[Sussex] Linux Heavyweights Sound Off At Summit

[Richie Jarvis]

Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 17:31 +0000, Angelo Servini wrote:
> 
>>IMHO is, its time maybe for the Open Source community to address this.  Im all for freedom of choice, but - how fast would a unified desktop advance, if ALL the desktop teams pooled their efforts?
> 
> 
> See www.freedesktop.org - we're all singing from the same prayer sheet,
> but we all sing slightly differently.
> 
> 
>>I read a mail by someone on the ubuntu forums who sounded off to ATI for their crap support of Linux. But, who can blame them.  
> 
> 
> I can.  
> 
> They refuse to release details of how to use the hardware they sell
> people and they justify that by saying "it's OK we'll give you some
> closed software to let you use the hardware you buy" - thus people
> intending to use a Linux system buy ATI hardware because ATI say it will
> work and then find out that the ATI drivers basically don't work at all
> reliably in any sense of the word.  Frankly this situation is worse than
> ATI not providing drivers at all - they are giving lip service to Linux
> purely to try and get their foot in a market that they can't be bothered
> to approach sensibly.
> 
> Nvidia do the same thing but support it well.  I'd much rather they
> released full specs for how to use the hardware they sell and (best of
> all) help develop drivers for their hardware under a free software
> license, but failing that actually support what they claim to support is
> a big thing in their favour.  The reason Nvidia support linux so well is
> not because they can make money selling to hundreds of gamers, but
> because they can sell to a smaller, but more profitable, graphics
> workstation market.  
> 
> Until such time as ATI even achieve Nvidia's level of support I have no
> option but to advise people to steer well clear of ATI as a bunch of
> cowboys.   Frankly ATI are doing nothing but harm to their reputation
> right now.
> 
> 
>>They perceive the Linux community as a small insignificant group and M$ is king.  
> 
> 
> For consumer level PC's this is almost definitely the case right now.
> Bear in mind though that Linux has a bigger share of the desktop than
> Apple does right now and Apple kit runs ATI and Nvidia hardware.  The
> big difference is Apple can sign an NDA with ATI and write their own
> drivers.
> 
> 
>>They will make a wrong and uninformed choice, and pool all their efforts into supporting the majority OS, as seen by their eyes.  
> 
> 
> Don't think serious graphics card manufacturers would ever ignore Linux
> - they desperately need to sell their top end cards for massive amounts
> of money in the workstation market in order to fund cutting edge
> development (see how much a current model NVidia Quadro FX 4400 card
> costs) before they push that technology onto the consumer market.  Linux
> now _owns_ the workstation market, it has more share than either windows
> or the old UNIX kings (Solaris, IRIX, AIX and HP-UX).  
> 
> That's the only reason Nvidia and ATI care about Linux at all.
> 
> 
>>That is not to diss the good manufacturers like Nvidia and HP, who do go out of their way to produce quality drivers for Linux.
> 
> 
> Nvidia don't go out of their way - it's core business.
> 
> HP - what drivers do they produce?
> 
> 
>>If the Hardware community on the other hand perceive Linux as becoming an up and coming better bet.  Then you will see them burst with activity to provide support.  Its all driven by profit.  
> 
> 
> Yup.  
> 
> One of the biggest problems with consumer grade hardware is that almost
> all of the functionality lives in software these days - Winmodems,
> scanners and printers all suffer heavily from this.
> 
> The problem is software development is cheaper than hardware development
> (so there's more profit) but it's also more transient - a lot of cheap
> modems, scanners and printers that came onto the market five years ago
> simply won't work with Windows XP never mind Linux - that's because the
> companies that made them put all the processing in software and didn't
> maintain it beyond the shelf life of the product.
> 
> Don't think that drivers are purely a linux problem - they're
> increasingly a problem for all platforms only masked by the fact that
> consumers rarely upgrade their OS without upgrading their kit (I know
> several people still running Win95 and win98 !).
> 
> 
>>If linux is to be king, then we need to win the Desktop battle. Thats my 2 denarius, anyhow.
> 
> 
> It's coming, but it's slow.  Home desktops are the last place Linux will
> take hold - it'll get there if and only if it becomes dominant of
> business desktops.  Even if it does end up on most business desktops it
> may not drive further adoption because Linux apps work to open standards
> and don't preclude interaction with other software (the opposite of
> Microsoft's approach which has allowed them to leverage an initial
> monopoly of business desktops to gain monopolies in other markets).
> 
> If anything the key battle is not getting open source everywhere but
> getting open standards everywhere.  Here there is more hope.  It seems
> like the worlds legislators are beginning to realise that there's no
> point retaining records for 7 years if you have no way to understand the
> file at the end of that period.
> 
> 
Well said that man!  Lets hope M$ is forced to use open standards in 
their office applications very soon.