Intel / Clear Linux Is Looking For Your Feedback On Your Linux Development Workflow

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel / Clear Linux Is Looking For Your Feedback On Your Linux Development Workflow

Intel's Clear Linux crew has launched a twelve-question survey seeking feedback on your Linux usage though the survey slightly caters towards developers. While the survey is being put out by Intel's performance-oriented Linux distribution, users of any Linux platform are encouraged to participate...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Clear-2019-Linux-Usage-Survey

[betam4x]

For starters, I code for 64 cores, not 28.

[ThoreauHD]

When intel asks for feedback, something is up. They are going to have a rough few years on the desktop.

And for this OS to be of use server side, they need enterprise support, like Oracle Linux. I'm not sure what feedback I can offer, other than to keep optimizing for later down the road.

Amd has surpassed Intel sales on the desktop in Korea, Japan, and parts of Europe. On the architecture side, by the time intel gets to 3d stacking, Amd will be doing the same(Zen3 & 4) at 5 & 3 nm.

It's a race to making the cpu+gpu+ram a single compute complex. The difference is Intel can't get off 14 nm at their current clocks. They'll be releasing 3-4ghz clocks with their current method of processing.

While this seems to be off topic, it's not. Those factors will directly affect this OS's adoption. I don't want to lose them. They are pushing the hardware perf envelope. But it's looking pretty dark out there for them atm.

[Guest]

When intel asks for feedback, something is up. They are going to have a rough few years on the desktop.

And for this OS to be of use server side, they need enterprise support, like Oracle Linux. I'm not sure what feedback I can offer, other than to keep optimizing for later down the road.

Amd has surpassed Intel sales on the desktop in Korea, Japan, and parts of Europe. On the architecture side, by the time intel gets to 3d stacking, Amd will be doing the same(Zen3 & 4) at 5 & 3 nm.

It's a race to making the cpu+gpu+ram a single compute complex. The difference is Intel can't get off 14 nm at their current clocks. They'll be releasing 3-4ghz clocks with their current method of processing.

While this seems to be off topic, it's not. Those factors will directly affect this OS's adoption. I don't want to lose them. They are pushing the hardware perf envelope. But it's looking pretty dark out there for them atm.

Sure, hardware wise AMD is providing some stiff competition - but AMD's software strategy is bad, especially on Linux. I mean with those Rdrand failures on older and latest AMD CPUs, as well as buggy GPU drivers, no sane company would want to rely on AMD for their desktop or server infrastructure.

Yes, Intel's CPUs currently have quite a few security problems, but even with that they're still the better choice, because their stuff just works. It works very well, is stable and reliable, almost all features are supported, with good performance. Intel also keeps working on different parts of the software stack, and improves the performance for their CPUs (and newer instructions in general) which makes their hardware much more attractive and useful than AMD's hardware.

[Kivarnis]

Sure, hardware wise AMD is providing some stiff competition - but AMD's software strategy is bad, especially on Linux. I mean with those Rdrand failures on older and latest AMD CPUs, as well as buggy GPU drivers, no sane company would want to rely on AMD for their desktop or server infrastructure.

Yes, Intel's CPUs currently have quite a few security problems, but even with that they're still the better choice, because their stuff just works. It works very well, is stable and reliable, almost all features are supported, with good performance. Intel also keeps working on different parts of the software stack, and improves the performance for their CPUs (and newer instructions in general) which makes their hardware much more attractive and useful than AMD's hardware.

Yeah their stuff just worked so well i had to replace a perfectly serviceable rig from constant faulty microcode downtime for security errors they had to fix. Worked so darn well i had to pony up another like 800$ I wasn't expecting to to replace hardware that had absolutely no electrical issues what so ever and could not deal with the already 2 months of unreliability from poor microcode pushes and security "fixes". Yeah, their software is stellar. /sarcasm

Needless to say, i'm not on a Intel rig anymore, and will not be until they resolve these issues in hardware.

[EarthMind]

I couldn't complete the survey. Kept showing me "Please answer this question." for the programming language familiarity table

[Guest]

Sure, hardware wise AMD is providing some stiff competition - but AMD's software strategy is bad, especially on Linux. I mean with those Rdrand failures on older and latest AMD CPUs, as well as buggy GPU drivers, no sane company would want to rely on AMD for their desktop or server infrastructure.

Yes, Intel's CPUs currently have quite a few security problems, but even with that they're still the better choice, because their stuff just works. It works very well, is stable and reliable, almost all features are supported, with good performance. Intel also keeps working on different parts of the software stack, and improves the performance for their CPUs (and newer instructions in general) which makes their hardware much more attractive and useful than AMD's hardware.

Intel's software support is amazing. Have you ever used Sandy Bridge chips with Intel HD 3000? The drivers have some nasty crashes, and webgl is enough to cause a kernel panic. These crashes haven't been resolved over the years. Also, remember linux 4.18 on core 2 duo? I've experienced that first hand as well. I don't think the rdrand issue on ryzen is that bad, look at how quickly AMD resolved it on their side with new firmware. Same thing goes for Zen1 and GCC crashes, they were pretty swift in resolving that one as well. These things happen, and right now I'd say AMD has a better reputation.

[andyprough]

I heard they are changing the name to "Mitigation Linux". Anyone know if this is true?

[schmidtbag]

When intel asks for feedback, something is up. They are going to have a rough few years on the desktop.

Since when is it a problem for a company to ask for feedback? It's a hell of a lot better than just assuming what people want and force people to adapt.

And for this OS to be of use server side, they need enterprise support, like Oracle Linux. I'm not sure what feedback I can offer, other than to keep optimizing for later down the road.

Isn't Clear more of an experiment? I don't know anyone in their right mind who would use Clear on a mission-critical server. On a test server, sure.

It's a race to making the cpu+gpu+ram a single compute complex. The difference is Intel can't get off 14 nm at their current clocks. They'll be releasing 3-4ghz clocks with their current method of processing.

Considering how fast storage has been moving and the advancement of non-volatile RAM, part of me wonders if RAM as we know it will just cease to exist at some point.

AMD's software strategy is bad, especially on Linux. I mean with those Rdrand failures on older and latest AMD CPUs, as well as buggy GPU drivers, no sane company would want to rely on AMD for their desktop or server infrastructure.

What do you mean by "strategy" in this context? Making mistakes for consumer grade CPUs on an OS that is niche for such products is not a "strategy". I'm quite confident that if AMD were to release Zen2 for their Epyc platform first, they would've fixed the rdrand failures, because then Linux would actually warrant their attention before release day. Personally, I think a temporary issue (which to my knowledge, has already been fixed) is a hell of a lot better than losing much of the performance you paid quite a bit of money for due to security issues.

Intel also keeps working on different parts of the software stack, and improves the performance for their CPUs (and newer instructions in general) which makes their hardware much more attractive and useful than AMD's hardware.

You might want to stop shilling so hard, because a lot of those improvements you speak of affects other non-Intel CPUs too. Maybe not quite as dramatically, but there is very little Intel can do to improve software that only affects them. Sure, other architectures like POWER or ARM don't share all of the same instructions, but AMD shares most of them.

[Hi-Angel]

I couldn't complete the survey. Kept showing me "Please answer this question." for the programming language familiarity table

Same here. In fact, I came here, to comments, to see if anyone has the same problem. But after reading your comment I tried something else, and… I succeed at completing the survey!

Note the oddness: the table for some reason has checkboxes instead of radiobuttons. So, turns out, to pass that survey you simply need to set all of them.