XBMC Developers Criticize AMD's Linux Driver

An anonymous reader writes "It's not only the NVIDIA Linux driver that has been publicly slammed over lacking support; the AMD Catalyst driver is now facing scrutiny from developers of the XBMC media and entertainment software. The developers aren't happy with AMD due to not properly supporting video acceleration under Linux. The AMD Linux driver is even lacking support for MPEG2 video acceleration and newer levels of H.264. AMD reportedly has the support coded, but they're refusing to turn it on in their public Linux driver."

Comments

Oh No

[sexconker]

Who cares?
There are plenty of versions of their drivers that include support, available for plenty of operating systems.

Re:Oh No

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, only losers have choices.

Re:Oh No

[rtfa-troll]

Yeah, only losers have choices.

Yes; seems like I'm a bloody "lucky" winner. I bought a reasonably top end AMD card specifically because they promised open source support. Of course it turns out that only the proprietary driver works properly. Fine "support is coming; they do the right thing and give over the documentation; install it for now and to free later; I don't mind". Except that because it's stupid proprietary code it doesn't get automatically distributed by my distro vendor (today that's Ubuntu; who knows tomorrow). Every time I get an X-org update it breaks.

I really don't care about the high speed graphics most of the time. The free driver will be fine. Just make sure they have the specs so that the colours can be made to come out right on decent monitors and I will buy your stuff. AMD; you almost have our goodwill; You've already made the investment; Just go that last few inches; get it finished and make sure you fully cooperate with the developers. We will pay extra for your stuff. We will be glad to never see NVIDIA again. You will get better integration to Android. This will be worth it.

Re:Oh No

[networkBoy]

Not to be too much of a shill, but this is one area Intel seems to always be better.
Their Gfx performance may not be up to the other two, but their support is better.
Maybe Intel should takeover nVidia :-) *
-nB

* when pigs fly I assume

Re:Oh No

[Anonymous Coward]

> whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump

you could probably add 'wall', and 'rm top' in there somewhere ;)

Re:Oh No

[inhuman_4]

Mod parent up. I have computers with graphics cards from each. An older NVidia, a 5800 Radeon, and an Intel 3000. The intel open source (released by intel) kick ass. No kernel upgrade problems, no video rendering problems, no full screen problems, no multi-monitor problem. They don't include any extra BS software to make their stuff work.

If you don't need gaming graphics Intel is the place to be in terms of linux support. I know what my next purchase is going to be. I just wish Intel would expand their market and try to compete on the high end. I would love to see chipzilla enter this fight with thier opensource record.

Re:Oh No

[networkBoy]

120 char limit :(

Re:Oh No

[networkBoy]

They tried (larabee IIRC) and failed. Intel == low-end graphics, that is just the way it is.
I wish it were different, but such is the state of affairs. (They are getting better, but really only maintaining the gab, not closing it).
-nB

Re:Oh No

[SealBeater]

This statement gets my complete support. Been using Intel i915 for XBMC for at least 3 years and it's been a rock solid experience. I had some initial trouble when the kernel mode setting was introduced (before you needed an app to write to the video bios so you could get the 1920x1080 resolution) but extremely minor and long past, I have to agree, I'll be looking for Intel net time I put together a HTPC.

Re:Oh No

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot always go for intel - unfortunately. Try buying a high-end laptop with 17" full-HD screen and 8 i7 cores and the latest chipset - whatever it may be right now. Then ask them for intel integrated graphichs! Minds will boggle!

Impossible. You can have intel graphics on medium level laptops with "hd-ready" screens and i3/i5 processors. But not on the high end, even though intel perform better (when restricted to available, open-source drivers.)

Fortunately, a high-end amd card is not that bad either, but it eats much more power. 80 min. on battery max - oh well.

Re:Oh No

[rtfa-troll]

Not to be too much of a shill, but this is one area Intel seems to always be better. Their Gfx performance may not be up to the other two, but their support is better. Maybe Intel should takeover nVidia :-) * -nB

I actually have what was supposed to be an okay Intel chip in the machine as well (built in on the motherboard). It was fine from the driver point of view but failed when it came to driving my big monitor properly and stably. Next time I probably will go with an Intel discrete solution, however.

Thanks for the comment anyway.

Re:Oh No

[moderatorrater]

I assume that's because Intel uses their video chipsets to augment their processor market (basically creating a low end market). AMD and nVidia both have a large portion of their revenue tied up in video cards, so they can't risk it even though they probably should.

Re:Oh No

[Lumpy]

I need HD video processing. and Intel sucks at at. Nvidia owns the market at making a video chipset that will render any file format HD without any processor load.

I really wished that intel would get off their arses and make their GFX chipsets not suck.

Re:Oh No

[justforgetme]

Should try arch, they have even written up a wiki article on how to automatically reinstall fglrx when needed.

Re:Oh No

[justforgetme]

IMO Intele never wanted to actually enter the comercial high end 3D world. They do quite a lot of resears but as I see it their interests always reside in creating the know how to scale CPUs horizontally in massive dimensions (10k cores etc.) because they correctly see that this is going to happen. IMHO the graphics series are just a way to monetize their RnD a bit earlier instead of just dumping billions on eggheads for a payday somewhere in the next decade.

Still I'm in full support of what they actually do. The only HW i had hassle free installs on on the graphics side were Intel chips.

Re:Oh No

[Grishnakh]

It's not shilling; I point this out from time to time myself. If you want the best-supported GPU on Linux, it's simple: buy Intel. There's absolutely no room to argue this either; it's a plain fact. With the other two, you get either a proprietary driver that may perform well, but doesn't integrate well with the rest of the distro as you've found out the hard way (breaks every time you apply security updates to X or kernel, doesn't support KMS, etc.), or you get an open-source driver that does integrate nicely and support KMS, but the performance is total crap. With Intel, you get excellent performance (relative to the GPU's potential), and excellent integration, because it's all open-sourced by Intel.

Of course, the downside is that Intel GPUs have terrible performance compared to the other two (because of the hardware itself).

However, there's some possible caveats here: the Intel GPUs are dirt-cheap (integrated into motherboard chipset), they don't use much power (the other two are usually power hogs), and the performance of a mid-range Nvidia GPU running the open-source Nouveau driver is probably equivalent to a recent Intel GPU running its open-source driver (because the Nouveau driver gets such terrible performance), while the Intel will get much better power efficiency getting that lackluster performance. Finally, the Intel GPU is probably perfectly adequate for the needs of most desktop/laptop users who are only doing things like watching videos, and using 3D effects on their desktop environment; obviously, you're not going to have a good experience playing a recent FPS game with an Intel, but if that's not part of your requirements list, then you probably have little reason to bother with Nvidia or AMD.

It's not shilling to point out that a cheap, low-performance option that's extremely well-supported is probably a better choice than a more expensive option that's so poorly supported that you can't realize anything near its performance potential.

Re:Oh No

[Grishnakh]

I don't think this is quite correct. I used to work at Intel, so maybe things have changed a little since I was there, but as I saw it, the main reasons they entered the 3D market was two-fold: 1) to secure their position in chipsets, and 2) to make money. When I was there (over 6 years ago), they were the world's largest GPU manufacturer. I imagine that hasn't changed. Yes, their GPUs were low-performance compared to the competition, but that wasn't all that important; their goal was to dominate chipsets, and they did then and I believe they still do now (honestly, it seems like very little has changed in the PC world in 6 years; lots has changed in mobile devices (phones, tablets), but not in PCs or laptops). Most PCs don't need high-end GPUs; most PCs are bought from places like Dell, in large quantities, and used in offices for corporate drones to read their Outlook email, write MS Word documents, etc. They only need 3D so they can run the graphical effects in Windows. Many more PCs (probably more laptops these days) are sold to individuals and corporate users, who again use them to read their email, use MS Office, and use a web browser. They only need 3D for graphical effects and to watch videos with GPU rendering. Some might play a low-end game here or there, but most don't. The people who do want to play games probably quickly find out that integrated graphics aren't very good for that, and upgrade to an Nvidia/AMD card, if they didn't do so from the outset.

By having a GPU built-in to their chipsets, they were able to get a lock on much of the chipset market. Instead of a PC buyer need to buy a motherboard w/ chipset, and then a separate graphics card, they could spend a couple bucks more, and get a motherboard with integrated graphics, and forgo the graphics card altogether, saving a bunch of money. Remember, before Intel got into 3D graphics, there were a bunch of chipset makers; these days, many of them seem to have withered away. They couldn't satisfy the low-end users by building an acceptable GPU into their chipsets, so everyone just switched to Intel.

Re:Oh No

[Grishnakh]

They don't really need to; they've already succeeded at getting a giant majority of the chipset market by having an integrated GPU that sucks, but is good enough for average users who do little besides surf the web and maybe use MS Word.

Saying they need to make a GFX chipset that competes with Nvidia's and AMD's mid-to-high-end offerings is like saying KIA needs to make a car that competes with Ferrari. Not that it wouldn't be nice (since Intel's open-source support is so superior to the other guys'), but it's probably not exactly high on their priority list when they're already making buckets of money by covering the low-end market.

Re:Oh No

[jedidiah]

> There's absolutely no room to argue this either;

Sure there is. Intel peformance sucks and there are features missing from the driver. It doesn't matter how "open" it is.

It is not the "best-supported" on Linux.

Re:Oh No

[Grishnakh]

Sure there is. Intel peformance sucks and there are features missing from the driver. It doesn't matter how "open" it is.
It is not the "best-supported" on Linux.

