“Pete’s Open Source Journal on Driver Heaven, said that it has been five months since products have been released, but ATI is still unable to supply Linux drivers for the products.”
Thank you Pete! I’m glad this is making news. I realized this sad fact back a couple years ago when I was first getting into Linux. ATI just has crappy Linux drivers.
After reading the Digg discussion, I can see people just don’t really get it. Yes, Linux is 5% (or less depending on how you count) of the desktop market. But as Pete said. Linux users aren’t usually your average computer user. They’re the power users, server administrators, network administrators, etc. They may only be 5% of desktop users, but they’re arguably the most important and have a larger sphere of influence when it comes to purchasing decisions.
Think about it. Say I’m an IT manager at a company and we just got the budget to buy new laptops for our department. Yay! Chances are, we’re going to use Linux somewhere in our company and while Windows to Linux connectivity isn’t that bad, Linux to Linux is still better. What laptop am I going to choose, the ATI one or the nVidia one? Unless I get a screaming deal on something else, probably nVidia. You might say well that’s just an example. But I know
I saw the arguement that since Linux doesn’t run any CAD or 3D games, ATI doesn’t need to care. It doesn’t matter that I wouldn’t be running any 3D apps in this type of setting because ATI’s current Linux drivers don’t support nonstandard resolutions. Most laptops today have widescreen panels with, you guessed it, non-standard resolutions.
Think about this from a developers standpoint. Would I develop an app or a game for Linux knowing full well all my ATI users are going to have sub-par performance? No way! Of course some do, thankfully (Unreal Tournament, I’m looking at you).
This goes beyond just supporting Linux gaming though. What’s holding people back from converting to Linux completely? Software/Drivers is #1. People want their games and office and productivity and they really don’t care what OS it runs on, just that they can use it. It’s the same as TV shows. People don’t care what network they’re on, they just want to watch their shows. If ATI offered a decent Linux driver, that’s one less hurdle people have to overcome. nVidia somehow does it and does it well, why can’t ATI? Pete mentions in his article that if they cared, they could even make Linux drivers a bragging point.
I hope this article and bloggers like myself light a fire under ATI’s butt because I think they are just as capable of making a Linux driver as nVidia is. And it’s just one more piece of the Linux desktop puzzle.
And rightfully so. He really doesn’t make a very compelling arguement. His #1 reason? Adobe is dragging their feet on porting Photoshop. Come on! Photoshop is a huge application and porting it to a universal is going to be quite the task. A large part of his justification also has to do with the ’switch’ campaign. It’s not effective, iPod’s aren’t bait enough to switch, etc. It just doesn’t add up and some things are almost unrelated. So what if iPod’s don’t use firewire any more! They obviously see something in USB (like not having to worry about two different connectors for different platforms).
Seriously! What need is there for checks anymore. I hate writing them and keeping track of them. They take forever to process. The only thing I write a check for is to other people and one of my student loans because they don’t have a way to pay online.
Eight years ago, on a recommendation from a friend, I picked up Less Than Jake’s Losing Streak. From that moment on, I was hooked. On Wednesday, I finally saw the band for the first time live.
After what I’d just witnessed, I would’ve been content with calling it a night. It was just icing on the cake by the time Less Than Jake took the stage. The crowd was going long before they took the stage, and the band came on to chants of “L T J.†Chris and Roger weren’t shy one bit, often joking back and forth. Like AWS, they played a healthy mix of material from their back catalog. I was impressed with how many lyrics I remembered even from songs I hadn’t listened to in years. Two lucky fans made it on stage that night. Trombonist Pete is quite the dancer, and so there was a dance off. Too bad the clown they pulled up on stage was more interested in the mic than dancing. Pete was the winner, hands down. Later, Chris picked out some kid, let him hang on stage and drink water all because “If you put enough gel in that thing, you’d have a football helmet.†That’s LTJ for you. Fun loving until the end!
