Senior Member
Wow; I had heard of SimNow before, but for some reason I thought that it only simulated core platform components (CPU/Northbridge/Southbridge). The manual makes it pretty clear that there's quite a lot of stuff in there. I get the impression that it's not all AMD's to release, though (a Matrox G400 model?Originally Posted by bridgman
).
AMD Linux
I think we added an r600-family simulator to the model set, and the web page talks about HD3850 which lines up. I don't know where all the IP comes from, but a quick web search didn't turn up any obvious third party owners.
What I don't remember is whether the simulator model responds to driver code (register writes, command packets etc..) or whether it simulates at some higher level. Need to find out.
Senior Member
Mindshare really at this point. For every person, who bitches about you're drivers, you lose about 2 customers. Because people who bitch spread their anger. When someone is satisfied with something, they sadly usually aren't motivated to make their opinions known as there is no incentive to express them.
The Linux community is filled with the most hard-blooded and outspoken people as I'm sure you have realized. When we don't like something, we bitch, bitch again, and bitch some more. We are almost as bad as Mac users (except without the denialism).
You guys need a hard plan and a roadmap, cause that is the only way you can get things done, especially with limited resources.
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Have distros ever really performed their primary function well? That is the reason of the semi-rolling release system. Because we are HORRIBLE at maintaining our packages unless 1. we don't ever change anything (a.k.a Debian Stable or Red Hat Enterprise) or 2. barely check our packages for bugs and never customize them (a.k.a Gentoo, Arch or Debian Unstable) or 3. are special purpose distros with a minimal feature set (a.k.a XBMC Live).With respect, why do you think AMD (and Intel, and NVidia) should provide funding so distros can stop performing *their* primary function and hand the work over to (highly specialized) driver developers ? What do the hardware vendors gain from getting into the distro business ?
The best examples of distributions that have tried what you have suggested, are frankly the worst of all worlds (ie. Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSuSE). They are buggy, have outdated packages and without a shitton of customization, are completely incapable of performing specialized tasks.
With infinityOS I have tried to take a little of all three successful models, while avoiding the pitfalls of the unsuccessful forth model. I have a stable core OS (as Ubuntu is basically Debian at its core. Try installing Ubuntu with the minimal install. It is EXACTLY the same as the Debian net-installer). I have update to date package for end user packages that really don't need much testing as the devs have a direct incentive to make sure their packages work. And lastly I have a core feature set that I make sure worked to the T. My Bittorrenting and media features are guaranteed to work out of the box.
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The philosophy behind infinityOS is that the best people to do the packaging are the developers themselves. This is essentially because Ubuntu has *zero* reason to care whether Texmaker works out of the box and figures if there are any problems, the people will go directly to the developers anyways. infinityOS' release system cuts out that step, as the developers provide the packages. The developers have every incentive to make sure their packages work, as if they don't, they _directly_ will have to deal with their users.
In a way, the release system of infinityOS is much more similar to the release system of Windows or Mac OS X, in that the distribution maintainer only maintains the core distribution and leaves the maintaining of the individual packages to the developers. The only exception is that it has the integration of the package system, making it easier for users to install and update their programs.
Senior Member
Yes, the manual mentions a model for HD 3870. It says:
The ATI Radeon HD 3870 device model is a faithful simulation of the software-visible portion of an ATI Radeon HD 3870 adapter; it is not a model of the specific ATI Radeon HD 3870 hardware. Because of this, the graphics device model is not equivalent in certain areas. Any issues related to timing, such as the vertical retrace time, DAC, CRTC and GPU clock timing, will be different. Any software that depends on exact timing behavior may not function correctly.
The following features are not supported in this version of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 device model. Any software that depends on these features may not function correctly.
Unsupported Feature List
- DirectX 10+ (shader constant buffer, geometry processing, shader
- import/export from memory, DirectX 10 shader instructions)
- Flow control and conditional shader instructions
- Texture Filtering, mip mapping, LOD, anti-aliasing, blending weight
- generation, depth filtering
- Line color gradients, wireframe fill mode, Fog
- UVD
- Dual screen configurations and display hotplug detection
- ATI CrossFire™
AMD Linux
I don't disagree with your summary of the current distro challenges, but dumping the support work on an even smaller community obviously won't work, and expecting HW vendors to lose big chunks of money on Linux isn't really a great strategy either.