BS. I already said the performance sucks compared to the others, but that's orthogonal to "best supported". Intel is the best supported, hands-down. There is absolutely no room to argue on this; only a fool or a shill would disagree. With Intel, there's open source drivers available that get the best performance out of the hardware, and are well-integrated with the rest of the Linux distro. With the others, this simply does not exist. You can either get a proprietary driver that performs well but the integration is total crap, or you can get an open-source driver that integrates well, but the performance is horrid.

Intel's HW absolutely IS the best supported on Linux. This cannot be argued.

Re:Oh No

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, before Intel got into 3D graphics, there were a bunch of chipset makers; these days, many of them seem to have withered away. They couldn't satisfy the low-end users by building an acceptable GPU into their chipsets, so everyone just switched to Intel.

I seem to remember Intel making it difficult for Nvidia to create chipsets for newer CPUs.

Re:Oh No

[Grishnakh]

That could be too; if the goal is to dominate chipsets, then both actions are logical (making it hard for the competition, and offering features that render the competition's product unnecessary for as many users as possible).

Re:Oh No

[DaVince21]

Actually, I'd say that's only partially true. I mean, the Intel Sandybridge graphics driver works great for 2D hardware support, desktop compositing and 2D OpenGL-based games. But go 3D and the driver suddenly starts coming short (f.e. a fair amount of recent Humble Indie Bundle games just won't work properly with it).

Re:Oh No

[DaVince21]

You're right; if you don't need gaming graphics, Intel is pretty much perfect in their support.

However, once you start trying to play games with an Intel GPU you'll find that there's plenty of games that don't even want to start up, or have issues that make it unplayable (Amnesia, Psychonauts, Bastion to name a few). Note that these are all issues I'm having personally with a Sandybridge, though.

It's a pity, really. Intel's graphic driver performance is surprisingly good (esp. when compared to their Windows-based drivers). They could have gone the extra mile and make sure more games launch at all.

Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they support Linux leeches? Get a job and pay for your software losers and then maybe you'd see some support.

Re:Why should they?

[txsable]

What leeches? The drivers don't cost the user anything extra (far as I know?). If I've already paid for the hardware, I expect drivers that work and support all the functionality, and there is no valid excuse for any hardware manufacturer to withhold them.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows users don't pay for their video drivers. Both Windows and Linux users have paid the same amount for the hardware, though. You must be kind of stupid.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT

Re:Why should they?

[jedidiah]

> Why should they support Linux leeches? Get a job and pay for your software losers and then maybe you'd see some support.

This is HARDWARE you moron. Everyone that has the hardware has PAID for it you moron. Get back under your bridge.

Linus may want to cuss out the guys at Nvidia but they're doing a better job in this case.

Re:Why should they?

[0123456]

Why should they support Linux leeches?

There's a reason why all my Linux boxes except the oldest one have either Nvidia or Intel graphics. In the case of the old one I had to manually patch the ATI driver kludge source because ATI dropped support and a kernel change broke it.

So, not a penny of my IT budget has gone to ATI since 2008 because their drivers aren't very good and they don't support them.

Re:Why should they?

[fluffythedestroyer]

It's clear you don't know a thing about hardware, linux, amd, ati, nvidia and drivers. Seriously, get a fucking clue before you post your crap. Your getting on lots of peoples nerves. flaming bitch whore

Re:Why should they?

[pastafazou]

I don't see the validity of your argument. Are you saying that because you bought the hardware, and because AMD offers free drivers for Windows users, they should be required to provide drivers for any operating system you choose to run, simply because you bought the hardware?

Re:Why should they?

[obarthelemy]

Well, drivers advertised as available at the time you purchased the hardware should be available and supported well enough. Drivers not advertised, on the other hand... OEMs can't support each and every OS, kernel version, ... especially when the market share is marginal, and revenue almost nil.

I understand that sucks and, frankly, it's the main thing that' keeping me away, again and again, from Linux. But I also understand that companies are not charities and have to make a business case for investing $$$ in dev and support. Especially when, as is probably the case here, there's 3rd party IP in the mix, which would cost a lot to buy out and "open", or replicate w/o getting embroiled in endless lawsuits.

Re:Why should they?

[SJHillman]

He was replying to the AC that was apparently saying Linux shouldn't be supported because those users don't pay for software (generally). The AC which you replied to was simply pointing out the original AC's argument was faulty because Windows users don't pay for the software in question either. However, both Windows and Linux users paid the same price for the hardware, the price of which includes support for the drivers. If they offer Linux drivers, then it's only fair to expect the same level of support offered for other platforms.

Re:Why should they?

[Tmann72]

That's exactly what he is saying. I think you are too hung up on the word free. It's not as if a better paid option is available. All the drivers for each platform are free. As a user who purchased hardware at the full price I fully expect the hardware creator to release fully functional drivers for their device, and to not half ass it. This shock and awe that Linux should be treated differently or somehow less free than the windows version is the ridiculous argument here.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Intel provides excellent Linux support. However it comes at a slight price premium which most Linux users can't afford. They would rather mailorder "budget" AMD systems and fight with buggy drivers.

Re:Why should they?

[MickyTheIdiot]

We liked you better when you were posting as an A.C. Obviously the same person.

Re:Why should they?

[0100010001010011]

But 100,000 Windows users have paid $1 of their final purchase price to software development. 10,000 Linux users have paid $1 of their final purchase price to software development. (It's hyperbole for an example.) Each user has paid the same amount for hardware but the "Develop Windows Drivers" pool has $90k more in it.

Re:Why should they?

[MickyTheIdiot]

Fine. Don't support Linux. If you say you support Linux, then REALLY support it. There shouldn't be a middle ground in this issue. It's pretty simple.

Re:Why should they?

[jedidiah]

Intel cooperates with the community. That doesn't mean that their kit is better or that the associated drivers are better. It also doesn't make them a premium option of any kind.

That cooperation also hasn't led to feature or support parity with the Nvidia blob.

Intel is the same sort of force bundled cheap stuff that AMD is.

Re:Why should they?

[Locutus]

we are talking about video drivers here and the drivers only work with the hardware from that company mentioned. Exactly what software should the OSS people purchase from AMD to get this support you think you know about?

figures, an AC...

LoB

Re:Why should they?

[hazah]

I bet you came when you finished typing that.

Re:Why should they?

[geekprime]

Would you care to explain how AMD/ATI's revenue is different because I choose to use Linux instead of windows?
I still paid the same amount of money for the card.

Furthermore, we all know for a fact (because it's happened for every other piece of hardware) that if they released the details needed for the Linux community to write it's own drivers, they'd never have to write another one for Linux, ever, AND they would benefit from being able to take the concepts and optimizations created by the Linux community and fold them into their windows drivers.

Re:Why should they?

[geekprime]

If it says it supports that OS on the outside of the box then YES, I DO expect it to be included.

Re:Why should they?

[Tharkkun]

What leeches? The drivers don't cost the user anything extra (far as I know?). If I've already paid for the hardware, I expect drivers that work and support all the functionality, and there is no valid excuse for any hardware manufacturer to withhold them.

They do work on the hardware listed on the box when you purchased it.

Re:Why should they?

[Bert64]

People only have finite funds available, if you have a budget of $1000 for a computer and you decide to spend $400 of it on software then you only have a $600 computer.
If you decide to use free software, then you can buy a $1000 computer which will be more powerful.

AMD sell hardware...

Re:Why should they?

[aitikin]

Would you care to explain how AMD/ATI's revenue is different because I choose to use Linux instead of windows? I still paid the same amount of money for the card.

Furthermore, we all know for a fact (because it's happened for every other piece of hardware) that if they released the details needed for the Linux community to write it's own drivers, they'd never have to write another one for Linux, ever, AND they would benefit from being able to take the concepts and optimizations created by the Linux community and fold them into their windows drivers.

I'll bite, although I generally agree with you and will make a different case in a minute.

Their given revenue may currently be based off of a model where they spend X number of person hours on developing drivers for given hardware and devoting those hours to the less common user base of Linux in the degree to which it would theoretically be necessary would take more than the given hours.

On the second point, if they were to release all of their hardware specs, then, it's theoretically possible for someone with a bigger budget (Intel comes to mind) to come in, build these exact same chipsets in higher quantities and undercut AMD at sales.

Now, while neither of these are extremely strong arguments, they're the type I'd expect to hear from corporate honchos who don't really know as much as they should. Now my big argument is that, we, the Linux crowd, is some of the most outspoken individuals in computer. I have a half dozen friends who, every time they need a new computer, they ask me to come shopping with them. You find me a company that gives true, quality support for Linux, and I'll tell you which company I'm going to recommend over the other. Many Linux geeks are in charge of (or at least have a say in) specing systems for everything from corporate servers to company desktops as well. Sure, the boost in sales won't be apparent or even clearly directly correlated, but there'll likely be some improvements...

Re:Why should they?

[Tharkkun]

Would you care to explain how AMD/ATI's revenue is different because I choose to use Linux instead of windows? I still paid the same amount of money for the card.

Furthermore, we all know for a fact (because it's happened for every other piece of hardware) that if they released the details needed for the Linux community to write it's own drivers, they'd never have to write another one for Linux, ever, AND they would benefit from being able to take the concepts and optimizations created by the Linux community and fold them into their windows drivers.

