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[Kano]

@bridgman

First of all, i still can see no logic in your previous answers. Why would ATI need so much more time to do the same for fglrx as for radeon oss - when you look at xv. As the chips changed for nvidia with series 8 they had to implement xv differently and ATI had to do the same with R600 - this happened more or less the same time +/- 1 year or so. Why whould have got Nv more experience? Also interestingly the xvba lib appeared 1 month BEFORE vdpau and it is still not fully debugged. I think you reverse the history - thats just a lack of real interest not that you would have got less time to adopt changes.

[nanonyme]

But ya, essentially my plan to desktop Linux profitable is essentially to decentralize its maintence. It is much easier and productive to maintain a certain subset of code, then to maintain everything.

Keep us posted on how it works out in the next year or so. I'm a bit sceptic by nature but always interesting to see how new ideas work out. Start keeping a blog on your experiences with it, for example?

[nanonyme]

What we are doing is building up relationships with the different distro communities to get a cleaner interface between the L1 distro-specific support community and the L2 driver-specific support, ie so things only get to the driver community once most of the distro-specific issues have been handled locally.

That does sound like a good idea. Since even if there was to be a roadmap (possibly with parallel moving since not everything depends on everything always), the current position(s) must be able to be tracked both on distro level and on upstream level. Then people can see that hey, I now have this and this is what I can expect when things get pulled from upstream. (a visual roadmap might actually not be a good representation, maybe possibly a categorized list of components like OpenGL 2.1, what it consists of, which parts are done, OpenGL 3.0, what it consists of, which parts are done, which parts are shared and which are not etc would imo be somewhat more informative and less of a hassle than trying to think which "road" we atm walk)

[darkphoenix22]

Its just a numbers game, unfortunately, the numbers don't stack up when the consumer desktop profit per desktop is $0. You can thank the spaceman with the bottomless cash pit for that one. Before Ubuntu you could at least maybe get $1 profit ;-)

Dave.

I like the bit about the spaceman.

But ya, essentially my plan to desktop Linux profitable is essentially to decentralize its maintence. It is much easier and productive to maintain a certain subset of code, then to maintain everything.

The semi-rolling release system was born out of neccessity. I needed to make a distribution that could keep up with the times in terms of video codecs and Bittorrent clients, while maintaining a stable core OS that was usable and safe for my users. Additionally, I needed a way for me to maintain the thing on my own without spending countless hours rebuilding packages.

I guess the best things in life simply come from pure need.

[airlied]

As an aside, Canonical and Novell are losing money hand over fist over desktop Linux. Red Hat was losing money until they decided to make Fedora into a solely community supported Linux. Novell has pretty much done the same with OpenSUSE, but failed to emulate Red Hat's success. Mandriva went bankrupt at one point. Debian and Gentoo are now sponsored by non-profit organizations.

The current distribution model is great for servers as that is what it what it was designed for. It is horrible for desktop Linux though as it fails to offer what desktop users need. This is why you see long term Linux users gradually switch over to Arch and Gentoo, as those distributions offer completely up-to-date software in exchange for a bit of initial work. Ubuntu users usually have about a dozen PPAs in their sources to get the software they need.

I believe an entirely different approach is needed to make the desktop Linux market profitable. I intend to provide that with infinityOS.

I don't agree with that at all, the way we deliver the software isn't the problem, the problem is supporting what we deliver. The reason the model works well for servers is there is a massive body of people working on making it work. For every one Red Hat lkml kernel hacker you see in public there are probably 2-3 more internally making RHEL not suck for servers. For every one Red Hat X hacker you see publically the same person is also internally spending time making RHEL suck less as much as possible. Its just a numbers game, unfortunately, the numbers don't stack up when the consumer desktop profit per desktop is $0. You can thank the spaceman with the bottomless cash pit for that one. Before Ubuntu you could at least maybe get $1 profit ;-)

Dave.

[darkphoenix22]

Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell (among others) have all built successful business models around Linux, all different but all allowing them to finance a certain amount of ongoing development and to support their users. You may not like the way they do it, but that is a function of the amount of money their business model contributes for paid staff and their ability to attract volunteers for the bulk of the community.

As an aside, Canonical and Novell are losing money hand over fist over desktop Linux. Red Hat was losing money until they decided to make Fedora into a solely community supported Linux. Novell has pretty much done the same with OpenSUSE, but failed to emulate Red Hat's success. Mandriva went bankrupt at one point. Debian and Gentoo are now sponsored by non-profit organizations.

