Xig Ad Campaign Slamming Xfree?

San Mehat wrote in to point us to a full-paged Accelerated-X ad that has taken to some old fashioned mudslinging. The most incriminating quotes are "Buckle Up. If you're still using that free X server that came with your linux distribution, well hazardous conditions lie ahead" and "When the X server 'falls over'--crashes--the entire operating system goes down and usually the user unfairly blames Linux itself'. What do you think?

Comments

This is nothing new

[frohike]

I've been on the XFree86 developer's list for quite some time, and apparently this is nothing new.

Basically what's been said on the issue (since it's been brought up several times) is that the guy who started Xig (Thomas Roell I think it was?) is the one who wrote X386, which is the basis for XFree86 today. Apparently he is a bit miffed at the success of the project, and the apparent lack of success in getting ahead of it in his own project.

This generally tends to inflame people who are working on free software that is generally of higher quality than the corresponding commercial software, but they are bashed for their free work. XFree86 4.0 will be worlds above Accel-X in performance, modularity, and features. The thing is, XFree knows this, and so does Xig. The XFree policy is not to sling mud back, and not to post any kind of benchmarks (which often don't make sense anyway), but to simply let the consumer decide what they want to use. We're writing XFree86 for ourselves, and if other people get a good bit of use out of it, then we've more than served our purpose.

The main thing that companies like Xig and Metro-X have above XFree is that they can write proprietary drivers for cards where the manufacturers are too stingy with their specs to let the open source/free software people at it. At least Metro-X knows this, and they contribute code back and forth freely with XFree (including the new module loading system in XFree 4.0, which is pretty awesome).

Don't get all hyped up about this. It's nothing new. It's sad that it's happening in the way it's happening, but just wait for XFree86 4.0 to come out, and there won't be much mud left to sling except that tired old FUD that most people try to use in commercial vs free software. As Linus Torvalds said, "talk is cheap".

Article text

[konstant]

You mean, two competing products are.... competing????

Here is the text of the gigantic image:

Bumpty Ride

Buckle up. If you're still using that "free" X server that came with your Linux distribution, well, hazardous conditions lie ahead.

The X Server is the graphics sub-system in a Linux or UNIX installation. It is more than twice the size of the Linux kernel and much, much busier. Critical communications, fonts, drawing, windowing, mouse, keyboard, memory functions, and more all depend on the X server.

When the X server "falls over" - crashes - the entire operating system goes down. And usually, the user unfairly blames Linux itself.

To make your graphical Linux all that it can be, you need a commercial quaklity X server that's proven itself in thousands of mission-critical applications. An X server that delivers the full power of your graphics hardware to your LCD or monitor in the form of crisp, clean, and fast images. For all that, you need Accelerated-X.

Unmatched stability. Lightning-fast graphics. Superior performance. You'll find accelerated-X is like a fresh set of tires on brand-new blacktop. Want a test drive? Steer your browser to our website.

-konstant

Easy way to differentiate themselves?

[MrHat]

In my opinion, the major advantage Xi Graphics, Inc. has over the Free Software Community is their willingness to sign non-disclosure agreements which, though they effectively tie the product to a closed-source model, allow for a fuller featured and more hardware-specific X server, not a more stable X server.

Yes: it's corporate mudslinging at its finest, a vain attempt to differentiate themselves from the free "competition" by including terms that the public can identify with (like "stable", "secure", and "fast") that have very little technical merit. A page explaining NDA agreements and the politics of the situation wouldn't make a real convincing ad, and would prove that Xi is doing little more than attempting to translate a political advantage into an economic one.

My 2e-2 cents...

Considering that...

[Scott Francis[Mecham]

...as of AccelX 4.1.2 they still had a "dissappearing/corrupting" mouse cursor problem reminiscent of a MIT-SHM bug(very annoying when using Blender or the Gimp), couldn't use DGA extensions, and couldn't drop below 640x480 resolution. The only reason I ordered it in the first place was to support my i740 card, and when the XBF project produced an XF86 driver two weeks after I ordered it..
It _is_ faster than XF86, and you do get a nice splash screen, but XF86 is more feature-rich, IMHO.

Also, I could be mistaken, but it seems that the version of Accel-X I had didn't install any X source. When I compiled xanim for the first time, I had an error, and the author of xanim pointed out the problem--in the XF86 libraries that were still installed on my machine.

I bought an X server because of this ad.

[wahay]

Unfortunately for xig, I bought MetroX, but I will vouch for Xfree86 "falling over". It happens people. It may not happen to you but it does happen.

When I was running Xfree on my Matrox Mystique card, I would have daily system lockups where the keyboard, mouse, and network all went down. Interestingly, linux really didn't, as proven by my still-running cron jobs, but the system was all but unusable (a solipsistic turing machine). It wasn't until I saw xig's ad that I put two and two together. Once I installed MetroX, I had uptimes of a month or more. Just goes to show you that you really don't want a buggy X server, whoever makes it.

I now have a different graphics card, and I'm back on XF86 (those vmware accellerations are hard to beat), but I wouldn't hesitate to go to a commercial X server if I started having problems again. Nor should you.

Competing?