Statistics show that people aren't going to go out and spend $500 on a nice video card to display X on Linux. The high powered video cards are for games and gaming is non-existent on Linux. So their revenue is directly affected by drivers working *great* when gaming on Windows. Successful gaming equals new cards purchased in the future. If the Linux community could optimize OpenGL to compete with Directx you might have a solid argument. But OpenGL is slow, buggy and doesn't compete so why would AMD/Nvidia have any interest in the input of the open source community on their drivers?

Re:Why should they?

[Tharkkun]

Why should they support Linux leeches?

There's a reason why all my Linux boxes except the oldest one have either Nvidia or Intel graphics. In the case of the old one I had to manually patch the ATI driver kludge source because ATI dropped support and a kernel change broke it.

So, not a penny of my IT budget has gone to ATI since 2008 because their drivers aren't very good and they don't support them.

A kernel change broke it for a card 4 years old? So the driver worked fine until Linus broke it? The biggest problem here is there is no standard for changes make by the kernel team. They have ultimate power and break anything they want, forcing companies to change. Microsoft does this also but only on major revisions of their OS. Windows XP, Vista, 7, etc. If Microsoft broke video drivers once a month when Windows updates came out there would be an uproar as well.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia drivers have always been better than ATI drivers on Linux. The only reason someone uses ATI is because it seemed like the best option for their windows partition.

Re:Why should they?

[Tharkkun]

Replying to my own ftw. It's funny how many people put up with this crap with Linux. When it's Windows it could be a 10,000 page thread bitching about the evil Microsoft. But when Linux does it, it's assumed as something natural and innovative because its open source. You can't have it both ways...

Re:Why should they?

[cheesybagel]

There are a lot of people buying high-end graphics cards for Linux workstations or even clusters with tens of thousands of nodes so if you don't release drivers for them you are losing a substantial chunk of the technical computing market.

Re:Why should they?

[lister king of smeg]

distros don't matter if you put the the driver in f'ing kernal where it belongs

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistics show

[citation needed]

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. They should completely drop the Linux drivers to put an end to the whining. The games are on Windows, so support Windows well and bail on the hobbyists.

Re:Why should they?

[gman003]

Writing drivers is not free. It costs money to hire and pay a development team.

AMD/nVidia would love it if everyone used one version of Windows (even Windows has driver compatibility problems between versions - Vista/7 drivers don't always work on XP/2K, and never on 95/98/ME, and so on). Not to mention 32-bit/64-bit drivers. They would cut their driver development costs dramatically.

On the other hand, users would love it if they supported every single revision of even the most niche OS, from Mac OS 9 to Minix to freaking CP/M.

Obviously, neither extreme is actually viable. At the very least, they'll need to support four Windows drivers (32/64-bit XP and Vista/7, probably going to become Vista/7 and 8 soon), and OS X, if only because between those two you get > 95% of the desktop market (and Apple's willing to subsidize your dev costs because they need it to sell their hardware).

Linux support is iffy because it's just on the border of "is it worth our money to make drivers for this OS?". It's big enough that you'll get *some* sales, but not enough to justify the kind of development work that goes into the Windows drivers. So it seems most companies are content to half-ass it to hedge their bets - if the Year of Linux on the Desktop finally arrives, they can quickly ramp up development and ship out awesome, Grade-A drivers, but if Linux on the desktop totally dies (at least to the level of *BSD), they didn't waste much money.

That also explains, to an extent, why Intel's Linux drivers rock. Intel graphics are found much more often on servers and ultra-portable laptops than AMD/nVidia's graphics. And, coincidentally, Linux dominates the server market, and is making inroads on netbooks and such. So Intel gets much more out of having good Linux drivers (it also helps that to Intel, GPUs are a product bundled with their actual money-maker, while to nVidia GPUs *are* their money-maker).

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, I bought a quite nice graphics card because I wanted 6 outputs. For a multiple monitor rig, 3840x2400 and 2048x1536, each requiring two DVI connections.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that in many cases, the hardware might be designed to support a
particular feature either directly or indirectly through register program
a particular combination of features but thatcombination is already covered by a patent currently owned by patent trol.
So long as the programming capabilities aren't known
publicly, the patent trolls don't have anything to chew on. Just
a single keyword is enough to start a lawsuit.

Re:Why should they?

[drooling-dog]

We don't need them to spend money developing Linux drivers; we only need them to stop throwing roadblocks in the way so that others can write and maintain them. That's the way Linux has always worked. The only cost to the manufacturers is proper documentation, which must already exist internally (or so one would hope).

Re:Why should they?

[drooling-dog]

OEMs can't support each and every OS, kernel version, ... especially when the market share is marginal, and revenue almost nil.

Well, it's been argued that the whole Linux ecosystem can't possibly exist for just that reason, much like flight for bees being aerodynamically impossible. And yet, there they are. Drives you nuts every time you update your OS and software, doesn't it?

Re:Why should they?

[0123456]

A kernel change broke it for a card 4 years old? So the driver worked fine until Linus broke it?

If I remember correctly, the ATI driver was calling a kernel function which they're not supposed to access, and a security fix changed the parameters or visibility for that function so the driver no longer worked.

It wouldn't have mattered, except ATI decided to drop support for the chip so there was no official route to update the driver; I believe that was about two years after I bought the machine.

Re:Why should they?

[jones_supa]

Stetson-Harrison, 2012

Re:Why should they?

[drooling-dog]

You can't have it both ways...

As a matter of fact you can. If the source is open, then anyone can propose the fix (to either the driver or the kernel) and even do it themselves. If it's proprietary, then you're shit-out-of-luck unless the vendor sees it in their business interest to make the fix and distribute it. That's what this entire thread illustrates: the video drivers and hardware specs are closed, and so all we can do is plead and whine.

So yes, complaining about a problem in Linux is just the first step along the way to getting it addressed (if there's sharp disagreement about how best to do it, then you'll get your 10,000 page thread!). Believe me, if the capabilities of the hardware that you and I purchase weren't treated like state secrets, we wouldn't need to be having this discussion.

Re:Why should they?

[drinkypoo]

A kernel change broke it for a card 4 years old? So the driver worked fine until Linus broke it?

You know, while you have a point, you should take a look at the hardware support list for the nVidia driver, and then compare it to the list for the AMD driver, and it will blow your fucking mind. nVidia manages to maintain support for very old cards, and all in one driver, why can't AMD?

Re:Why should they?

[shutdown -p now]

So why don't you write a business plan based on that data, and send it to AMD so that they know about all the profit they're missing?

Re:Why should they?

[ThatsMyNick]

Simple, the number of people wanting Linux support is less. So AMD does not make revenue (in the future) by supporting and serving Linux customers well.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the second point, if they were to release all of their hardware specs, then, it's theoretically possible for someone with a bigger budget (Intel comes to mind) to come in, build these exact same chipsets in higher quantities and undercut AMD at sales.

Argumento ad merda bovis.
There is no magical interface2blueprint application that I know of. Details of the interface(software or hardware) could give an expert some faint hints about the underlying hardware design breakthroughs. Maybe. Why would anyone bother to do that when he could just browse patent applications?
AMD already releases specs for the graphics stack, so this video encoder secrecy is probably 100% media cartel enforced.

Re:Why should they?

[jedidiah]

> Statistics show that people aren't going to go out and spend $500 on a nice video card to display X on Linux.

Most people don't in fact.

So your attempt to demonstrate that you have more money than you really do is rather pointless.

Re:Why should they?

[jedidiah]

I buy what's good kit for HTPC use or what's a reasonable but not absurd choice for light gaming. This isn't just a Linux thing. In truth, very few people are inclined to confuse their video card with their manhood. That's why Nvidia is hurting. They have no CPU to force bundle their GPU with.

Most people are cheap bastards. That's why Apple didn't destroy Microsoft in the 80s.

Re:Why should they?

[jedidiah]

You want to run ancient hardware on a new system then perhaps you should run a new driver for it. If that ancient hardware is discontinued in the current driver then perhaps you should take the vendor's action in the matter to heart.

There's always the libre driver. If your card is ancient, the related performance issues probably aren't a problem.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like hardware H264 decoding rely on tech that they do not own all the patents to. they are probably contractually barred from releasing the specs of this hardware to the OSS community. They HAVE released quite a lot of specs on the physical registers. The fact that their OSS drivers lag nVidia Nouveau OSS drivers has more to do with market share and developer mind share than not releasing the relevant specs. OSS developers will gladly reverse engineer nVidia hardware to develop the drivers, yet balk at working on an AMD driver with the specs known beforehand.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they would lose control.

You OSS guys are all hardon for keeping control... Yet you want AMD to give up control just so you can have a driver.

That sounds like a shitty deal. And you know it's a shitty deal. Why do the linux junkies always want someone ELSE to take the shitty end of the stick?

Every time.. Every damm time...

Re:Why should they?

[bky1701]

However, if I have both windows and linux, and would like to be able to use one card on both, guess which company's 500$ card I WON'T be buying?

Re:Why should they?

[butlerm]

On the second point, if they were to release all of their hardware specs, then, it's theoretically possible for someone with a bigger budget (Intel comes to mind) to come in, build these exact same chipsets in higher quantities and undercut AMD at sales.

That is ridiculous. The specifications needed to interface with a hardware device are roughly comparable to a complete definition of a software API. The implementation details are typically thousands of times more complicated.

For example, if you had the complete interface specification for a modern desktop microprocessor (freely available, easily a couple of thousand pages), just add several hundred million dollar research and development budget, and you too can produce a compatible device with comparable performance, if you are lucky.

