Petition for Adequate ATI Drivers in Linux

[gripen]

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"ATI Petition for Adequate Drivers in Linux"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/atipet/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,
gripen

[energyman76c]

Hi,

I can feel the pain of ATI owners, I had an ATI Xpert2000+ (or so), and it was the worst graphic-card experience ever (back then I had a win95/linux dual boot setup. Linux had the better TV-card apps, than Win, and the hourly lockups under lin&win were VERY annoying).
But even if they would provide better drivers (and I don't think they will), I will never go back to ATI.

[Tuvoc]

The Linux desktop market is so tiny, this isn't really much of a threat to them.

From my limited use of Linux, an ATI card powers a basic desktop just fine, I've never had any complaints.

I have no particular brand loyalty, but ATI are great cards and I'd certainly buy them again. I'm not looking to repalce my 9500 Pro though. If I was, it would probably be an NVidia 6800GT, not because I won't buy ATI, but because at the moment I believe that has the best price / performance / featues compromise for me. In a few months with the market moving so quickly that could all change of course.

[energyman76c]

@Tuvoc:

if you mean by 'basic desktop' 2d only, with severe Xv and tv bugs, so you do not watch videos (a powerfull cpu works around that) or tv, than yes, an ATI card would be enough.

ATI cards have a nice cost/performance ratio, if you are not a linux user. As a linux+ati user you have to deal with three different drivers, all powering different cards (but with some overlapping) with different features enabled. Great. Additionally, they are dead slow and lock your pc up, only because you watched a little bit tv or moved the video-window in the wrong moment in the wrong direction...

[RayvenX]

In the event that ATI cannot handle the programming of these drivers, we require all modern ATI chips to be open sourced to the Linux community so that drivers can be made. This would include all schematics and technical information pertaining to the video cards produced by ATI.

You know, it's things like this that give me a generally extreme dislike of open source obsessives.

This statement sounds like a very curtly put demand to me. Putting it like that certainly isn't the way to go about it and wouldn't encourage me to budge on this situation if I were in their place purely because it sounds downright rude. Considering the extreme minority of people who use alternative osses beside Windows and MacOS, both of which have featurecomplete and functional drivers I doubt the threat of not purchasing their hardware in the forseeable future is likely to hurt them too much either.

Developing Linux drivers that fulfill what users see as their requirements is something that isn't to be taken lightly, and it's their choice when or if they will do so. The chances are that the level of maintainance required for these drivers would be greater than the value of the potential amount of custom it would generate for them, so until the situation changes I doubt they're in much of a rush to get themselves organised.

[Tuvoc]

Originally posted by energyman76c:
@Tuvoc:
if you mean by 'basic desktop' 2d only, with severe Xv and tv bugs, so you do not watch videos (a powerfull cpu works around that) or tv, than yes, an ATI card would be enough.

That is what I mean. Basic office use.
Given that the vast majority of Linux desktops fit that category, I'd say that is all ATI deem necessary on the driver front. And I tend to agree. Linux on the desktop will only ever achieve any sort of volume in an office situation, not at home.

Still, NVidia are to be commended for their efforts. Nothing wrong with their cards, so just ignore ATI and buy NVidia. That's what I would do if I was trying to use Linux as a Windows replacement with all that entails, but after mucking around with it, and despite my hatred of anything Microsoft, I have to admit XP is impossible to beat for home use.

[bluetooth]

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