[Ledge Kindred]

Well, sort of, I guess. In the sense that Linus is competing with Sun, Microsoft, HP, IBM and all the other OS manufacturers out there.

The XFree project's goal is to produce "a freely redistributable implementation of the X Window System that runs on UNIX(R) and UNIX-like operating systems (and OS/2)." Slamming them in an ad campaign is kind of a cheap shot -- they're volunteers producing a product because they think it's "The Right Thing To Do", not to compete in a commercial marketplace...

I think the point of the submission is that XiG is slamming a product that's provided gratis, free-of-charge, fo' no money, etc, and representing it like some third-rate software package when, for all experiences and reports, it's actually quite stable and useful.

And keep in mind, the XFree project has almost certainly been a driving force behind Linux' acceptance and popularity. Think about it: would as many people have been so likely to start using Linux on a regular basis if the only X server available was commercial and cost at least $100? I know I wouldn't have.

I wonder if XiG is worried that XFree 4.0 will come out and give them a real run for their money, for no money.

-=-=-=-=-

xig should fire their marketers: this is foolish!

[FreeUser]

We use xig's AcceleratedX 5.x to provide multi-headed support. However, it is not at all stable with Red Hat 6.1 (though it is fine with Red Hat 6.0 and Debian 1.2). If you want an example, try running kpackage, then slide the scroll bar for the package tree up and down. You'll be logging in and rebooting remotely in no time!

We use AcceleratedX because it works with our multi-headed hardware today, but we are keeping a very close eye on XFree and anxiously awaiting 4.0 and xenerama as a possible replacement down the road, with plans to switch when XFree 4.0 is stable and well tested.

AcceleratedX's strengths are its early access to hardware specs (providing support for hardware XFree doesn't) and the features it offers today which XFree doesn't yet (multiheaded support being the critical one for us). It is IMHO very foolish of xig to sling mud like this. Their market is comprised of Linux users, many of whom (myself included) take offense at that kind of ridicule against an Open Source project, especially when the ridicule is nothing more than FUD of the worst kind -- something Linux users and administrators are very good at seeing through.

Negative Campaigning

[jd]

It's common enough in the US, although it's banned between companies in the UK. (The British believe that if a product can't be sold on it's own merits, you've no business selling it.)

Competition by negative campaigning often backfires and, even when successful, can lead to a more apathetic audience, which can actually lead to fewer sales in the long run. (Voting figures are a good example of this. The years of negative campaigns run by politicians have carved away from the number of people who can be bothered to vote. Why bother? Much the same happened in the UK, during the Thatcher Years.)

The only way to be successful, and KNOW you're selling a good product, is to sell on merit, not deficit. If people buy your product, because they believe it does what they want, and keep buying, because it DID what they want, you have a good, long-term future. On the other hand, if you DO get people to buy, because they believe everything else is so much carp, you stand to lose your entire customer base when the competition shatters the illusion. They only have to do so once.

A company is never stronger than it's foundation. A foundation of bullshit and FUD doesn't offer much security.

Have you ever used the XIG servers??

[HamNRye]

I won a copy of this program from Linux Today. It turned out to not be the laptop version (which I needed at the time)(Darn Neo-Magic) but it was the desktop version instead. All of my Linux machines have Matrox Millenium II's inside, and I was actually noticing more crashes on the machine with the XIG drivers. I noticed 2 crashes in the first month. (!) The machine was still accessible over the network (only for a reboot), but was unresponsive to any of the std. escape sequences. For comparison, I maybe crashed Xfree twice in a year previously, and the process was always killable with an escape seq. or a top over the network. After two months their CD was being used as a drink coaster. Add in the inconvenience of a less than intuitive setup, and no real performance benefit that was noticeable, and now I only reccommend their package for cards that are unsupported by the base distro.

I would also like to add that I did at some point in the proces need tech support, and I never got through on the telephone, and I never recieved an E-mail that was not an auto-responder. Now a newbie needing install support would not be able to get it from his Distro provider, and no response from XIG?? That sounds like a lose-lose situation.

In the interest of fairness, the Matrox acceleration is the best among the Xfree servers, and other people using ATI or such might experience different results. This experience that I relate happened ~1 1/2 years ago, so the state of their customer service and/or their drivers might be quite different. (But the the Xfree SVGA server has gotten better too...)

Other points of interest: Since Xfree SVGA is open source, you can diagnose and fix any driver problems yourself if you know how. But then I hardly think that this ad targets folks with know how... This is just another case of FUD.

Jason Maggard
hamnrye@mindspring.com

"I went mad for a while, It did me no end of good..."
-Z. Beeblebrox

The thin line b/w cluelessness and stupidity

[Lucius Lucanius]

This phenomenon seems to pop up with amusing regularity in the 'nix world. Every once in a while, some marketing genius comes up with the brilliant idea to jump on the popularity of the open source bandwagon by.......showing how their product is proprietary and and thus superior. It's really difficult to say if they are just clueless or somewhat thick.


Free hint to marketers - if you're trying to target free/open software customers, DON'T TRY TO IMPRESS THEM BY SAYING YOU'RE THE OPPOSITE.

Look at the above statement and think real hard. Repeat till done.

L.