Re:Why should they?

[sjames]

Statistics are also colored by the current state of affairs. What they actually show is that people won't shell out $500 for a video card to use in X when, due to driver brokenness, they will only get the features of a $100 card.

If they actually got the full $500 worth of features, the buying decision might change, but statistics can't tell us anything about that.

Re:Why should they?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm putting you on my list of Trolls that support the Right Wing movement. I blame your parents for your lack of morals.

Re:Why should they?

[exomondo]

and there is no valid excuse for any hardware manufacturer to withhold them.

They aren't withholding them, AFAIK the features are in the proprietary drivers AMD produced for Linux.

I know the open drivers may not be as good

[BigDaveyL]

But do they at least support this functionality?

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[simcop2387]

Not yet, AMD hasn't opened up the specs of the hardware video decoder for fear of DRM and other problems with it. There is work being done to do the decoding with the shader processor and it sort of works for mpeg2 (at least for me anyway) but not for anything more advanced. For the nvidia open source drivers i believe it's the same situation.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[Bert64]

The ridiculous thing is, the video decoding portion of the hardware operates on a video stream which is already decrypted, so in order to use it you must have already cracked any drm scheme, or be viewing drm-free video.

Or you could always decode the stream in software using the CPU... Or even using a different part of the GPU through OpenCL...

There is no sensible reason why opening up the specs of the video decoding would make it any easier to crack a drm scheme.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[hairyfeet]

They can't give away what they don't own, both HDMI and protected path video aren't owned by AMD so they have no choice but remove any traces from the specs.

Sigh...look in the damned mirror people! Its been 20 fricking years already, the damned drivers STILL don't work, they have NEVER worked great, the thing is a mess. Even one of the Red Hat devs says the current system isn't working and isn't sustainable, so its time folks. Time to take a good look in the mirror, cut through the dogma and bullshit, tell Torvalds he's had 20 years and couldn't fix the problems so STFU and give Linux a stable driver ABI already, and start working your way down the list of problems and making Linux a true third way.

Look as a retailer I WANT Linux to succeed, i really do. I do NOT like cutting a check to MSFT with every new build but right now things are a total clusterfuck. Companies having to continue to write drivers for stuff they don't even sell anymore because Linus' kernel fiddling breaks the old drivers, everything from the kernel to the DEs are in a giant state of constant flux and chaos, things that work in foo not working in foo+1, as it is now the driver situation alone would cost me more than a copy of Win HP simply because of all the time I'd have to spend on forum hunts and CLI fiddling and fixes just to get everything back to functional after an update.

Its a mess folks, and the sooner you accept there is a problem the sooner you can start to work to change it. Remember folks CLI fixes and forum hunts should NEVER be par for the course, you should and do deserve better!

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[aztracker1]

This is actually why I'm surprised that BSD variants haven't been more popular... plenty of userland tools are GPL on top of it, and will continue to be so, but the core is always really stable in terms of versioning.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[VexSky]

It isn't to say that Linux distributions are user-friendly, but are there user-friendly desktop-targeted BSD variants? I'm curious.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is that Linux has better hardware support than all the BSDs.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[Anonymous Coward]

> plenty of userland tools are GPL on top of it, and will continue to be so
FreeBSD 10 won't have a single line of GPL code in the default install.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[jedidiah]

The "protected path" has squat to do with video that has no DRM on it. Either they can release the necessary information or they botched their design very badly.

> ts a mess folks, and the sooner you accept there is a problem the sooner you can start to work to change it.

I just avoid the problem by not buying ATI gear. That's the beauty of a free market. If someone drops the ball, I can choose something else. You don't get away from the problem of shoddy gear just because you're running the monopoly product.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[CajunArson]

See PC-BSD.org In addition to having standard desktops and the large majority of packages you expect to see on Linux, they have a very innovative package management system that I would frankly like to see a Linux distro copy because it has some very nice features.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[makomk]

I'd heard that the Nouveau developers had managed to reverse-engineer most of the video decode hardware on recent NVidia GPUs - including the DRM! - but weren't sure about the legalities of releasing code based on that.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[bky1701]

"There is no sensible reason why opening up the specs of the video decoding would make it any easier to crack a drm scheme."

I believe a reason that makes no sense is also known as "an excuse."

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[TapeCutter]

No, an "excuse" is a plea for understanding or forgiveness, "a reson that makes no sense" is just plain bullshit.

Re:I know the open drivers may not be as good

[sjames]

Or we could make it clear that HDMI is a total failure (since it's been cracked) just like the schemes before it and that we'd really prefer that the MPAA FOAD.

In this case though, AMD COULD release code that is not compliant w/ HDMI and the protected video path. Not cheater code that claims to be and isn't, just code that isn't. Let the non-existent DRMed up the wazoo video players for Linux refuse to use the free driver if that's their choice.

Companies don't have to write drivers for stuff they don't make anymore. If they publish specs they probably won't even have to write the driver in the first place, someone will likely do it for free.

They could also try writing their own free software wrapper that exports a stable API.

Foamy HorsePiss

[Anonymous Coward]

goatse.cx

ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI has always sucked balls. To this day, I cannot fathom why AMD paid real money for that company.

Re:ATI

[fluffythedestroyer]

It's a Canadian company :)

Re:ATI

[SJHillman]

I've had the opposite experience. Every ATi card I've gotten in the last 5 years has run beautifully, with two issues:
1) Windows 7 started freaking out about my Radeon x1650 about 6 months after upgrading from WinXP and would only use the basic VGA driver with it. I was long overdue for an upgrade anyway, so I replaced it with a Radeon HD 5450, which has run beautifully ever since.
2) My laptop's ATi card had issues with some distros of Linux when it first came out in 2006. However, by early 2007 it ran without an issue on Linux Mint and by 2008 i didn't have any issues with any distros.

My current desktop runs a Radeon HD 5450, HD 4550 and Intel HD 3000 integrated alongside (six monitors) and so far the only drivers I've had issues with are the Intel ones. I use those cards because they're cheap and very low power and sufficient to run Diablo III smoothly on the largest monitor, which is what my usage case calls for.

Nvidia on the other hand, I've had nothing but problems with. It's all about what you plan to use it for and personal experience.

Re:ATI

[Kagetsuki]

If you're trying to make the joke that Canadian dollars may as well be monopoly money compared to US dollars... I'm afraid to tell you one Canadian dollar is currently worth more than one US dollar. So it takes more than one US dollar to purchase one Canadian dollar. :(

Re:ATI

[fluffythedestroyer]

I know, vacation for me in the US :). It wasn't about the Canadian dollar joke but rather a canadian company lol.

Re:ATI

[tlhIngan]

If you're trying to make the joke that Canadian dollars may as well be monopoly money compared to US dollars... I'm afraid to tell you one Canadian dollar is currently worth more than one US dollar. So it takes more than one US dollar to purchase one Canadian dollar. :(

Actually, it's reverted a few few weeks ago - 1 Canadian dollar buys aorund 97-98 US cents or so.

Anyhow, no more ATI. It's AMD, which is decidedly 'merkin. And AMD has sought to wipe out all reference to ATI as well - it's "AMD Graphics" now. Plenty annoying when I have a small driver collection and half of it is AMD and the other half installed in ATI. (I keep drivers around because of regressions - some I can ignore, others I have to revert because they get annoying).

Re:ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

.. What part of linux didn't you get from the article? Also they're referring specifically to decoding video features on the card which aren't used that much in linux outside of xmbc.

Re:ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

Er no, USD are not more than CAD. Your bank is likely screwing you. If you trade a lot, setup such an account.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=100%20USD%20to%20CAD

          100 U.S. dollars = 102.710003 Canadian dollars

Re:ATI

[jedidiah]

Every community developed video player can use the GPU video decoders. Nvidia even released mplayer source when they did their original release of VDPAU.

Flash even managed to finally support this in their recent Linux versions.

Proprietary Hardware II: The Wrath of Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

they need a finger

"Refusing to turn it on"

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, the most interesting part of the summary was:

AMD reportedly has the support coded, but they're refusing to turn it on in their public Linux driver

The relevant point from the article seems to be

Our sources say that these features are implemented in fglrx since a long time, but simply not activated within the driver. Nobody seems to know why.

Forgive me for being skeptical with Phoronix, but does anyone with more direct knowledge of these "sources" want to comment? I'd like to have a better view of the situation than just the words "Our sources."

Re:"Refusing to turn it on"

[aitikin]

I'm with you. Thanks for posting the part of the article that I have read (this is slashdot after all).

Actually I care...

[MickyTheIdiot]

Just this past week I rebuilt my HTPC going from Boxee (which orphaned its support of Linux) and went to XBMC. I have personal knowledge of the dumb problems with the Catalyst driver.

XBMC is a project whose users take a lot of advantage of old hardware. The other part are dealing with small form factor hardware. A lot of it does happen to be proprietary garbage. In my case I purchased a Dell Zino several years ago for the task. There isn't much choice about for these items, and rolling you own at this size is often clunky (though a lot more feasible now than 3 or so years ago). You're going to find a lot of Nvidia (no fucking way) and AMD.

So you have one group of people that are re purposing and one group with specialty hardware. Not a lot of hardware choice in either, really.

So, yeah, this is a big deal. There is no real reason from my point of view not to provide a good driver for my platform of choice.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is that Linturds cost way more in support than they provide revenue.

