Dear AMD, in light of you losing $600M for Q4, I am still left wondering how you can ignore quality Linux drivers. Feisty was probably the biggest release yet for consumer linux, and I have seen figures on previous releases of downloads greater than 20 million. You can’t afford to exclude this market. If you can make decent ATI drivers for Linux, we will be on board with you.
Related posts:
#1 by erik on April 21, 2007 - 3:05 pm
Quote
I’m afraid the pointy haired managers do not read your blog. What matters for them is that 20 million users downloads translates likely to 2 million real users, out from market of roughly billion relevant computers.
#2 by Marco Rodrigues on April 21, 2007 - 4:38 pm
Quote
We can also try to fill the form that appear on http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=598
After click on Email Topic.
#3 by Marco Rodrigues on April 21, 2007 - 4:39 pm
Quote
E-Mail: tech.support@amd.com
#4 by Jeffy on April 21, 2007 - 5:16 pm
Quote
Why not ask them to help out r300 guys? Then at least they’ll already have aiglx and hibernate working properly…
#5 by Zexy on April 21, 2007 - 7:14 pm
Quote
Currently I only use AMD procs in boxes that I build. How does their purchase of ATI affect me?? I don’t any issues so far with regard to Linux running on those boxes.
#6 by admin on April 21, 2007 - 7:16 pm
Quote
Since they purchased ATI, that means that ATI’s product qualify is reflected on them also.
#7 by Luke on April 21, 2007 - 8:32 pm
Quote
Interesting: Intel has open-sourced their drivers, and they have an enormous profit.
#8 by joe mom on April 21, 2007 - 9:01 pm
Quote
aye
#9 by Chris on April 21, 2007 - 9:10 pm
Quote
If AMD lost 600M$ last quarter, what makes you think they can afford to spend resources on writing software for such an OS that most comsumers don’t know/care about?
#10 by pizpot on April 21, 2007 - 9:41 pm
Quote
“…what makes you think they can afford…”
because enthusiasts are installing it left and right for friends and family. 7.04 fixed wireless and now ubuntu has everything. I do dual boots, but just did my best friend linux only since he uses wireless and msn messenger and keeps getting zombied. No really. We put his computer beside another, and it was acting like a router. He had a secret partition collecting keystokes, and was sending spam through a server in Finland.
#11 by panopticon on April 21, 2007 - 9:41 pm
Quote
@Chris
AMD losing 600M last quarter should ask the question “How can they not afford addressing the Linux market”.
nVidia has gone on record in a couple of interviews stating that good Linux drivers has accounted for substantial revenue. The financials of JUST the ATI unit versus nVidia would give you the answer to the question of “How can we not afford good Linux support.” Which is on the order of around 120 million dollars. This would mean 480 million in loss instead of 600 million.
#12 by sdlvx on April 21, 2007 - 9:52 pm
Quote
I have used ATI cards for a while. I was going to buy an x1950 AGP (which ATI would have raped me for, but I didn’t care, I wanted to extend my AGP system), but I am an avid linux and beryl/compiz user. ATI drivers in linux are trash, and setting up beryl/compiz in linux with ATI requires you to install XGL. It’s a giant pain in the ass. Specially when with NVIDIA and Intel it’s a cakewalk. Install drivers, install beryl, done. No, install drivers, install xgl, create a new session, create a startup script, install beryl.
The lack of ATI Linux drivers has COMPLETELY prevented me from buying an ATI video card.
On top of that, my next card will be an NVIDIA, regardless. I say this ONLY because of ATI Linux drivers.
I will also be building my next system with an intel proc, because AMD is not on my good side.
#13 by Sal42 on April 21, 2007 - 9:59 pm
Quote
Dear AMD, in light of you losing $600M for Q4, please spend more money on research and development for a small marketshare that you can never hope to provide adequate support for.
#14 by friendlybuddy on April 21, 2007 - 10:07 pm
Quote
“If you can make decent ATI drivers for Linux, we will be on board with you.”
Well, if you will be on-board, then the graphics will kinda suck, wont they?
Pingback: Spettabile AMD/ATI ...reagisci! « pollycoke :)
#15 by Ally on April 21, 2007 - 10:33 pm
Quote
“If AMD lost 600M$ last quarter, what makes you think they can afford to spend resources on writing software for such an OS that most comsumers don’t know/care about?”
You are actually insane, aren’t you? The largest server operating system in the world? HUGE (which no one can certifiably account for) personal community. To be honest, the way Linux is growing I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t number 1 in 5-10 years. That’s a long way off I know…but do you have any idea how strongly a Linux enthusiast feels about their environment? THEY’D KILL!