The current distribution model is great for servers as that is what it what it was designed for. It is horrible for desktop Linux though as it fails to offer what desktop users need. This is why you see long term Linux users gradually switch over to Arch and Gentoo, as those distributions offer completely up-to-date software in exchange for a bit of initial work. Ubuntu users usually have about a dozen PPAs in their sources to get the software they need.

I believe an entirely different approach is needed to make the desktop Linux market profitable. I intend to provide that with infinityOS.

[darkphoenix22]

Put differently, yes I agree completely with your analysis of the problem and your conclusion that HW vendors should do the packaging, and if you ever get close to the same market share as MacOS or Windows I'm highly confident that will happen.

The harder question is what happens in the meantime.

Anyways, I need to be up soon. Off to zzz, g'nite.

Actually, up until half a week ago I had never intended to support ATi hardware, due to concerns about the drivers. My userbase bitched though, so I came here, just to demonstrate that your drivers were not up to task and to get my users to let it be.

However, something changed. I tried out the Radeon drivers and saw everything I needed to work working, with the exception of 3D (due to the pitfalls of Karmic). After that point, my goal has been to promote the Radeon drivers within the community and to you guys at ATi to get you guys to give them the mindshare they deserve. I see something great within the Radeon drivers and I just want to see it come into being.

I feel that something great will only happen if ATi makes the Radeon drivers the official "desktop Linux" drivers. This is because as long as the Radeon drivers do not have that designation, they are destined to be looked at as also rans and will never get the outside developer support and community mindset that they need to prosper and be taken seriously.

[darkphoenix22]

Seriously. I really like what you are doing with the distro but you aren't offering a captivating business opportunity yet

Heh. Actually my business model is to provide a platform for companies like BBC, CBS, and CBC to cheaply put their content on the Internet. I intend to put full IMDB and Facebook integration into every corner of my distribution, to allow for people to find information and chat about what they are watching.

I don't intend to make any money directly off of the distribution.

infinityOS was born out of a hardware project called the Funbox. I have been working on this project in its iterations for over a year now and up till about February of this year, it was entirely based on Windows. Moving over to Linux allowed me to customize and tailor everything to a T, to a degree that was never possible on Windows. It also allowed me to target a much greater set of hardware, as on Windows I was limited to Nvidia due to driver deficiencies on that platform (ATi hardware seems to be horrible for video regardless of platform due to a lack of concern for it in their drivers).

I have told people online that I made this for a university honours project but it was kind of a lie. My professors offered for me to get academic credit for it after I showed them what I had done, not the other way around.

infinityOS is more of a platform than a distribution. As such, I am treating it purely like a platform in terms of support.

[bridgman]

Put differently, yes I agree completely with your analysis of the problem and your conclusion that HW vendors should do the packaging, and if you ever get close to the same market share as MacOS or Windows I'm highly confident that will happen.

The harder question is what happens in the meantime.

Anyways, I need to be up soon. Off to zzz, g'nite.

[bridgman]

I don't disagree with your summary of the current distro challenges, but dumping the support work on an even smaller community obviously won't work, and expecting HW vendors to lose big chunks of money on Linux isn't really a great strategy either.

At some point you really need to think about building some kind of business model rather than giving stuff away for free and expecting that somebody else will pay the bills. Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell (among others) have all built successful business models around Linux, all different but all allowing them to finance a certain amount of ongoing development and to support their users. You may not like the way they do it, but that is a function of the amount of money their business model contributes for paid staff and their ability to attract volunteers for the bulk of the community.

There is a certain amount of business opportunity in Linux, and that drives the amount we can reasonably invest in supporting it. With maybe 1/50th of the PC market (most numbers say closer to 1/100th) we are already investing as much as or more than the current Linux market can support, assuming we already have the same market share in Linux as Windows. We don't mind sustaining that for a while but I don't think it's realistic to ask us (or any of the other HW vendors) to provide funding for OS vendor support costs, which we don't do on any other OS.

Basically you're saying "you need to pour money into Linux than you make from it, so that it can become more popular and then cost you even *more* to support. This is good for you and one day I'll explain how".

Seriously. I really like what you are doing with the distro but you aren't offering a captivating business opportunity yet