Future of my support for ATI

[Tillin9]

I think the numbers are a little low. 3%-5% is what I'd wager for home use. Most big marketing firms have a hard time tracking linux since most people don't buy it, they download for free from a variety of places. The success of Dell's linux program and the EE PC should finally help dispel that argument.

AMD also should figure that the people making hardware purchasing decisions have a distinct skew for linux. At work I opted to get AMD cards for Windows boxes too, since chances are after a 1-2 year life cycle under XP they will be running linux.

As far as vendor support, would I love it if AMD spent more time and effort on Linux drivers, but I realize that there are limited resources. I'd argue that AMD should spend less time with fglrx and more time with the OSS drivers, but there is already at least one thread here where it was made clear that developer talent can't be so easily transitioned. Also, a lot of linux graphics work isn't so much the driver itself, but the frameworks, and anyone spending a good amount of time on phoronix sees that better support is coming.

For those thinking its some vast conspiracy, try to remember that a lot of problems with linux graphics don't come from vendors, but from the developers themselves. I mean, just google for the kernel mode setting discussions from the early 90s, or the XFree86 vs. X.org stuff, or some of the recent TTM flames, etc.

Finally, I wish I had the ability to help make the drivers better myself, but sadly I just don't. I do develop on a couple of linux games, so I'm indirecting doing a part (more games, means more demand for 3D, etc.). And finally, although I don't want to sound like an open source cliche, how about instead of whining about support, you open a terminal and try to help out?

[forum1793]

That's true only if you play games. I don't.

OK, you don't need 3D accel for games, maybe not at all. You're on because the regular apps aren't working. I'm back because mythtv crashed while I was trying to change dvd video player.

To reiterate one point, in last several months I went from slackware 12.0 to 12.1. I've upgraded several security packages. I've loaded other packages such as wine, mythtv, mplayer, etc. I've updated kernel 4+ times. I had Mandriva on another partition but then briefly tried ubuntu and now have fedora there. AMD increased kernel from 8.3...8.7.

And all of this assumes the operator/user is installing packages properly and has necessary prerequisite programs. Pretty tough to offer video card support to someone speaking diverse languages who might not have understood how to install a third party package in the first place even if the third party package was bug free.

With this kind of changing going on, if you were responsible for paying your employees and shareholders would you really start throwing money at this market?

Is the PC gaming audience still large enough to drive a market, anymore? If it still is, will that continue to be the case for the forseeable future?

Maybe not considering so many players are using Wii, xbox, etc. But I'm not going to buy one of those. I'm not very good with my thumbs. Hopefully we'll keep some good games coming out but with challenges regarding common architecture any kind of direct investment will be risky. Maybe we'll get some open source community groups crafting some good ones. But, 3D games or maybe the newer intent of using the graphics card for intense calculations are the only reasons to buy a graphics card besides what will come integrated into the motherboard. Most of us will not do enough modeling to need the physics calculations so 3D games might be fairly important to survival of AMD and Nvidia.

[duby229]

I've been to China. And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Riyadh. and Dubai. Everybody is running Windows. And they didn't pay one red cent for it.

At least that is what MS likes to tell people, and I dont believe them. I am 100% convinced that it is another flat out lie so that they can tell world governments it's OK to cut Linux out because we need to recoup what was "stolen" from us.

Sorry, but I dont buy it. I know some folks from India, and both of them tell me that Windows is hard to find. You can get it through P2P, but most folks are using a Linux distro released by the government. I know for a fact that China does the same with its RedFlag Linux. I know that for a fact that Russia does the same. And Germany is in the process of developing theres as well. And the list goes on and on and on. These are facts.

I've seen no verifiable evidence that Windows is being used illegally in mass. On the other hand I have seen verified facts that MS revokes Keys that have been used by too many machines. I'm supposed to believe that MS is somehow helpless when it is in a foreign country but not helpless here at home? Sorry, but I dont buy it.

[bridgman]

A few interesting things to read :

2006 : http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.ph...&mode=threaded

2007 : http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technolo..._in_china.html

There are conflicting views on market share no matter where you go. What makes it even harder is that you see totally different pictures depending on what part of the market you look at. In the server space Linux has a much higher market share, maybe 25% if you look at the right segments. Workstation market share for Linux is lower than server but still a lot higher than desktop market share today.

Everyone has a good reason to believe their own personal view of Linux market share and their views are frequently backed up by solid real-world experiences. It's a shame their numbers are all so different.