#16 by Arren Lex on April 21, 2007 - 10:51 pm
Quote
@Ally:
You’re right, it’s extremely important that servers have quality graphics drivers. As a hypothetical IT guy, I can’t even begin to tell you what would happen if our 100 theoretical headless boxes didn’t have high-end video cards with great drivers. It would be chaos, I tell you!
#17 by Remi on April 21, 2007 - 10:57 pm
Quote
I second that.
Pingback: Dear AMD » KOKYUNAGE NEWS »
#18 by Harry on April 21, 2007 - 11:30 pm
Quote
Maybe their losses wouldn’t have been nearly as much of a problem if they:
a) hadn’t bought ATI in the first place.
b) hadn’t sat around while Intel did some serious innovation.
#19 by Garett on April 21, 2007 - 11:34 pm
Quote
While linux may seem like a small segment of users, the majority of those users are geeks who other people others turn to to build their computers and fix things when they go wrong. I switched many years ago from ATI to nVidia because of their flacky linux support. Additionally, four of my friends ended up following me to nVidia because I’m their human version of Tom’s Hardware Guide. Well not really, but my opinions on things carry weight and I have no opinion on ATI because I’ve just ignored them since I switched. I’m trying to convert these people to linux as well, so I have a vested interest in ensuring their hardware is support. Alienating the linux community, is likely hurting their sales a lot. Assuming there are “only 2 million real users” and say only half of them have abandoned ATI for nVidia with say four friends which have followed them (who don’t use linux), that’s 5 million people who haven’t bought an ATI video card, which at an average cost of about $150 CDN/card, that is a loss of $750 million in sales every three or so years. That alone would account for a good chunk of their $600 million in loses a year. And that is just from ubuntu’s share of the linux world … I have no proof to back this up, but I can’t see how their crappy linux support is helping them.
Pingback: blackroses » Dear AMD
#20 by Ilya on April 21, 2007 - 11:42 pm
Quote
nVIDIA supports Linux and FreeBSD. I have told at least 30 of my friends to buy nVIDIA, which they did, because of their better support.
Suggestion: release the specs for your stuff so that the OSS community can write drivers for you. You will leapfrog over nVIDIA and the entire OSS community (millions upon millions of people) will be behind you.
Or keep losing money.
#21 by Adam on April 22, 2007 - 12:24 am
Quote
Just spent my cash on a MacBook, instead of a MacBook Pro. Why? It didn’t have an ATI videocard – important for my dual-boot (with GNU/Linux) setup. Similar story for my family’s last 3 computers.
#22 by Nate on April 22, 2007 - 12:58 am
Quote
I know I personally wasted $89 on an ATI card only to find that I am now forced to use horrible ATI proprietary drivers on xorg. I have a friend who installed the proprietary nvidia drivers and noticed that they work perfectly under xorg and support compositing, etc. which my frequently-crashing drivers do not. I have since told everyone I know not to buy an ATI card, and have just built two machines for my boss and his wife (I’m the hardware guy at a web hosting company) both with expensive nvidia cards. This is due to personally getting screwed by ATI’s piss-poor drivers on linux. Thank you.
#23 by MrX_TLO on April 22, 2007 - 2:07 am
Quote
Open source the docs already!
People are dying to write the drivers for *free* but the control freaks at ATI/AMD & NVidia won’t let them.
Are there really any earth shattering technologies left in stuff like the 9500 and the GeForce3 or is the roomer true that both ATI and NVidia violated patents and that’s why they have to keep it all a secret even years after the stuff has been out of production?
#24 by iggyboy on April 22, 2007 - 4:35 am
Quote
I’m a freelance consultant for IT vastly involve in setting up cyber cafes and School network computers, about 5 years ago my 1st cyber cafe setup was with ATI graphics card due to cost/performance ratio. Later when I comes to know Linux and find out that ATI do not support Linux at all. I made a mental note, never to purchase ATI again, atleast not until they support open source.
That’s my one time and the last time I purchase ATI cards (48 nos). After that all my recommendations always goes to Nvidea, although there are times where cost/performance ratio favor ATI, but my explanation and suggestion to my client always made Nvidea the winner purchase.
So far in my record I have set-up 15 internet/game center anything from 20 pcs up 150 pcs, all goes with NVidea except my very first 48pcs.
#25 by Jayakumark on April 22, 2007 - 4:42 am
Quote
I am planning to get a laptop . Dont want to get one with ATI .The reason is the same, lack of linux drivers. Why cant ATI take some old cards and open source drivers for it, alteast as a test measure.. In this case design of card ,even available will be less important to other vendors and will not be worth copying.
#26 by Ponzonha on April 22, 2007 - 7:03 am
Quote
The ATI card is the one and only reason that makes me regret having my laptop.