Re:Actually I care...

[MickyTheIdiot]

This is a dumbass troll, but I have to bite this one... how the hell do you figure this true?

We're generally not the people calling support for help, we're the ones finding the answer and sending it in for free.

Now go away and get an push-up pop.

Re:Actually I care...

[pastafazou]

This argument doesn't make any sense. All the choices you've made have resulted in a poorly supported platform. That's not AMD's fault, it's yours. So if you want to pursue this platform, perhaps you should be writing the drivers yourself.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, since the drivers are already written and have the required support available but simply disabled, ATI could... you know... turn on the features we paid for. Just a thought.

Re:Actually I care...

[MickyTheIdiot]

The only reason it is a "poorly supported platform" is that they are CHOOSING to support it poorly.

Re:Actually I care...

[Lunix Nutcase]

ATi doesn't exist anymore as a company or brand. ATi can't do anything at all.

Re:Actually I care...

[MickyTheIdiot]

that's pretty fucking pedantic right there...

Re:Actually I care...

[networkBoy]

Problem is , many of the bits required for writing a driver are unreleased/undocumented. We couldn't write a driver if we tried when the vendor won't give us the specs required.
Wireless cards are an issue too, with their binary blob drivers.
-nB

Re:Actually I care...

[Khyber]

"There is no real reason from my point of view not to provide a good driver for my platform of choice."

The Linux community can barely decide standards for themselves. Hence PulseAudio/ALSA/OSS/kDX

They barely get OpenGL right. As of this writing, only one machine in my house is capable of running a fully-functional (as in all my standard programs work without any errors) and it is my early '00s machine. Nothing built after 2006 has support for everything.

Re:Actually I care...

[Moheeheeko]

Actually, its poorly supported because there are so many different versions of it that usually need different support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

Go ahead and scroll down, look at that list. Who wants to make the same drivers for THAT MANY distros?

Heres the graphical representation of that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Gldt.svg/248px-Gldt.svg.png

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot.

If you believe that a hardware maker does not have any responsibility in writing the drivers for their products, and instead that responsibility lies with the end-user, you are clearly mad. Or are you shilling for AMD?

Re:Actually I care...

[dark12222000]

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about... at all...

A Linux Disto is a flavor - it's a set of pre-installed tools, features, etc. It's not a separate OS. Unless you're doing something *really* weird, you should be able to compile the same for the most part. In addition, AMD already stated they were going to open source the drivers, with FULL support - this isn't us just whining because we can, this is us asking AMD to live up to it's own promise.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whow really?

So instead of having thousands and thousands of people developing something together - because it's just too much for one man or even a small team - you have written EVERYTHING yourself, including driver support for hardware who's details you will never get and never bitched about it?

+10 superman for you my friend.

Re:Actually I care...

[MrHanky]

That might be true for exceptionally poorly programmed versions of proprietary software, but neither ATI nor nvidia target specific distros with their drivers, they target a couple of revisions of the X server's ABI (and a few more for the kernel, which is a simpler task), and current distros pretty much all use the latest available at the time of release (minus one or two for Debian Stable). You're making it at least 100x more complicated than it really is.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea cause the community came up with XvBA and VDPAU just to mention a few...

Since it's open anyone can get his huge look-at-what-i-made boner. Not that it's functional, cause a dozen different api's for half the brands is just ridiculous and hard to support. But mostly 1 will win.

Since windows dictates more it has less of these issues. That said, I think a lot of them are caused by companies that are in it (just) for the profit, but who shit on the philosophy.

Re:Actually I care...

[Lunix Nutcase]

AMD have been releasing specs for their video cards since 2007. Did you miss the memo?

Re:Actually I care...

[Verunks]

unfortunately the truth is that amd/ati isn't capable of making decent drivers on both windows and linux, their cards seems to be always better than nvidia in terms of price and performance but in reality they rarely works flawlessy, either the driver crashes or the game glitches and you have to wait for some hotfix, there was also a news here on slashdot just a few weeks ago that the windows amd drivers disable dep/aslr otherwise you get a bsod

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're choosing to support it poorly because there's little market for them in Linux.
People who use Linux are the minority.
People who use Linux for anything other than command line programs are the minority of Linux users.

It's like complaining that Black Angus Steakhouse is dragging its feet when it comes to opening their New Delhi location.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no compelling reason to support another platform.

Re:Actually I care...

[Zardus]

Nvidia (no fucking way)

If you're enough of a dumbass to ignore the right solution (nVidia stuff *works*, binary blob or not, as opposed to ATI's, also binary-blob, braindead crap), you deserve to fail. Every media PC I've built has been nVidia; no problems on the graphics side.

Re:Actually I care...

[lister king of smeg]

bbbbttttttzzzzzzzzzzz wrong thank you for playing. all they need is to put it in the kernel. there are plenty of binary blobs in there already so don't go pulling that. or do as vmware does with player and workstation provide the necessary bits in tar.gz with a install script written in python

Re:Actually I care...

[corychristison]

I built my own HTPC, but the hardware appears to be very similar to what you have in your Dell Zino HD.

I am curious, what are the problems you had with the Ati Catalyst driver, and did you ever resolve your issues?

My system is a Jetway NC81-LF ITX board. Onboard Radeon HD 3200, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e CPU, 4GB DDR2 SODIMM & 30GB 2.5" HDD all retro fit into and old VHS player (I was bored one day). As an aside I plan to upgrade HDD to SSD soon. Whole system is only about 9GB. All media plays over NFS mount from my primary workstation.

I am running Gentoo Linux (kernel 3.2.12, w/gentoo patchset), Catalyst 12.4, Xorg server 1.11.4 and having no issues with any media. I do not, however, use XBMC, but a custom UI I've been working on that calls mplayer (eventually will be open sourced, currently working on integrating Youtube).

I did have to disable the sideport memory on my board though. If it was turned on I got a lot of tearing in video. I also set mplayer lavdopts threads to 2 (one thread per CPU core).

This setup is capable of playing anything I have ever thrown at it, including direct Bluray 1080p rips with no transcoding, even no issues with fast paced scenes (Disney's Cars & Rio).

mplayer config:
[default]
vo=gl
# force audio over HDMI
ao=alsa:device=plughw=1.3
# multithreaded CPU decoding
lavdopts=threads=2

# set languages
alang=en
slang=en

# disable subtitles
sid=999

Re:Actually I care...

[bgarcia]

I too had bought a Dell Zino, hoping to use it as a MythTV frontend. But the lack of good drivers nixed that idea.

I ended up purchasing Lenovo Ideacentre Q150's for the frontends (Atom processors, nVidia GPUs), and relegated the Zino as the backend server. Works very well.

Re:Actually I care...

[drooling-dog]

The only "support" they need to do is document their hardware specifications accurately and publicly. The community will take care of the rest.

People who use Linux for anything other than command line programs are the minority of Linux users.

And people who believe that have no idea what they're talking about.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the hardware video decode unit, which is what TFA is talking about.

Re:Actually I care...

[majid_aldo]

get windows and be done with it so that you can do flash properly, netflix, easy dvr w/ WMC, and bluray. and these days, there are enough all-in-one devices out there that do much of what an htpc can do. it's more difficult to justify a htpc these days.

Re:Actually I care...

[anomaly256]

And lets not forget that the requested features *already exist* within the driver code base. AMD just doesn't turned them on when building the linux package! This isn't the same as having to write interface code for a different window manager or library or kernel interface or something that requires an actual porting effort, this is internal code that talks to their firmware to send/receive data and process it on their hardware. It already does this for h264 THERE and turned on when building for windows. All they have to do is change a #ifdef and suddenly linux support catches up with windows in their driver. This really is a f*cking retarded situation and people are right to be angry at AMD for artificially limiting their experiences. Under the table agreements with a particular REALLY large software maker much? It seems to be the only explanation that causes this situation to make any kind of sense.

Re:Actually I care...

[anomaly256]

damn, typo'd a and lost a sentence fragment.. oh well

Re:Actually I care...

[jedidiah]

Windows won't help a bit with Flash. This is just stupid Lemming nonsense. It is equally bad on all platforms. It's the same kind of soul sucking mess on Windows 7 that is is anywhere else.

WMC is still inferior. That's why so many people (even Windows users) like XBMC in the first place. It does right what Microsoft does wrong or just plain ignores.

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

BECAUSE THERES NO MONEY IN SUPPORTING IT!

Jesus. You linux weenies act like you're some giant ass marketshare and AMD will just rake in the cash off you guys. Instead of what will really happen. They'll burn some dev time making your drivers.. And never ever get that money back. AND get every other wannabe os fanboys to think AMD should support them too!

Money! You nix geeks aint got none! No driver for you! NEXT!

Re:Actually I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "support" they need to do is document their hardware specifications accurately and publicly. The community will take care of the rest.

They've already done that! And the community has proved that you are wrong, they cannot take care of the rest.

xbmcui

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Does this mean we can publicly criticize the XBMC UI?

Re:xbmcui

[MickyTheIdiot]

you need not ask permission for that...

Re:xbmcui

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably the only other person on here who has used XBMC, let alone Linux. Still, we'll have 75 +5 Funny and 30 -1 Trolls. My how Slashdot has fallen.

Re:xbmcui

[ichthus]

What's stopping you? Also, if you don't like the default UI, install one of the many skins that are available.

To be rude, but, that was a dumb question.

Re:xbmcui

[Tukz]

Or, I don't know, you could change the skin if you don't like the default?

