on Linux systems are pretty much unanimous in their lack of enthusiasm.

I am just going to say it now... that there is pure bull shit.

[emparq]

As you pointed out on Chris Blizzard's blog here, AMD/ATI Marketing guy Henri Richard said that they "committed to fixing the ATI problems with open source."

Linux Weekly News has posted an article here in response to the statements made by above-mentioned Henri Richard and the recent flurry of ATI buzz that followed.

In short, it underscores the fact that AMD/ATI have a long road ahead of them if they are seriously looking to rebuild their good faith with the Linux community.

As it happens, the developers in charge of making graphics work on Linux systems are pretty much unanimous in their lack of enthusiasm. This is not the first time that ATI has made promising sounds, but, so far, the corresponding actions have not been forthcoming. Graphics hacker Dave Airlie is particularly unimpressed, noting that ATI has not yet bothered to communicate its intentions to the developers:

As for working with the community I'd expect they'd at least try talking to the ppl who maintain the ATI open source driver if they intend on doing something with it...