Trackback: jcinacio.com
#27 by megablue on April 22, 2007 - 10:26 am
Quote
if AMD can’t afford to make drivers for linux.. who else able to afford?
#28 by Weasel on April 22, 2007 - 10:44 am
Quote
AMD/ATi, please add:
- gl_ext_texture_from_pixmap so we can use beryl/compiz
- an inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) acceleration interface (XVMC?) so we can hardware accelerate mpeg-2 decoding
- support at least hardware bob deinterlacing, or preferably, motion-compensated deinterlacing
- enable the ability to render idct-accelerated video to a texture so we can have hardware decoded high definition video on the sides of our cube desktops
- do it for multiple videos simultaneously. (if that isn’t too crazy!)
- improve framerates.
Avoid buying third party code for your drivers so you have full control of the licensing and can open your drivers up.
Do it faster than nVidia, because if desktop Linux becomes mainstream, and nVidia have open drivers, being developed rapidly when yours are not, then you’re in trouble.
Code for CPUs is developed openly. I’ll bet it’s not causing a problem for AMD processor sales. Why is GPU code developed in a closed environment?
By limiting the ways your hardware can be used, you are limiting the sale of your hardware.
A hundred thousand people (the open source community) can think of more ideas than a hundred (the developers).
Embrace our imagination.
#29 by mo2 on April 22, 2007 - 1:04 pm
Quote
you guys dont know the inner workings of ati. amd is out to change it a bit, but i belive they still follow suit. When all the beta testers and ati people were talking a couple years back, there plan was to alienate openGL and praise the directx because of the sales, this is not documented, but its truth. ati has direct contact with microsoft – they work with microsoft and the communication/marketing between them is great! they worked together making the CCC center for the ati drivers in .net and all the stuff for vista, mind you nvidia is still behind in that area.
thats where the money was, and thats where microsoft shot some marketing speak to them. i wish stuff like this would be documented much better… but unless amd changes the linux drivers ati wont do anything.
it was also noted publicly that linux was much less used in grfx applications so less need for support. they said there linux support staff was as big as the need for linux drivers, and thats really low from what they gather. i cant comment on the ammount of staff, and they wont either, but its not a high number at all.
#30 by Yuzle! on April 22, 2007 - 6:05 pm
Quote
And yet nVidia and Intel manage to do it.
#31 by PENIX on April 22, 2007 - 6:49 pm
Quote
All it takes is one good programmer with access to the hardware specs. How can they turn their backs on this entire market?
#32 by BrokenCrystal on April 23, 2007 - 12:38 am
Quote
As far as open sourcing their drivers… ATI says they cannot for various reasons… We can’t have everything we want, and I accept that… What I cannot accept is how ATI (after all this time) cannot take a hint that their drivers suck. Can’t they figure this out on their own? If they are not sure where they are falling short, I can give them a hint… **AIGLX**
I tell ALL my friends, coworkers, and family (including in-laws) to not buy ATI because their drivers do not support composite or AIGLX. While they do not know exactly what this means, they listen because they know that I know what I am talking about. Many of them are Windows users, yet they will take my advice because of my position. I let them know that ATI’s drivers are terrible. Until ATI/AMD make drivers for Linux that support composite/AIGLX, my friends, family, coworkers, anyone who asks my advice, the guy standing looking at them on the shelf at the store who I kindly offer advice to, and myself (even the Windows users) will not buy ATI graphics cards. We buy NVIDIA for now. (It has been many years and counting)
Keywords for ATI/AMD to remember while developing drivers:
*Linux
*Composite
*AIGLX
Thank you,
BrokenCrystal
#33 by ORB on April 23, 2007 - 5:33 am
Quote
how did u get so many diggs by writing such an old story and that too writing so little about it?
#34 by bro on April 23, 2007 - 7:14 am
Quote
I dunno about the innerworkings of Ati/AMD but I will never buy ati again and I know that I’m telling others. How much work could it be for them to write these drivers? Obviously a lot, as there windows drivers for my x1400 aren’t to great either (and I’m not even a gamer…)
#35 by salvador on April 23, 2007 - 8:52 am
Quote
@ORB: That’s because even if it’s an old story, it still pisses the hell out of us, linux users, to have a fucked up binary driver
Anyway, I just submitted a support request for proper linux drivers on the ati support website, I suggest you all do the same
#36 by RaghuNayak on April 24, 2007 - 7:01 am
Quote
Why should we beg for better drivers with AMD ? Just choose NVidia cards as NVidia provides better driver supports for Linux.
But yes, Open Source drivers really matters !!!
#37 by maurice on April 25, 2007 - 11:23 pm
Quote
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=683&num=1