ATI under fire ahhhhhahahahaha

[oldsk00l]

I only signed this petition yesterday, and it was at 2,612 signatures. Checked today and it's 3600+

Anyone who wants to sign it be my guest, nVidia users welcome. Just stated "I run nVidia, especially because of ATI's crap drivers".

http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.html

roflmao

[AthlonXP1800]

Oh I thought ATI headquarters are under fire. :rolleyes: (j/k)

[DivotMaker]

Anyone who wants to sign it be my guest, nVidia users welcome. Just stated "I run nVidia, especially because of ATI's crap drivers".

roflmao

Don't know if it is just me, but why would an nVidia user care about an ATI driver petition? What exactly do you have to gain?

[Thunderbird]

Really ignore that petition. For some months they have been working on REAL linux drivers. Those drivers are different from the ones they are currently maintaining. Just watch out for future ATI driver releases ..

[Kamel]

hey, maybe ati will get off their asses finally and realize that they shot themselves in the foot when deciding not to do linux drivers properly... any time i get in this argument with someone, they claim "well, there is no money to be made with linux" bull****, i bet less than 1% of all linux users even know about this petition, and it is up to 5,000 signatures already (4,991) -- at $300 per video card, that's $1,497,300 -- no money to be made for linux my ass. i understand not all of them are getting $300 video cards, but some are getting higher than that. the majority of the vote from what i saw had a $100 or higher video card.

[oldsk00l]

Really ignore that petition. For some months they have been working on REAL linux drivers. Those drivers are different from the ones they are currently maintaining. Just watch out for future ATI driver releases ..

Well, honestly I do hope that petition would force them to let out a beta, heck, alpha version of those drivers. By all indications though, searching for cygwin and mtippett is really really discouraging. Based on the evidence I've seen I'm not convinced they are working on any different codebase from what we've seen in public knowledge. Also, because of how they are developing from cygwin we won't likely see any 64-bit drivers until a 64-bit windows environment shows up. I also don't like that they are using gcc really to compile the core of their driver code.

I kind of think you have it a bit backwards. The 3.2.8 drivers were a strong foundation to build from, for whatever reason three series of drivers after that release were slower, and it wasn't until the latest release that the performance at least matched that version of driver. It would appear they scrapped that code and started maintaining newer, unfortunately horribly optimized and slow code. From what I gather, ATI had a developer contracted out of Germany, wanted him to relocate to CA, and he gave them the middle finger. Linux drivers downhill since.

[edit]
Also, the current driver does not even conform to OGL 1.0 standards. If they are working on an uber-driver, it'd sure do them alot more good than bad to release something now.

@BigBerthea

You're right, to the NV community it's kind of a double edged sword. You sign the petition saying "bwahaha, ATI is teh suxX0rs my nVidia drivers pWn j00!!!!" and then ATI looks at that and writes some AWESOME drivers complete with a control panel etc etc. Then you haven't gained anything, on the other hand spiting ATI sure is fun lately......

[hlfmanhlfamazng]

Originally posted by BigBerthaEA


Don't know if it is just me, but why would an nVidia user care about an ATI driver petition? What exactly do you have to gain?

-------------------------------------

It's just you...........

You have ******ALOT*********** to gain by signing it. Nvidia's linux drivers are pretty good, yes. but like anything else they could always be better.

Nvidia for the time being has zero competition in this field so if they screw up or take their time it's not like you have anywhere to go anyways. You should sign that petition knowing that it puts nvidia in a corner, and at least lets them know that users want an alternative. You think they're not watching taht thing skyrocket as much as ATI is?

I've had a few of my friends that aren't even linux users sign it.

[hlfmanhlfamazng]

Kamel, I agree. One thing that people fail to remember/mention is that DRI supports ATI cards up to the r200 series. Granted that it's not fully supported(meaning advanced functions such as FSAA and AF and even HyperZ, me thinks but not completely sure) the majority of your important functions are gonna work, and work well(like most other open source drivers).

My current card is a FGL 8800.

[holmes]

ATI's linux drivers were the single greatest factor in my getting the 6800GT...
:|

[Kamel]

ati's linux drivers are the reason why i traded my 9800 pro aiw for an fx5900u.

[oldsk00l]

The [H] sure had an ATI friendly tone in their ATI Linux interview..




NOT!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If I could somehow capture that laugh that Dr. Betruger had in Doom3 when he imploded the monorail bridge in Doom3, I think that'd just about illustrate how I reacted to that interview and petition happening in a relatively short timeframe.

[hlfmanhlfamazng]

Oldskool....

The market is cycling yet again. Have you seen this recent article over at the inquirer?

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18029

Just as ATI caught nVidia with their pants down a few years ago, life has come full circle. It's once again nVidia's turn. They've caught ATI with their pants down. Good for them.

That's why it doesn't pay to be a zealot.

The only thing that keeps me with ATI for now is the fact that they opened up some of their specs to the DRI. When I go to upgrade from my 8800, if ATI hasn't released more I'll most likely have a Geforce 8000 or whatever.

[oldsk00l]

I am not really a zealot, but a finkle fan. See this reminds me of how Nintendo and Sega were back in the NES/SNES/Master System/Genesis days. They were just rubber band companies expanding and contracting at the whims of each other. ATI and nVidia are in that same pattern for now.

[edit]
Back in the Riva128 days, nVidia went so far to provide OGL support as releasing an ALPHA driver to the public. One thing about nVidia, is that the bureaucracy in getting decent drivers has NEVER been as bad as most of their competitors. With ATI it takes a huge grassroots movement or a marketshare threat to move on that. That, however shady some of their other practices are, is a goldenchild of nVidia's.

[Pandora's Box]

erm wow. 9692 signatures. +1

[hlfmanhlfamazng]

Old skool.......

Whoa, first(yes, I wasn't specific enough, my fault) I'm not saying you're a zealot.

You're exactly right about ati/nvidia and sega/nintendo.

You're also right about ATI's support of drivers and the grassroots "requirement". I think that's part of the reason why they opened up the docs for the DRI

As it stands right now, the 9100 is the card I recommend. Especially with the new x.org 6.8 release impending in the next few days. I still see nvidia's binary drivers as being problematic all over these and other boards.

I'll take a two-year old design and open source drivers any day.

Thank god for choice. :)

[hlfmanhlfamazng]

Yup getting close to 10000. When I signed, I noticed a few that were from people double posting. I also wonder how many are not real names..... or names of family members who are represented by a linux zealot in the family ;-)

I have my g'ma on linux, I'm gonna try to get her to sign tomorrow.

She has a 9000 in her box though.(DRI)

:clap:

[elmartinos]

Originally posted by BigBerthaEA
Don't know if it is just me, but why would an nVidia user care about an ATI driver petition? What exactly do you have to gain?
It's all about competition. Where would Intel be without AMD? where would Microsoft be without Linux/Apple? Competition is good; with out it, there is no reason for improvements.

[oldsk00l]

You're also right about ATI's support of drivers and the grassroots "requirement". I think that's part of the reason why they opened up the docs for the DRI

Actually, you do have a very valid point there. I also agree with you, for all intents and purposes the DRI drivers totally rock this world for what they were intended. Unfortunately for ATI this does harm their reputation. While trying to appear virtuous, they appear incompetent...but then again we already knew their software teams are incompetent otherwise their users wouldn't be following a string of fixes every month.