Re:xbmcui

[jedidiah]

Something beyond "Cats rule and dogs drool" might actually be useful. A developer might even act on it.

Re:xbmcui

[sunami88]

Does this mean we can publicly criticize the XBMC UI?

Uhhh... Of course. By that same token, there's nothing holding you back from making a better one.

Re:xbmcui

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always leave. Nobody has you tied up constantly staring at the Slashdot page... do they?

Re:xbmcui

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems with XMBC run more than skin deep.

Re:xbmcui

[GNious]

if you don't like the default UI, install one of the many skins that are available.

I tried, but the non-default ones were worse (visually and/or use-wise) and some even seem to make XBMC (on a clean Win7 64bit Home Premium) even more unstable.

XBMC is good idea, but I'm not really impressed.

Do they bathe in cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It sound like some people I know who "Keep getting all thses virus things no matter what I do!""

Remember the Sony BMG root kit?
Remember how no Antivirus detected it? Not even Anti root kit scanners?
Remember how only one tool initially detected it?

Now consider for a moment how many other government software/firmware moles/rootkits may be lingering within millions of people's proprietary systems (hardware/software-OS).

Wikileaks published a lot of information on companies willingly selling rootkits to governments and organizations. And do I really need to bring up HBGary?

So many fools using multiple proprietary scanners on their systems, the makers of which could all be in bed with big bro, the programs and/or updates could contain rootkits, and seriously, what the fsck is up with Microsoft and Flash both having so many remote exploits being patched all of the time?

The very products you trust, imo, could be the very e-poison from which you e-drink from.

To this day I laugh inside when twits tell me their system is "clean" because they scanned it with several proprietary tools.

Face it, even on Linux the quality of the root kit scanners are piss poor. You have to boot into a separate environment (like Remnux) to evaluate the malware, but most people won't do it, they'll wipe and reinstall and rely only on signatures which can be compromised. And when they find out they have an APT which continues to reinfect their computer(s)? Would they be intelligent enough to consider a firmware (PCI/BIOS) infection which survives hard drive wipes? Do they also have infected thumb drives laying around they plug into other computers around home and/or friends/family/work?

Chkrootkit has a function to list the strings of binaries, but it's up to you to determine whether or not the content of the strings are malicious. I've tried several root kit scanners on Linux and all of them are, imo, crippled pieces of trash. The crowd will yell back at you, "But most of these require root to exploit!" No, not at all, there are hundreds of ways to exploit a Linux box, many not requiring root, but a particular program/version. I won't even bite down on the subject of ways to subvert package managers. Heck, how many Linux repositories use SSL? SSH? Torrents with established "good" check sums for thousands of packages?

And I've not mentioned Flash and Adobe Reader for Linux and the past problems with those... and the NVidia driver for Linux, had in the past, one or two severe security issues whereby a remote exploit could take over the system! (Google it. The news of one exploit was in 2006.)

Our proprietary hardware and software are both at risk, and likely subverted world wide on millions of computers by governments and select organizations. The fact it takes years until a researcher trips over a particular piece of malware which none of the antivirus companies are detecting is inexcusable.

Were I head of a commercially developed antimalware company, I'd develop a website similar to Virus Total, but instead of the users uploading single files one by one, I'd give them a FOSS program which checked every part of their hardware, embedded and manually inserted, checksum the firmware (of all media drives, graphics cards, anything with firmware) and BIOS and tear apart the results, funneling them into separate result pages, each result for each component going to its own page for comparative results, rather than building a profile on one user's system. I would offer the users the option of publishing a one page result for their unique computer, but it would be opt-in only. Yes, checksum the firmware, including the router, and demand companies publish checksums and use GPG to sign their firmware, all of this information would go to the site as described. A massive database of important, but anonymously pulled and published information.

It's just going to get worse.

On the side, I've been saying to myself for years, IMO, "When Microsoft finally starts to show signs of

Re:Do they bathe in cash?

[obarthelemy]

Nice rant. Any relevance to the topic at hand ?

Re:Do they bathe in cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped reading at the second reference to big brother.

You do realize that this is actually going to make it /easier/ for the government to install boot-loader level software on your rig, right? All any entity will need to do is pull the appropriate strings at M$, and they get a free digitally-signed pass past all of your scanners and other protection.

Throwing the bird

[mwolfe38]

Nobody cares unless somebody drops an F-Bomb and gives the middle finger. Until then we should all just move along.

Suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

We are the slashdot trolls, my just made surprise butt fuck friend.
And we keep on trollin' till the end.

We post goatse links.
Natalie portman and hot grits.

No time for lusers (Linux users),
Because FreeGayOS (FreeBSD) rules!

Re:Suck my dick

[fluffythedestroyer]

Yeah sure, best OS would be microsoft. No possible virus could infect that system. No problems, no patch needed. It's the perfect system. Perfect company... stfu

Lin-sux morons complain endlessly.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all you ever hear anymore from the lin-sux losers. Whine. Bitch. Moan. Complain. Why don't you IDIOTS chuck your crappy homemade operating system and move up to something that is better written, more secure, faster, has more features and far easier to use: OS X. Hell, you'd still be doing better even if you went with Windows instead of lin-sux. But oh no, all we ever hear anymore is the bitching from losers like Linus Tortards and his ilk of low-IQ, anti-social misfits who think they are better than everyone else because of the OS they use, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Think different.
Think better.
Think APPLE!

Re:Lin-sux morons complain endlessly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think different, just like every other consumer with ample disposable income.

Isn't OS X built on Linux? So your criticism is really an issue of window manager, right? MacOS v. Gnome / KDE / Unity?

Re:Lin-sux morons complain endlessly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an Apple-hating Linux fanboy, but you're really really wrong.
If OS X used Linux code, Apple would have to release the source (GPL, remember?).
There is a lot of free software in OS X, but not copyleft. Check out Darwin.

Re:Lin-sux morons complain endlessly.

[spauldo]

Window managers have nothing to do with drivers.

Video drivers on Linux (for hardware accelerated devices, anyway) have a kernel component and a driver for the X Window System (which isn't a window manager, it's the graphical system). Things like GNOME, KDE, etc. run on top of X and don't care what the underlying driver is, although of course certain features won't work well if you don't have accelerated hardware coupled with a driver that supports it.

OSX doesn't use the X Window System for its main GUI. It also isn't based on Linux (it's a highly customized BSD derivative). OSX drivers would be as useless as Windows drivers on a Linux system.

so much

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for all those nerds praising amd in the nvidia stories..the facts are these companies
don't want to give away their sauce and I don't blame them

Re:so much

[fluffythedestroyer]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180336/amd-admits-improving-linux-opencl-support This is a good example why amd has problems supporting linux.

STFU and RTFA.

Re:so much

[TapeCutter]

Especially if it's a secret sauce.

was annoying on XBMC for me

[forgottenusername]

I usually don't pay too close of attention to ATI vs Nvidia war, but I had built out a slick HTPC machine to run xbmc on Linux, and videos had all sorts of problems on the ATI card.. especially with decent quality videos. Hitching, crashing, general instability despite trying different drivers and config combinations.

Threw in a fanless nvidia, VDPAU works fine, totally different experience.

So, I'll stick with Nvidia on Linux for anything more serious than web browsing; their closed source binary driver is a little obnoxious, but at least it works.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the anecdote and your single data point. I'm going to go right out and buy an Nvidia card now.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Yvanhoe]

I think that my next one will have Intel graphics. They are not the top boys in terms of raw power, but their drivers are open source, and their linux support apparently complete. That makes them probably decent competitors to NVidia/ATI

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Strider-]

I'm running XBMC on an Asus EeeBox 1021P (Atom 510 w/ Nvidia ION2 graphics). Built the thing up with Debian, running Diskless no-less, and it is a fantastic HTPC. It will hapilly play whatever video files I throw at it, be they BluRay rips, high bitrate 1080p video, lower video, etc... The Nvidia closed source drivers, as built by the Debian packages, work well, and VDPAU works great. The great irony is that XBMC seems to draw less CPU time when running a 1080p video than it does displaying its own menus.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Synn]

I have the same exact setup, Debian as well. Works great.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[forgottenusername]

Probably not a terrible idea - don't they tend to have lower power consumption / run cooler? I got this thing for my xbmc box;

http://www.quietpc.com/products/vga-cards/msi-n210-md512h

Fanless, which is nice for noise.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[drinkypoo]

I have been having windows crashes due to ATI drivers since Windows 3.1 and the Mach32, a combination which I was forced to deal with due to an employment situation. Every third or fourth card I try them again and it is a horrible mistake. My Gateway subnotebook with AMD R690M chipset (ATI X1250 graphics) works properly with neither fglrx nor ati and AMD does not provide integrated chipset driver downloads at all and the Linux support for this hardware is spotty at best.

