Future of my support for ATI

[Dragonlord]

Oh well... Intel... stands for me anyways for rather... modest... driver development. I mean churning out drivers which hard-lock your laptop when you try to load the WiFi module ( which happens during kernel boot time with auto-load by default ) and your RF switch is off is not really a great thing to start with :P

[Alecz]

Don't forget too that intel's hardware when it comes to GPU's is by far simpler. It doesn't not have all the options and instruction sets that ATI or NVIDIA provide. As well, if you tried using compiz or have a multi-user setup, you'd soon see the limitations of that driver pretty quick.

I'm not sure what you mean.
I have several users, and I am running compiz, but only on the first logged in user. This is a limitation of X as I have been told.
ATI has the same limitation(due to X), but nVidia made a workaround.

What other limitations am I supposed to see?

[Zhick]

Choice is abundant in Linux, and some believe it's what defines Linux but I think it's too much! Linux isn't growing tall... it's growing wide, spreading itself too thin. Just because they can't get along, developers just think "Well, i'll just make my own!"

Just because you think the devs are doing things wrong that doesn't make it wrong. Most devs think Linux is about choice and/or about doing things right and not about growing tall, and they won't (and don't have to) change the way they work because some people think otherwise.
There's a nice article called "Linux is not Windows" you might want to read. Googling it should be no problem.

[gtrawoger]

Just because you think the devs are doing things wrong that doesn't make it wrong. Most devs think Linux is about choice and/or about doing things right and not about growing tall, and they won't (and don't have to) change the way they work because some people think otherwise.
There's a nice article called "Linux is not Windows" you might want to read. Googling it should be no problem.

I read that article a while ago (I think it was not too long after CK Patch one) and I realize that they're not the same. In fact I am quite happy they are not.

But sometimes I wished the linux community ran a bit more like a company, in that people would have someone to answer to (i.e. your boss).In Linux' case, the end users?!?! Admittedly, that won't work in the total sense of the idea, since people don't like that in the first place.

I personally like my boss, and we get lots accomplished in our IT department. That being said, our boss doesn't know much about computers, but knows what he wants to see. It kinda keeps us on right path and we don't get hung up on wild "what if's".
In a similar sense, I see the community working hard, but sometimes without enough direction in a "general" sense, like let's get the X system working good before making fancy 3D desktops.

If this made little sense, then it's because I am rather sleep-deprived (3 week old daughter). I can try to make myself clearer in another post (*** another thread opens to discurage anyone to get gtrawoger from commenting again ***)

[Dragonlord]

As mentioned Linux is about choice. You have to implement sometimes different stuff to see what really holds true in the wild ( aka at the end users machine ). Main problem with companies is that they try one way and bang it through to not miss deadlines. If it is mediocre then the suffering one is the end user... until the end of time. In Linux you suffer earlier if something is not as good as envisioned on paper but the mediocre attempts drop out sooner or later and your suffering does not end until the end of time. That's the main difference. I'm up for some early suffering if the end result is better.

[Joe Sixpack]

Yep, those numbers seem pretty typical :

90.89% Windows
7.94% Mac
0.80% Linux



That makes sense... I think the Mac sales figures are actually higher than the browser hit figures, so that supports your statement that a lot of Mac's are either running Linux or Windows. The browser hits are based on OS not HW brand though, so Mac should really be read as OS/X.

Running multiple OSes on a machine seems to bias the reported results in favour of the least-popular OSes, ie it probably boosts the reported share of Linux and the Mac OS.

Actually what people always tend to forget is the amount of computers in the world that don't even have internet access. It's a lot more common than you would think. There was an article on it about 2 years ago, saying how many parts of they world didn't have access to the net because it was too expensive, too far off the mainline, or both. I think 2 of the areas named were some parts of New Zealand, and a lot of countries in Africa.

Most of the systems in question run Linux for 2 reason: a) It's free, so they can afford it and b) Someone took the time to translate it into obscure languages that Microsoft wouldn't even waste their time with.

Long story short: those stats are utterly useless.

[gtrawoger]

As mentioned Linux is about choice. You have to implement sometimes different stuff to see what really holds true in the wild ( aka at the end users machine ). Main problem with companies is that they try one way and bang it through to not miss deadlines. If it is mediocre then the suffering one is the end user... until the end of time. In Linux you suffer earlier if something is not as good as envisioned on paper but the mediocre attempts drop out sooner or later and your suffering does not end until the end of time. That's the main difference. I'm up for some early suffering if the end result is better.

Like I said, it may not have made sense what I said since I am overtired. And as it was as much a suggestion (to make linux development like a company) as an observation (bringing my own work situation in), one needed to take it with a grain of salt.

All I am saying is that the current model seems a bit flawed. Nothing terrible, since in reality just about everything has some flaws. It just seems that the very essence that makes up Linux might be going against itself.

You commented again about choices being available in Linux. Well, you got a few choices in ATI drivers, that is true. How has it been serving you?

Look, I don't want to argue about something I can't change... or for that matter, nobody on this forum. I am no guru in any way, just a linux user that had made the switch from Windows a few years ago.

But just as I really like what Linux has to offer, it was one frustrating switch to it. And I think I can speak for everyone that wasn't nurtured on a floppy with slackware or red hat on it, that it could be made easier.

It seems that the elite of the linux community have gotten so good at patching and applying fixes, that running linux must seem boring without it.

Ok, I will quit this while I am still not completely hated by everyone here (or am I?). It was my 2 cents. Whatever it was worth.

