New AMD Catalyst Beta Supports Linux 3.8, TF2 Fixes

[schmidtbag]

It's one thing for AMD, NVIDIA and Intel to deal with different Windows versions too.

That is true, but Windows isn't anywhere near as fragmented as Linux and MS kinda made it easy for GPU devs by making older versions of Windows incompatible with newer technologies, which means less to maintain. Linux does have the advantage of a userbase that isn't using kernels and display servers from 10 years ago, but I get an impression that for some reason GPU devs feel this obligation to not release a driver because of something that breaks, such as special effects in a desktop environment. While the breakage is technically the GPU devs' fault, it very often could be caused by improperly or poorly written code on the end of the broken program.

[PsynoKhi0]

Sure, that that must be why they primarily fix gaming issues.

In a beta driver...
For Steam games, for which Ubuntu 12.04 is the recommended distro...

nvidia also has no problem given nouveau the middle finger for documentation... But a selfish, arrogant and narrow-minded company serving selfish, arrogant and narrow-minded customers, no wonder it goes well for them

Too bad the mayan calendar turned out to be an hoax, really...

Back on topic, AMD's page still lists 13.3 beta 3 from last month, it might be time to stop announcing stuff that's not officially out because some random Bozo McLame found a random URL on AMD's servers.

[Vim_User]

But a selfish, arrogant and narrow-minded company serving selfish, arrogant and narrow-minded customers, no wonder it goes well for them

When it is selfish, arrogant and narrow-minded that I do not want to be forced to either wait ages for support of new stuff or use an incomplete and slower driver as alternative then you sure can call me that. No problem here. If I have the choice I rather buy the hardware that gives me fully functioning drivers with zero-day support for new stuff.
If AMD wants to stay competitive they should think about that.

[entropy]

I think you're missing the point. The priorities and goals for the binary mostly come from the workstation business unit, and WS customers are quite a bit more likely to run on stable enterprise distros.

It's not a black-and-white thing but last time I asked the workstation folks there was more customer interest in supporting RHEL 4 (!!) than in supporting the fastest moving consumer distros.

Open source drivers focus more on upstream and fast-moving distros. Originally there was a big gap between what the radeon and Catalyst drivers covered but the gap is closing over time.

Is that still the official stance now?

I mean with the slight chance of graphic intense blockbuster games coming to Linux,
this is hard to believe...

It doesn't look like your binary guys care about RHEL bug reports either:

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=736

I hope that there is at least an active discussion how to improve on the communication with non-WS customers.
In particular the current bug-tracking system is basically defunct and highly frustrating.

P.S. Don't take it personal, I know you're not the one to blame.

[bridgman]

I mean with the slight chance of graphic intense blockbuster games coming to Linux,
this is hard to believe...

You might have missed the "it's not a black and white thing" portion of the text you quoted. That said, I don't think I understand what you think the answer should have been... are you suggesting we should drop workstation support and focus only on the Valve opportunity ?

It doesn't look like your binary guys care about RHEL bug reports either:

Not sure how you concluded we don't care about RHEL bugs. Jammy (on the ticket you linked to) already said that 6.4 support is implemented but was not included in the drivers that were mentioned in the bug ticket.

There might be a disconnect in the sense that none of the "release" drivers for FirePro seem to meet the criteria Jammy suggested, so I suspect there's a public beta which isn't on the amd.com "released" driver site. I have updated the ticket to make it clear that there do not seem to be any drivers on amd.com which meet the criteria Jammy suggested, and so a link would help. Hopefully that will get the 6.4 users pointed to a driver they can test.

I hope that there is at least an active discussion how to improve on the communication with non-WS customers.
In particular the current bug-tracking system is basically defunct and highly frustrating.

I guess the question is whether you want the devs to spend time responding to every bug ticket they don't have time to look at yet, or to spend the time working on bugs.

I suspect that what you're really looking for is "more bugs being fixed". Given that, my vote would be to have them work on bugs and only respond on the board when they need more info to make progress or are aware of a solution/workaround already (current state), rather than fixing fewer issues and talking more, but that's just one opinion.

[curaga]

Surely AMD can afford to hire one secretary to respond to bugs with "noted, our people will take a look"

[bridgman]

Surely AMD can afford to hire one secretary to respond to bugs with "noted, our people will take a look"

Ahh, you mean a feel-good platitude disconnected from reality. I guess we could do that but it's not the way we like to operate. Besides, I would rather use a script for mindless responses... when we have extra $$ to spend we try to spend it on engineering folks.

The point is that the developers do *not* have time to look at every bug individually in real time. That's why we don't tell people that we will.

The devs look for clusters of problems indicating areas that need some urgent attention, and patterns which might suggest possible solutions. You'll find this is the case at every vendor although the degree may vary.

[Kano]

Did you ever look into:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/linux/

How is it possible that Nvidia can do that for several years (before it was in nvnews forum until it was hacked) already and AMD can not do that?

[entropy]

Ahh, you mean a feel-good platitude disconnected from reality. I guess we could do that but it's not the way we like to operate. Besides, I would rather use a script for mindless responses... when we have extra $$ to spend we try to spend it on engineering folks.

The point is that the developers do *not* have time to look at every bug individually in real time. That's why we don't tell people that we will.

The devs look for clusters of problems indicating areas that need some urgent attention, and patterns which might suggest possible solutions. You'll find this is the case at every vendor although the degree may vary.

Fair enough.

From now on I will judge the support - I'll try at least - just by how long it takes the devs to fix bugs I'm facing or that I have filed.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong!

[bridgman]

Did you ever look into:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/linux/

How is it possible that Nvidia can do that for several years (before it was in nvnews forum until it was hacked) already and AMD can not do that?

What am I supposed to be looking at ? Seems like a run-of-the-mill online forum. Do you think that is a better format than bugzilla offers ? (I don't)