I have had basically two notable problems with nVidia, period, and my first card of theirs was a Riva TNT, so I've been at it a while. When I got my 240GT there was no real support, but because it's very similar to other cards, it worked... so long as I didn't run the very latest (though not beta) driver. And the other problem was a Quadro 1500FX with the infamous die bonding problem. HP denied that there was a problem for a long time, then I found a tech willing to admit that there was a problem, and then they gave me a new machine which worked great and I sold it on the premise that it's an HP and it'll probably fail.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running XBMC on an Asus EeeBox 1021P (Atom 510 w/ Nvidia ION2 graphics). Built the thing up with Debian, running Diskless no-less, and it is a fantastic HTPC. It will hapilly play whatever video files I throw at it, be they BluRay rips, high bitrate 1080p video, lower video, etc... The Nvidia closed source drivers, as built by the Debian packages, work well, and VDPAU works great. The great irony is that XBMC seems to draw less CPU time when running a 1080p video than it does displaying its own menus.

it was done that way on purpose

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding XBMC using lots of CPU drawing menus, that's a true statement - a relic from the original design from XBOX. Look into the "dirty rectangles" feature in the latest releases (it's in advancedsettings.xml), which can help with that problem.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[jedidiah]

If you think it is only one single data point then clearly you aren't bothering to pay any attention to this sort of stuff.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[jedidiah]

Nvidia had respectable partial decode support even before VDPAU came along. This was very handy for things like the AppleTV1. As soon as VDPAU was released, I got myself an 8400 and happily awaited the release of the IONs. I tried to buy from the UK but Amazon wouldn't let me and I nearly imported a Revo from Akihabra.

I've been happily using ION low profile machines as frontend machines handling high def h264 cable recordings for as long as they have been available for purchase.

The nvidia drivers have been free of the performance issues and glitches present with ATI and the performance and HDTV detection issues of Intel.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad you guys are making good use of Debian. My philosophy on FOSS prevents me from doing anything like this on my own system but it's great to hear that people can get this kind of mileage with Debian.

This kind of success is why I'm not a fan of gNewSense.

Re:was annoying on XBMC for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that my next one will have Intel graphics. ...

Okaaaaay...just make sure they don't pull another GMA500 'Poulsbo' trick on ya.

Their wishlist

[pathological liar]

What kind of piss-poor cpu can't decode mpeg2 in several times realtime?

The article implies h.264 acceleration for levels less-than-or-equal-to 4.1 works fine as well. Scene rules for x264 releases say respect 4.1, and most hardware players top out at that as well... so who's clamoring for it, and why?

Re:Their wishlist

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point. Offloading to a GPU for built in HW decoding means low power CPUs can control full HD media without breaking into a sweat. You don't need a full HTPC when you can have a simple and 100x cheaper SoC. Scene isn't everything, 4.1 hasn't been the baselines for several years even if the spec itself covers what the scene release.

Re:Their wishlist

[0123456]

What kind of piss-poor cpu can't decode mpeg2 in several times realtime?

An Atom struggles to play 1080P MPEG-2, and you can forget 1080P H.264. Whereas my Xbmc box with an Atom and Nvidia Ion chipset has no problem with anything we've thrown at it.

Re:Their wishlist

[Junta]

1920x1080 MPEG2 is actually still challenging (e.g. ATSC content).

'Scene' rules haven't stopped me from getting higher profiles on various pieces of content.

Re:Their wishlist

[hairyfeet]

Because I get 6 hours on my netbook running an E350 playing 720p under Win 7 HP thanks to everything being offloaded? Not a Linux guy but i can understand why they wouldn't be happy, its a hell of a lot less power to use the dedicated GPU to do the rendering than the CPU and when you are building an HTPC you want it quiet. hell if all you are gonna use is the CPU anyway might as well just through in a cheap Phenom I or C2D and call it a day, because it sounds like the GPU ain't do anything anyway.

Re:Their wishlist

[Rich0]

Wish I could say the same. I have no idea if it is myth, X11, the kernel, or what, but I keep getting artifacts when trying to use my ION to play HD video. It varies considerably based on where the stream came from, and what software I'm using to play it...

Re:Their wishlist

[jedidiah]

I play BDMV files with my IONs with no trouble.

Hardware decode in general suffers from the problem that your video might fall outside of the expectations of the hardware.

Re:Their wishlist

[jedidiah]

My ATV1 was able to handle high bitrate ATSC recordings quite adequately. If not for the fact that the Hauppauge 1212 outputs h264, I would still be happily using mine (ATV1).

Re:Their wishlist

[Rich0]

Well, the same files play perfectly fine on my ION without trouble on a different distro. So, the trick is figuring out which of the 4700 differences between them introduced the regression (the one with problems is newer - and I don't want to be running a two year old version of Myth forever...).

Getting hardware makers to support Linux

[BitZtream]

isn't going to happen when you keep calling them assholes because they won't support all 6 of you.

If you can't understand why Linux support is going to continue to suck, you really don't need to be posting on the Internet. You like a basic understanding of the way the world works.

I'll give you one basic hint though, as I said, when you keep rallying behind people in your community that throw temper tantrums when the rest of the world doesn't see it the same way and they can't understand why ... you pretty much lose any chance of any intelligent company supporting you. The only people who are going to support you are those that can't make it main stream for various reasons and they need a niche market to help them survive ... this companies also tend to produce shit products, hence why they are relegated to niche markets for standard products.

Keep calling people assholes and then wondering why you have no friends, go ahead, we'll continue to shake our heads in disappointment that you still haven't grown up.

Re:Getting hardware makers to support Linux

[spauldo]

Calling them assholes doesn't affect anything, one way or another.

Seriously, this is basically a tech forum. The people that make the decisions at AMD don't read it and wouldn't care if they heard that /. readers were bashing them. AMD is used to being bashed - they've been at war with Intel for over twenty years.

Meanwhile, the intelligent companies will support Linux when it makes financial sense to do so. Most hardware does not have the legal and technical hassles that video cards have, and companies can throw a bit of documentation at some kernel developers and forget about it. Video cards are going to continue to have issues with open source because it's a catch-22 for everyone involved. XBMC calling out AMD on not supporting features in their binary driver is the right thing to do - AMD very well might listen to them, whereas they certainly won't listen (or even notice) us.

It's not that we haven't grown up. We know we can bitch and moan on /. and AMD won't care. And what's the point of being in IT if you can't bitch and moan?

My xbmc setup

[SealBeater]

I'm currently using a mac mini with the Intel i910 driver and a broadcom crystalhd mini-pci-E card. 1920x1080, both CPUs run at about 30% decoding 1080p. Works very well for me.

AMD vs nVidia video acceleation

[ruinevil]

If you've ever lurked Doom9, you'll realize that AMD/ATi cards are very narrow in the types of AVC files they will accelerate, when compared to nVidia. And this is on the well supported and well funded Windows side.

They might have some support in the drivers, but Linux video acceleration is a clusterfuck, some really convoluted setup that makes PulseAudio/ALSA look like a sane design.

In Windows, video players will simply drop to software decoding if it can hardware decode, but in Linux, the video players try to hardware decode anyways, resulting in garbled video.

My nicest card is AMD, but my ancient Pentium 4 with a NV 8400 can DxVA more files... and it needs to.

Re:AMD vs nVidia video acceleation

[ruinevil]

Can = CAN'T

Re:AMD vs nVidia video acceleation

[jedidiah]

Bullshit. Linux players will adapt to what's available on the system. Calling Linux video accleration a "clusterfuck" is really quite amusing since nvidia is effectively the only game in town and has been for quite a long time.

Blame DRM

[CityZen]

Their video acceleration hardware has DRM built into it. The reason they can't release the specs is most likely because their lawyers said not to, for fear of breaking some DRM-related legal contract(s).

Re:Blame DRM

[fa2k]

The reason they can't release the specs is most likely because their lawyers said not to, for fear of breaking some DRM-related legal contract(s).

I can't imagine how that would be a problem though. DRM relies on having some system that the content publisher can trust, which the user doesn't have control over or visibility into. The Linux video acceleration APIs probably allow a separate process to read the final frames from the video framebuffer, so the opensource driver can't decode any DRM'ed content on Linux. That's fine. Why is it then a problem to allow decoding of non-encumbered content? The only way I can imagine it would be a problem is if the hardware call to decode DRM content is almost the same as that for decoding DRM content, and AMD relies on keeping it secret.. Anyone have a better explanation?

[Happy user of the open source AMD drivers. Just do it in software and disable CPU throttling :]

Re:Blame DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. Just don't release documentation on the DRM stuff, then. But release detailed documentation on everything else. There are plenty of DRM-free videos we want accelerated. (Old videos, self-made, ...) Having a small 'binary blob' to handle DRM-video in an otherwise open system is not so much of a problem.

Switchable Grpahics

[PerlJedi]

The video codecs are the least of my problems with linux support from both NVidia and AMD. Neither of them off any kind of support for switchable graphics under linux. I have laptops with modern graphics cards from each of these guys, and in both cases it has been a long up hill battle getting the graphics cards to work correctly.

Re:Switchable Grpahics

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem there is that X itself doesn't have infrastructure to support switchable graphics sanely. There is some work being done to provide a Hot-Swap API into X11 to address this problem so at least then there will be a way to at least start to get this working in X.

The other big factor is that most of these switchable graphics solutions are proprietary per laptop. Some use a physical mux to switch the display back and forth between integrated and discrete cards. Some don't and use a purely SW solution where the discrete card renders offscreen, then has its output copied into system memory for compositing by the integrated card. Windows 7 sort of supports this now in their driver model with their WDDM compositor.

I'm sure something could eventually be worked on in Linux but there isn't any standard X driver model really created to make this work. I don't blame either company for not spending that much effort to get this working given the current marketshare of linux on laptops (which I think is pretty close to 0% as sold by OEMs). It makes me a bit sad, but until X gets support to make this whole switchable graphics thing a first class citizen I doubt either company will have much official support for this.

