First and foremost, I'm not crapping in all these "woe is me" threads, so those of you facing your self-generated problems, don't crap in this thread. Show some respect for opinions.
Look, I'm going to be completely honest with you guys, but I'll try not to come off as a smug, pompous ass. I find this whole fglrx/X-Server 1.5/Kernel 2.6.uber situation laughable, especially having been through it myself back on Fedora 6 (IIRC) when the X.org dudes decided to revise their version numbering (Hey! That sounds familiar!) and broke the official nvidia driver for us. No, it wasn't nVidia's fault. Sure, I was hoping they'd fix it soon, but I didn't start a thread or two in every major forum bashing them for it, but plenty of other people did; Just search nvnews.net to see.
Things happen, and if the incident was important, the fixes usually follow very quickly.
That said, Ubuntu 8.10 is coming out in 13 days from writing and everyone is all in a hubbub over X-Server 1.5 support. The truth is, a lot of people are "still" "back" on Ubuntu 7.10 & Ubuntu 8.04 (like me) and their video cards should be working one way or the other. We're worried about all these regressions, though. Ubuntu 8.04 isn't going away anytime soon. 3 years is a very long time in "technology years." You know that. Enter you guys running developement releases. You're worried about the future of Linux, about getting support now, about the view [FOSS] people will hold on AMD if they don't get this support out pronto. The thing you guys need to realize is this, Linux (the platform) is an extremely fast-placed moving target, and they (AMD) still have a bunch of regressions and unimplemented (AMD/ATi) features to worry about. (Not to mention get all their chips working with this re-written driver)
On the one hand, you'll see people calling AMD a waste of time, a poor choice, a disappointment, etc. In the opposite corner of the ring, you'll find those who don't update to the latest Kernel 2.6.uber, X.org version, etc and whose installs are relatively stable and working. Those are the people who generally enjoy using their computers (and OSes), not the ones who are infatuated with compiler flags, etc. In yet another light you have the people still on Windows or Mac who are looking to check Linux out. The reasons vary from one person to another, and that's a different topic, but one thing they will look for: Driver support. Either it's there or it isn't. Again, Ubuntu 8.04 is fairly nice and it's not going away for years. Read: It's dependable if the support exists.
If you take a step back and look at what AMD is doing overall, you'll see a company that is hurting, but still cares enough about the little people to keep working on their driver, publish documentation for those who insist on an open-source-only install/driver (which I don't think I'll ever understand completely).
This is the same attitude found with EPIC Games and Unreal Tournament 3. A long-time friend of mine (no names) didn't even know who EPIC Games was, but his first reaction to the name was, "The only thing EPIC is their EPIC failure." For years and years they've supplied Linux binaries for a lot of their big-name games when they didn't have to. They're not making much money off Linux gamers compared to Windows users, and like any company, their goal is to sell a product. So, they even offer the opportunity to the little guys, then it gets tossed back in their face, but they keep giving that opportunity. Who is the bigger man here?
AMD doesn't have to support their desktop video cards on Linux to sustain a working business model. But they do anyway. And they release documentation on their hardware!
I wish X Server 1.5 was supported too, but it takes more than a wish to make it happen, it takes a lot of resources. Monetary resources. Monetary resources earned from selling a product, not from giving it away.
All I really want to ask is this: Please cut them some slack.
Look, I'm going to be completely honest with you guys, but I'll try not to come off as a smug, pompous ass. I find this whole fglrx/X-Server 1.5/Kernel 2.6.uber situation laughable, especially having been through it myself back on Fedora 6 (IIRC) when the X.org dudes decided to revise their version numbering (Hey! That sounds familiar!) and broke the official nvidia driver for us. No, it wasn't nVidia's fault. Sure, I was hoping they'd fix it soon, but I didn't start a thread or two in every major forum bashing them for it, but plenty of other people did; Just search nvnews.net to see.
Things happen, and if the incident was important, the fixes usually follow very quickly.
That said, Ubuntu 8.10 is coming out in 13 days from writing and everyone is all in a hubbub over X-Server 1.5 support. The truth is, a lot of people are "still" "back" on Ubuntu 7.10 & Ubuntu 8.04 (like me) and their video cards should be working one way or the other. We're worried about all these regressions, though. Ubuntu 8.04 isn't going away anytime soon. 3 years is a very long time in "technology years." You know that. Enter you guys running developement releases. You're worried about the future of Linux, about getting support now, about the view [FOSS] people will hold on AMD if they don't get this support out pronto. The thing you guys need to realize is this, Linux (the platform) is an extremely fast-placed moving target, and they (AMD) still have a bunch of regressions and unimplemented (AMD/ATi) features to worry about. (Not to mention get all their chips working with this re-written driver)
On the one hand, you'll see people calling AMD a waste of time, a poor choice, a disappointment, etc. In the opposite corner of the ring, you'll find those who don't update to the latest Kernel 2.6.uber, X.org version, etc and whose installs are relatively stable and working. Those are the people who generally enjoy using their computers (and OSes), not the ones who are infatuated with compiler flags, etc. In yet another light you have the people still on Windows or Mac who are looking to check Linux out. The reasons vary from one person to another, and that's a different topic, but one thing they will look for: Driver support. Either it's there or it isn't. Again, Ubuntu 8.04 is fairly nice and it's not going away for years. Read: It's dependable if the support exists.
If you take a step back and look at what AMD is doing overall, you'll see a company that is hurting, but still cares enough about the little people to keep working on their driver, publish documentation for those who insist on an open-source-only install/driver (which I don't think I'll ever understand completely).
This is the same attitude found with EPIC Games and Unreal Tournament 3. A long-time friend of mine (no names) didn't even know who EPIC Games was, but his first reaction to the name was, "The only thing EPIC is their EPIC failure." For years and years they've supplied Linux binaries for a lot of their big-name games when they didn't have to. They're not making much money off Linux gamers compared to Windows users, and like any company, their goal is to sell a product. So, they even offer the opportunity to the little guys, then it gets tossed back in their face, but they keep giving that opportunity. Who is the bigger man here?
AMD doesn't have to support their desktop video cards on Linux to sustain a working business model. But they do anyway. And they release documentation on their hardware!
I wish X Server 1.5 was supported too, but it takes more than a wish to make it happen, it takes a lot of resources. Monetary resources. Monetary resources earned from selling a product, not from giving it away.
All I really want to ask is this: Please cut them some slack.
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