Originally posted by Svartalf
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Originally posted by Crunchy View PostThe majority of what ATI owners are moaning about is pretty basic stuff, it's not much to ask for working drivers. Rialto based cards work but badly, poor scrolling in Firefox, major memory leak in any 3D app etc. Frankly ATI/AMD should be ashamed of their drivers atm.
If you release a driver that isn't marked as unstable/alpha/beta it should work! Major show stoppers simply should not get through the QA department. Phoronix have reported how drivers are released with a rolling system, a driver spends at least a month in QA.
We are also not moaning about something provided for free. We all spent a good amount of money on the hardware, we expect decent drivers under supported OS's.
Having said all that AMD have released the new code base, CCC is finally getting ported to Linux and Michael hinted that Rialto based cards are being properly supported next release. I can't wait, I'm hoping it will fix most of the major problems and they can go from there adding new features and better performance.
BTW I don't think CCC is being ported, as the win32 CCC is .net and we don't ahve to luckly endure that horror.
P.S. Micheal, i know NDA n stuff, but something 'I have or haven't tested it' would have been _some_ answer It would be nice if I finally got to use my card is all
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Originally posted by mlau View PostMy suggestion to ATI would be to drop fglrx completely
and instead integrate the GL blob with the RHD driver, and assign the people working on the 2D part
to it. So at least 2D would be well supported, and
the adventurous folks can have a bleeding edge 3D blob that doesn't depend on a particular kernel and
xorg version (I bet the freebsd people would like that too).
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Originally posted by lucky_ View PostAnd what about older graphic card ? Maybe they simply cannot release anything for older models they inheritate from ATI.
We're just going to have to see what comes of 7.12/8.1 and go from there, I guess.
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Originally posted by Svartalf View PostConsidering that NVidia got SUED for their "Vista Ready Drivers" that had similar issues on the Vista side, I think you might want to stop and think about what is all going on here.
If you think I'm being negative, heh, what the heck was that from the Windows world?
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostI'm just stating facts here- pointing out serious problems which should have been show stoppers but weren't. To not do so is sticking one's head in the sand.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostAnd you mention moving on, etc. What do you think this is, hm? You're taking me to task for pointing out unacceptable things coming from them and telling them that I'm moving on.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostProfessionally, I can't really do that (I have to use their stuff to test for function on the stuff I do so that I know it works under Liunx.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostThey COULD have better stuff coming out than they fielded at this point. They still can. Whether their upper management opts to give out adequate resources for the people working on things to do so, remains to be seen. The certainly have had the entire year to get it to this point and they haven't managed it so far- not because the people working on it are unable because of skills or competence, but because they're too few to be actually working on the stuff, especially in the stated development process they're using to produce the proprietary driver.
Once they find the developers they've got to get them up to speed on the hardware, current driver, and AMD/ATI corporate culture. This takes time. I'm not surprised it's taking them this long. Yes it's unfortunate and if I was a business customer of them or someone else who distributes their products where it was costing me money and the risk/reward ratio for suing them was in my favour too bloody right , I'd sue them but I'm not so I have too look at what's the best I can do in my situation and that's hope some big boys sue them , speak out against people who are making the environment for the developers hostile and persuade them to focus their efforts where it'll actually do some good.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostWhat? I'm just supposed to "suck it up" and hope they get their act together? Not likely. You state that this is a problem with Linux getting ahead. Nope. Not even close. They end up encountering as bad or worse (Way worse...being rebuked online like this is nothing compared to getting sued over something...) stuff from the Windows world- and people still keep making stuff for it. Eagerly.
Without talking to intellectual property lawyers you might find the case against ATI on the linux driver side much harder to win than on the windows side.
Windows is also a much bigger market and that changes the game an incredible amount. We only have a couple of developers for linux and AMD/ATI needs more , if I was a potential developer for the linux driver I'd have a long around , see what's going on here and think fuck that for a joke.
If someone asks whether an AMD/ATI graphics card is suited for linux then by all means tell them no , but there are people here calling the developers monkeys , morons and idiots and suggesting when people don't ask that they change to NVidia when they post a problem.
If we could somehow have a positive development environment for the developers and maturely focus the negative aspects about the quality of the linux drivers and the consequences of that on AMD management I'd be perfectly happy.
Instead we've got a bunch of folks who are annoyed they are having so much hassle with their gfx card on linux and taking it out at anybody they can.
I'm simply pointing out in the long run that unless it's focused in a mature manner (which may very well involve the courts) on AMD management then they aren't helping the situation and are only going to prolong their problems.
Originally posted by mlau View PostMy suggestion to ATI would be to drop fglrx completely
and instead integrate the GL blob with the RHD driver, and assign the people working on the 2D part
to it. So at least 2D would be well supported, and
the adventurous folks can have a bleeding edge 3D blob that doesn't depend on a particular kernel and
xorg version (I bet the freebsd people would like that too).