If Linux laptops were a big market segment and the manufacturers were clamoring for switchable Linux graphics because end users were willing to pay for it then you'd probably see this feature emerge. Sadly the market probably doesn't appear large enough to justify major investment.

Also do the open source AMD driver or Noveua support any sane form of switchable graphics? Or are they also stuck on X11's lack of a good API for this?

Re:Switchable Grpahics

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem there is that X itself doesn't have infrastructure to support switchable graphics sanely. There is some work being done to provide a Hot-Swap API into X11 to address this problem so at least then there will be a way to at least start to get this working in X.

It's actually working already. Just not merged into the main repositories. Demos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoUNsbFmxS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEUKuNTRp78

Anything specific?

[Junta]

I use XBMC and find it pretty solid. There are things I'd like, mostly not GUI related
-ATSC embedded closed caption support (this feature would make me drop mythfrontend in a *second*)
-No 'headless' xbmc. For central library, an xbmc instance must be running. It does pretty much everything needed to do api calls to do database maintenance, but has to have a display
-A more simplified cookie cutter setup for centralized database. I know a lot of people will say 'PMS', but I've found that less useful (and more burdensome) than XBMC database.

I found the UI pretty decent actually. Now 'x' versus 'Tab' versus 'Escape is a little non-obvious at first in terms of 'how the hell do I get back to the video that didn't stop when I hit escape' or 'why didn't my video stop when I hit escape', but on a remote, things actually can be intuitively mapped.

Re:Anything specific?

[futuresheep]

I don't know if you've tried this or not, but I have my XBMC front ends setup to use a MySql backend for the database on my file server. It works beautifully, even syncing where I stopped playing something in case I need to move to another room. All the thumbs and fanart are delivered from the file server as well.

Re:Anything specific?

[Junta]

Right, I do that as well, but the tweaks to advacedsettings.xml are non-obvious and could be simplified. If I had time, that would be an area of interest for me to contribute.

Re:Anything specific?

[futuresheep]

I completely agree. The one thing that always keeps me from recommending XBMC to my friends that aren't very tech savvy is that the more useful features, like external players, custom menus, or shared databases involve what could be hours of extra work when all they want to do is watch movies. I point them towards boxee.

Bring back the XBOX as standard platform!

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this would have happened if we had stuck to the original XBOX hardware!! :D

ATI is the future of RIM?

[Anonymous Coward]

in the early 90's, I bought and loved my ATI VGAWonder card and Mach32 card. They were the best, and I like to support home-grown tech (I'm Canadian). Things worked fine when I moved to Linux (pre-1.0 kernel, no less!).

But, it's all downhill from there... the lowlight was buying a top-line Radeon AGP-Pro X, which quite simply ~never~ worked, under either Linux or Windows.

They started great, made some great products, won the hearts of many. Then, they sputtered, blew off customer-complaints, and spiralled down... ...almost exactly like RIM, just a decade earlier.

Personal experience

[saikou]

For me, out of nVidia and ATI proprietary drivers under linux, ATI's were always more problematic, especially under 64 bit Ubuntu.
Every couple years I try to get an ATI card and make linux work with it and every time I get very frustrated (last one was 5830 card in 2010). Yes, I don't have much expertise in kernel hacking, but I don't expect that I have to do that much tweaking to install a freaking driver. So far nVidia never presented a problem under Ubuntu. It might re-compile itself, but that's as bad as it gets. The amount of trial and error for ATI is waaay worse (how on earth can "official" binary driver complain about unsupported hardware? open driver being so slow you can see windows painting? yuk)

So, for me, out of two evils, the lesser one is nVidia. Maybe it's almost time to try a new ATI card yet again :) Though if even mpeg2 acceleration is not working, probably I should wait another couple years.

Re:Personal experience

[Anonymous Coward]

open driver being so slow you can see windows painting? yuk)

Most likely the driver did not work correctly then.

This is on a HD 5650 mobile graphics chip just today: http://ompldr.org/vZWc2Nw/tm2.mp4

It's not the fastest development but it comes along.

So you blame AMD instead of MPLA?

[tlambert]

H.264 patent: The last expiration is US 7826532 on 29 nov 2027
MPEG-2 patent: The last expiration is US 7334248 in 2026 (but if 6181712 is held to be prior art, move that up to 2018)

Otherwise there are per unit royalties without a Microsoft to pre-pay them for you so the OS itself pays no royalties for the driver (or you pay for the driver, or you drive the chip cost up relative to Intel, for whom Microsoft also pays the royalty).

-- Terry

Re:So you blame AMD instead of MPLA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame, cause they're both fully accelerated in the Nvidia driver in Linux...

Re:So you blame AMD instead of MPLA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was sitting here thinking of how to put this politely, but realized it was a waste of time - you look like a total douchebag signing your name like that. Stop it.

video support

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it coded, but won't turn it on? Dude, that's just retarded!

Under attack from both sides

[Anonymous Coward]

A person can use nVidia hardware and assuming the proprietary driver exists and works for their kernel, VDPAU works well.

A person can use Intel hardware and the free driver has VA-API, which most stuff is able to use now.

A person can use AMD hardware and they're screwed. The free driver lacks the most basic of features (unlike Intel's relatively featureful one) and the proprietary driver isn't as reliable as Nvidia's. AMD has their niche and I can see why someone would buy their hardware, but for HTPCs it's pretty much the worst choice you can make, and whichever competitor you go to instead, you'll end up happier.

vesa 3d

[Anonymous Coward]

There used to be a time cards had vesa support. I'd love to see vesa accelerated and with 3d functions added. It doesn't have to support everything, it doesn't have to be fast but it should enable cross platform support in the most easy way possible. I don't even have xv support on bsd for ati. I can't run 1920x1080 desktop in plan9. What's wrong with supporting a standard instead of all this mess. I really don't get it. Same for all the talk about rewriting old software with less functionality. Please someone explain to me why.

THIS is why you can't have nice things!

[tlambert]

Actually, this is why you can't have source code to the binary blobs.

-- Terry

AMD Posted on LLVM/Clang for R600 Linux Driver

[tyrione]

If you ever read the LLVM/Clang Dev Lists you'd know they are releasing the stack for their Linux Community Drivers with OpenCL 1.x full support. They are cleaning up the code and the dump will soon begin.

Intel Atom + nVidia Ion Next Gen = Smooth 1080p

[JakFrost]

I can't add anything regarding ATI/AMD Catalyst drivers for Linux issues but I thought I'd mention results with nVidia so that someone can compare that to their experience with HTPC and ATI/AMD drivers.

Over a year ago I built an HTPC box based on Asus AT5ION-I motherboard with Intel Atom D525 (1.8 GHz 2-core + HyperThreading) and nVidia ION Next-Gen (~GT240 equivalent) video on board, 2GB of RAM, Intel X25-V 40GB SSD, and WD 1.5GB HDD. For software I used the old XBMCLive Ubuntu 9.x Linux distro that is now upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 running XBMC. This system only consumes 50 Watts of power when running and decodes everything you can throw at it, even 8MB/s H.264 1080p with DTS or AC-3 Audio while only using 15-20% of CPU cycles on each logical core and 450MB of ram. This is all due to the VDPAU video acceleration available from the nVidia Linux drivers, currently 295.59 and always updating when new ones come up or new kernel is released since a re-compile is always required with this binary driver.

The biggest pain the arse is the recompiling of the nVidia driver every time that there is a Kernel update but the nVidia drivers work well enough with the command below that forces the re-download of a new driver, recompile, and reconfiguration. Then just killing Xorg process and starting uxlaunch service gets me back into XBMC frontend. This driver might be binary only and it might "taint" the kernel with its license but frankly it works well, every time, and never crashes. It provides video acceleration functions and decoding without any artifacts or issues.

sudo ./nvidia-installer --accept-license --force-update --update --no-questions --run-nvidia-xconfig

After a year of working using this I have been super satisfied since it plays everything I throw at it, old XVid, AVI, MPEG-2, H.264, etc content without any issues and with full audio with MP3, AAC, AC3, DTS, etc.

I would be weary of going with an AMD/ATI Fusion based motherboard after having such a great experience with Intel Atom and nVidia ION. I don't wish to harp on AMD since I loved the company years ago during the Athlon days but the sour taste that I got from the Opteron Dual-Core issues with core timings going out of sync and other game strangeness I am weary of that company. Although I did buy an ATI 6950 unlocked to 6970 for $225 USD that I have been happy with in Windows 7 playing last year's games but I've been religiously downloading their monthly ATI Catalyst drivers, updated to 12.4 just today.

Irony

[Clueless Nick]

I chose an HTPC with AMD processor and graphics over the one with Intel/nVIDIA, thinking it would have better Linux support, and an nVIDIA based Android tablet thinking it will get good OEM and driver support. Turns out that now I am stuck with both.

When MS starts making its own computers.

[lsatenstein]

AMD and Linux: It is much more likely that MS will go with Intel for their new systems. MS has stated that they intend to make their own machines (a la Apple).
Where will that leave AMD? I guess that they may not even have a chance to have their software or hardware as a replacement for the Intel products.

If the above is true, then AMD should be at least considering to document the specs for Linux. The fear of patent lawsuits is a fear that all software vendors have today, AMD or Nvidia or Intel or another software vendor has to worry about the trolls. That fear is most probably the reason there is not better help from video card vendors. The algorithms to get performance from the GPUs is probably well known. I am thinking that the logic differences within the AMD and Nvidia cards is trivial.