[Dragonlord]

>>> Well, you got a few choices in ATI drivers,
>>> that is true. How has it been serving you?
I can't speak about them currently since the card in question ( 4870 ) is still about to be exchanged ( a bit of hassle but nothing I could not handle ) so I tack of the current experience with the drivers and this card as "on hold" until I get the new one and can verify if this had been really just a HW defect or if it is really a driver problem. The machine I'm currently writing from uses an old radeon 9500 or something along this line. With that card I have no problems with all drivers ( running fglrx though since I set it up for that driver back then ) so in fact there I would have the choice if something fails horribly. It's though a bit unfair to trial Linux on a very specific case that is 3D acceleration. It's not like the pure software side with windows manager which really are one hell of a thing to have chooseable. So for example on this machine I have XFCE because of the scarce RAM, CPU and GPU speed. On my dev stations I have KDE for the tools and a representative user system. For all the users I setup boxes so far I put up KDE to easy the transition from Windows. Some people I know use WindowMaker for the fun of it and while it's easy on resources. The choices here allow me to use the exact right window manager for whatever system/user combination I come across. And if I don't know I put up all of them and the user can pick what he is most accustomed to. Mind the word "accustomed to". The customer is king and this is what the OS should also value most: customer is king and chooses what he wants.

>>> It seems that the elite of the linux community
>>> have gotten so good at patching and applying fixes,
>>> that running linux must seem boring without it.
This is not correct anymore. It's true that Linux had been a bitch to set up especially what goes for X back in the days. I started with a Suse 2.0 or even earlier, can't remember anymore. I nearly had a party when I managed to get X running the way I wanted. Today we have a lot of binary and user friendly distributions. Without a doubt Ubunutu and company can no more be called "patch this" or "gurus only". Plug in the disc, install, fire up the package manager, select what you want to have since it sounds good, install, finished... enjoy Linux. Distributions came a long way to get as user friendly as they are today. Still there can be done more of course and there will be done more but saying it's for Gurus only is not correct. Things like GenToo for example, yes, that's pro stuff... don't touch it unless you know what a console is good for or you know the important Linux console commands by heart. But that's not something I would shove at somebody not knowing what a hard disk is.

And no, people are not hated for opinions... only for acting like morons, and that you did not.

[siggma]

I guess that would be me. Hi !!

Sorry it's taken me so much time to respond. The text on this site is very tiny and the editor is even worse. I started a reply but wasn't able to finish it so here I go again.

I think we are supporting Linux quite a bit today, aren't we ? Whose hardware would you buy instead, and why ?

Now that's a leading reply...

Does it matter?
The reality is that under any linux distributions I've seen the video looks very sloppy. It flashes when it shouldn't, the control center is meaningless having no effect, and above all it WON'T PLAY watchable video, whether 3d is enabled or not. That's the primary issue. I can put up with the 3d abberations, the lack of a working window resize, and a non working control center. I can easily use the aticonfig tool for that. But video tearing in all video playback is unacceptable, especially on a card this new. The gstreamer plugins that are normally used in a web browser either play a flashing morse code of nonsense or don't work at all.

What aspect of the 3D support are you unhappy with ? We are still shaking some issues out of the new 3D code base but I think the stack is running pretty well other than (ahem) Windows apps under Wine.

VIDEO PLAYBACK!

The only other 3D issue I can think of is running 3D apps under Compiz, where NVidia has an advantage because they didn't rely on the Linux framework and instead ported relatively more of their Windows driver stack to Linux allowing them to support Redirected Direct Rendering before Intel and AMD.

I'm not really interested in why you don't write the code, it's the reality that it doesnt' work. I get the feeling you are more interested in looking good for ads than writing a good, solid, working video driver. I've seen linux under other cards and it looks very nice. No tearing, no jagged edges on 3d objects.

Regarding video playback, have you tried the open source drivers on your 1650 recently ?

Yes, I just downloaded and installed Sabayon in the hopes it would be working. But no deal, it looks exactly like it did last time I tried it.

Alex put a lot of work into adding good EXA render support and Textured Video (which works nicely even under Compiz) and that is now available on both the radeonhd and radeon drivers. The only missing thing in the framework right now is a good vsync solution in the compositor but that is being worked on.

Again, that sounds really political to me. I don't know what you consider "working nicely" but I see horrible jagged edges on ALL 3d oblects and the video playback has no hardware support. It's software only and it looks terrible. Do you sit in front of an x1650 desktop under Linux to write these replies?

It's going to be another 6-12 months before the Linux desktop infrastructure is going to be ready to start taking on Apple and Microsoft, but there is great progress and solutions seem to be worked out for all the key parts. Again, you want to be running the open drivers to see the framework progress fastest -- while you want to run our proprietary drivers if you want to see proprietary features first. Up to you.

Since there is no Linux "infrastructure" per-se, I get the feeling you don't understand where I'm coming from. This is not just about ATI or RADEON or RADEONHD, it's about people, society, cultures, and the future of business.

I think Bill would disagree with you. Windows is the foundation of a very successful empire

So you admire dishonesty, lying to the public it sells to, forcing small companies out of business, court battles, and more lies?
Do you really think the current business environment of "take as much as you can doing as little as possible" will have no effect on business in the future?

I understand that Microsoft OSes are not your choice and we are not trying to force you to use their products.

Now that I just don't believe. How many people are working on Linux drivers vs Microsoft?

Do you even know?
would you post it here if you did?

It comes to this:

The future of our entire society is at stake and ATI is small part of that stake. Business is about people, when it becomes about deceiving soneone into purchasing a product just to sell the product and make $$$, it's not business anymore, it's gambling. The difference is that busienss carries risk that can be managed through experience. Gambling carries risk that cannot. It's a guarantee of failure. Look around at what's going on?

Wny is labor worth less today than it was yesterday when experience is greater?
Why do we have inflation?
is it acceptable or honest to try to force one country to be like us?
Do you have children?
Do you want to be part of raping their future?

-Tom

[rbmorse]

So, this is political and not technical.

Ok. Have fun.