At some point you really need to think about building some kind of business model rather than giving stuff away for free and expecting that somebody else will pay the bills. Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell (among others) have all built successful business models around Linux, all different but all allowing them to finance a certain amount of ongoing development and to support their users. You may not like the way they do it, but that is a function of the amount of money their business model contributes for paid staff and their ability to attract volunteers for the bulk of the community.
There is a certain amount of business opportunity in Linux, and that drives the amount we can reasonably invest in supporting it. With maybe 1/50th of the PC market (most numbers say closer to 1/100th) we are already investing as much as or more than the current Linux market can support, assuming we already have the same market share in Linux as Windows. We don't mind sustaining that for a while but I don't think it's realistic to ask us (or any of the other HW vendors) to provide funding for OS vendor support costs, which we don't do on any other OS.
Basically you're saying "you need to pour money into Linux than you make from it, so that it can become more popular and then cost you even *more* to support. This is good for you and one day I'll explain how".
Seriously. I really like what you are doing with the distro but you aren't offering a captivating business opportunity yet
AMD Linux
Put differently, yes I agree completely with your analysis of the problem and your conclusion that HW vendors should do the packaging, and if you ever get close to the same market share as MacOS or Windows I'm highly confident that will happen.
The harder question is what happens in the meantime.
Anyways, I need to be up soon. Off to zzz, g'nite.
Senior Member
Heh. Actually my business model is to provide a platform for companies like BBC, CBS, and CBC to cheaply put their content on the Internet. I intend to put full IMDB and Facebook integration into every corner of my distribution, to allow for people to find information and chat about what they are watching.Seriously. I really like what you are doing with the distro but you aren't offering a captivating business opportunity yet
I don't intend to make any money directly off of the distribution.
infinityOS was born out of a hardware project called the Funbox. I have been working on this project in its iterations for over a year now and up till about February of this year, it was entirely based on Windows. Moving over to Linux allowed me to customize and tailor everything to a T, to a degree that was never possible on Windows. It also allowed me to target a much greater set of hardware, as on Windows I was limited to Nvidia due to driver deficiencies on that platform (ATi hardware seems to be horrible for video regardless of platform due to a lack of concern for it in their drivers).
I have told people online that I made this for a university honours project but it was kind of a lie. My professors offered for me to get academic credit for it after I showed them what I had done, not the other way around.
infinityOS is more of a platform than a distribution. As such, I am treating it purely like a platform in terms of support.
Senior Member
Actually, up until half a week ago I had never intended to support ATi hardware, due to concerns about the drivers. My userbase bitched though, so I came here, just to demonstrate that your drivers were not up to task and to get my users to let it be.
However, something changed. I tried out the Radeon drivers and saw everything I needed to work working, with the exception of 3D (due to the pitfalls of Karmic). After that point, my goal has been to promote the Radeon drivers within the community and to you guys at ATi to get you guys to give them the mindshare they deserve. I see something great within the Radeon drivers and I just want to see it come into being.
I feel that something great will only happen if ATi makes the Radeon drivers the official "desktop Linux" drivers. This is because as long as the Radeon drivers do not have that designation, they are destined to be looked at as also rans and will never get the outside developer support and community mindset that they need to prosper and be taken seriously.
Senior Member
As an aside, Canonical and Novell are losing money hand over fist over desktop Linux. Red Hat was losing money until they decided to make Fedora into a solely community supported Linux. Novell has pretty much done the same with OpenSUSE, but failed to emulate Red Hat's success. Mandriva went bankrupt at one point. Debian and Gentoo are now sponsored by non-profit organizations.
The current distribution model is great for servers as that is what it what it was designed for. It is horrible for desktop Linux though as it fails to offer what desktop users need. This is why you see long term Linux users gradually switch over to Arch and Gentoo, as those distributions offer completely up-to-date software in exchange for a bit of initial work. Ubuntu users usually have about a dozen PPAs in their sources to get the software they need.
I believe an entirely different approach is needed to make the desktop Linux market profitable. I intend to provide that with infinityOS.
X.Org Developer
I don't agree with that at all, the way we deliver the software isn't the problem, the problem is supporting what we deliver. The reason the model works well for servers is there is a massive body of people working on making it work. For every one Red Hat lkml kernel hacker you see in public there are probably 2-3 more internally making RHEL not suck for servers. For every one Red Hat X hacker you see publically the same person is also internally spending time making RHEL suck less as much as possible. Its just a numbers game, unfortunately, the numbers don't stack up when the consumer desktop profit per desktop is $0. You can thank the spaceman with the bottomless cash pit for that one. Before Ubuntu you could at least maybe get $1 profit ;-)
Dave.
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