I suspect the real desktop market share is a bit higher than the most common stats indicate, but not a lot -- if you forced me to guess I would say maybe 1.2%.

In Europe the market share seems to be quite a bit higher -- first time I flew through Frankfurt the (very cute) girl behind the Lufthansa counter was having trouble with the new system and said something like "it's OK I guess, but it runs on Windows so it and I could never be friends". You don't get that in North America very much

Only one person asked if I got her phone number. Everyone else asked what distro she ran at home.

[storma]

So...

Did you get her distro??

[me262]

Don't forget:

1. ... how far the AMD/ATi drivers have come from the short time they've been open-sourced. They were slated by many to be very unpleasant with games and other 3D applications, and they're now changing that. Weither they're working with the old drivers, or re-writing the entire framework. In a year or two, we'll see fantastic results.
2. ... how much more usable and friendly to the average joe Linux has become. We're starting to shed that "Linux is for the technically advanced" feel. Windows has been "user friendly" since the mid-90's (the first computer I built ran Windows 95).
3. ... that close to 100% (if not all) of consumer computers sold by the major retailers have had Windows on it, due to large kickbacks from Microsoft. It's only been recently that Linux has debuted for these types of systems, and the average turn around time for a system is 3 to 5 years. We have out foot in the door, and we're now making the sales pitch.
4. ... our software support base is a catch-22 situation. Software companies will only work on what gets them the most money. Otherwise they need to be persuaded for support. A great area to start is the gaming circle. There's only a handful of companies that make AAA titles available on Linux. The next circle is the enterprise software, and this can be toted as highly secure and flexible. You want LDAP? You got it (OpenLDAP). You want a phone system, you got it (Asterisk), and it can interface with LDAP, and with your CRM system (SugarCRM w/Asterisk Plugin). You want a secure company website? You got it (Apache, OpenSSL). Email, multiple location support, groupware, accounting software.
5. ... due to the way Windows handles file deletion (deleting the reference, not scrubbing the file), *nix will always have a place in the market. Windows is just too insecure and unstable for the hard, rigorous requirements of Offense/Defense government agencies (DOD for example), Linux has security options to boot, and on the kernel and application level. (Sorry for the pun.)

Keep up the good work AMD/ATi.
I don't know what's going to happen, but I believe...

[rbmorse]

At least that is what MS likes to tell people, and I dont believe them. I am 100% convinced that it is another flat out lie so that they can tell world governments it's OK to cut Linux out because we need to recoup what was "stolen" from us.

You can believe what you want, but my experience, especially in the developing world, is vastly different.

I got my first copy of of WinNT from a street vendor in Singapore for about a buck.

[panda84]

[cut]

For me It comes to this, support Linux or I'll never purchase another ATI or AMD product again.

[cut]

Windows is supposed to be an OPERATING system, not an EMPIRE system. It's now become an application restriction system. it's supposed to provide an environment to support those products I choose to purchase and install on MY COMPUTER HARDWARE, not limit my choices to ONLY MICROSOFT products or those products that have the "stamp of approval" from Bill Gates.

[cut]

I don't really understand... if you're so concerned about freedom of choice why do you attack exclusively ATI who just started to support the FOSS community (by releasing specs, hiring a developer of the open source driver and so on), and do not attack Nvidia who's not supporting FOSS at all?

Are you sure your point is about freedom and not about "I want it all free now!".

Personally I dislike fglrx very much (I tried Catalyst 8.5, 8.6 and 8.7 and they're not able to make 3D working on my Radeon 9500).

However I'm really impressed by the improvements of the latest open source ati 6.9.0 driver so I don't really care for the closed source driver anymore.

Bye,
Diego

P.S.: ATI's support for AmigaOS, MenuetOS, Haiku, DOS, and Windows 1.0 sucks much more than Linux one, why don't you bother them for that?

[RealNC]

P.S.: ATI's support for AmigaOS, MenuetOS, Haiku, DOS, and Windows 1.0 sucks much more than Linux one, why don't you bother them for that?

There's a difference between a 1% market share and a 1 person market share. 1% accounts to many million users. 1 person accounts to 1 person :P

Seriously, we're using Linux, not Amiga and Atari. Why would I bother them for something I don't use?

[me262]

I only know the reason I rename my trash bin to "Amiga" on every computer I own.

http://www.atari.st/amiga.php

Atari ST 4 Life!