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

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.

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.