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Ze. The community has waited a long time for them to get their act together, probably too long... Been there, done that. The only ones making it hard for the developers to actually code the driver were ATi themselves by simply having an understaffed team, and a HUGE problem on their hands, not to mention that every ~6 months a new product would come out and every ~18 months a whole new generation of products and hence underlying architecture. It is disproportionate to compare the Windows Driver team and the Linux Driver team, at one point IIRC one of us in the Rage3D forums joked about how many Windows Driver developers were there for one Linux developer.
Svartalf is not criticizing the actual merits of the driver team, particularly Matthew Tippet (leader of the Linux driver team), but rather that the gargantuan task they are assigned to is simply too big and they are just too few to accomplish it in a reasonable amount of time... And by that I mean graphics market reasonable amount of time, which is ~18 months... That was what the community was expecting (and still is). In the current state of things AMD/ATI have indeed made a HUGE leap forward (from where I left them, anyway), but they still have an equally or even bigger gap to close before things will be smooth enough, and I don't mean speed necessarily (see Svartalf points about OpenGL spec implementation, basic X features, etc, etc, etc).
If anyone made the development environment hostile to the developers were ATi themselves, as I said before. With this new open way of doing things, I'm sure ATi will see a much better reaction from the community, not because of the open driver, but because most likely things will start to "just work" (at a LONG last!). AMD has the great opportunity by maintaining a dual model driver (open and proprietary) to actually benefit from the open development on the open source driver and implement that into their proprietary driver, but keep the open driver so "things just work" in new systems and installations.
Most of us former ATi users grew skeptical of ATi/AMD on Linux. Not for the people behind the code, but for the people higher than these in management. I agree with most what Svartalf said about the current situation and what does the opening of the specs and an open driver might mean for ATi/AMD, I don't think ATI/AMD will regain the lost users any time soon, but for new users, and people buying systems integrated with ATI/AMD parts, this means that ATI/AMD will at least be able to start having a growing user base in Linux, and these users won't
- Go running in tears back to Windows.
- Go out and buy an nVidia card.
Like you, I don't think anyone will sue ATI/AMD for their Linux drivers any time soon, and the market segments that could, have moved on to that other IHV, cheaper than any legal action, and you get actual work done; However, I don't think Svartalf implied that anyone would do so either.
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Originally posted by Svartalf View PostWell, I believe that most of the R200 stuff is being discussed at this point as well as the R300/R400 and the R500 and R600 info. As it stands, I do need to get back in touch with John Bridgman to see if they're okay with releasing the sanitized RagePRO/Rage128 spec data that I had been given for the UtahGLX project work I'd done- but the both of us seem to be busy. (I'm hoping it's due to trying to get more people in there to fix the problems his employer has on the proprietary driver and possibly to get the specs out the door. I would honestly like to see the fglrx driver do much better and to see us catch mostly up with them and make this a win-win situation for ALL.)
We're just going to have to see what comes of 7.12/8.1 and go from there, I guess.
Considering that there is very little people buying amd/ati powered lappy due to the current situation since at least one year (at least for linux enthusiast). It sounds pretty pessimistic but I still hope for the good time to come, AMD cpu's always satisfied me.
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Originally posted by Ze.. View PostSo you admit the developers can't do anything? So why condone people making the development environment hostile for them? How is that going to attract more developers? which AMD/ATI is having trouble finding?
Once they find the developers they've got to get them up to speed on the hardware, current driver, and AMD/ATI corporate culture.
There is a vast difference between what has been going on here , that has been targeting the developers and instead doing something that will make AMD/ATI's management take notice.
Without talking to intellectual property lawyers you might find the case against ATI on the linux driver side much harder to win than on the windows side.
Windows is also a much bigger market and that changes the game an incredible amount. We only have a couple of developers for linux and AMD/ATI needs more , if I was a potential developer for the linux driver I'd have a long around , see what's going on here and think fuck that for a joke.
If someone asks whether an AMD/ATI graphics card is suited for linux then by all means tell them no , but there are people here calling the developers monkeys , morons and idiots and suggesting when people don't ask that they change to NVidia when they post a problem.
Until AMD gets it straightened out, one way or another, their GPU products, under Linux, is solely for the brave at heart or the lucky. That's what most people have actually been saying.
If we could somehow have a positive development environment for the developers and maturely focus the negative aspects about the quality of the linux drivers and the consequences of that on AMD management I'd be perfectly happy.
Instead we've got a bunch of folks who are annoyed they are having so much hassle with their gfx card on linux and taking it out at anybody they can.
The average person doesn't know whom to blame, so they pick the "likely" target. I don't and I've been trying to get them to quit taking potshots at the devs.
I'm simply pointing out in the long run that unless it's focused in a mature manner (which may very well involve the courts) on AMD management then they aren't helping the situation and are only going to prolong their problems.
It's still inexcusable to ship with the problems that the current new codebase drivers have. I know that the devs are doing what they've been told. But the middle management should have planted their feet in the ground like a mule or donkey would have and said that this stuff wasn't at all ready. It's very apparent that their QA staff doesn't know what to test under Linux or things are getting swept under the carpet.Last edited by Svartalf; 19 December 2007, 11:17 AM.
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