AMD "Hondo" APUs May Not Be Too Linux Friendly

[dogsleg]

Well, there is some (almost good) support for radeons. I think, that all this means only that we won't see any power management docs and official code from AMD. Well, nothing changes?

But these news are pricking up my ears. F*ck!

[oliver]

I actually didn't read the article and was in shok. Why I assumed it could 'just work', nothing as such was in the article. I understand AMD doing this, I'm sure they get some money for this 'exclusiveness' or atleast some good PR.

This was just some bad PR here. *shiver* atleast other people did read the source and assured nothing is really up.

What makes you say that? android could run on the eeepc for years now. android-x86.org is alive and kicking. There simply isn't any x86 hardware out yet really. No phones no tablets. And those win7 tablets that used to exists, e.g. laptops basically, should run android/ubunutu just fine.


What I personally am way more interested in, is running the dalvik engine on a regular ubuntu/linux machine. e.g. not the entire 'OS/framework' just the dalvik engine and be able to use some of the more basic apps, without a VM. Think most popular non-game apps.

[blackiwid]

hmm I heared that intel is supporting gpu-video-encoding with some chipsets and the free driver, is that for the newer chips so? If that happens I never buy a amd apu ever...

[Adarion]

I will quote the headline from the Inquirer

"AMD's Hondo will only support Windows 8 at launch - Linux support coming, Android perhaps later"

At. Launch.
Linux coming later.

Further from the text:
"However unlike Intel, AMD said there is nothing stopping people from running Linux on its Hondo processor."
"However unlike Intel, Belt said AMD's software engineers are working on Linux support, though that doesn't necessarily mean Android."

Moreover if agd5f quotes these senteces also, that should be a certain expression.

I think that still leaves open the usual Linux support. Maybe the will make some promo W8 tablets with partners (though I wonder who on earth wants W8) and ring some bells to get attraction, but why should there be a technical hindrance to run Linux on Hondo HW?

It is NOT like a certain BLUE company chosing FUCKING IMGTEC SHIT AGAIN.
I thought intel would be doing halfway decent GPUs now so there was no need for PowerVR crap. Or they could just add some radeon goodness to their CPUs.

Maybe the free driver stack won't have launch day support, yeah, but that doesn't mean that AMD is actievely trying to keep people from running whatever OS they want on their HW.

[blackiwid]

so yes the last 20 pcs or so which I bought for me or for my relatives (not to mention the tipps I gave to friends what they should buy) were to 99% amd systems maybe 2 netbooks got between that ^^. Lol I even bought a very bad rated bulldozer cpu, ok I only play with that system und windows, so linux support for it doesnt matter... (and a mid-end-range amd grafics card hd 5850).

I do that because of 3 reasons, first intel has a market dominating position, 2. I wanted to buy amd stuff because they startet to support linux with free grafics drivers and 3. often they are realtively cheap.

But even it would hurt me, because I am right now kind of a amd fanboy, I even bought shares and hold it for a few years. Thought that the value that was falling after the overtaking of ati was a to hard falling and that it would come back at least a bit. Sadly did never happen. but at least I did not loose money with that deal

Right now I dont need a new system, I have htpc/server/nas kind of zacate thing, a always running htpc ^^ and the gaming pc and a zacate notebook.

But when I buy the next system someday, in 1-3 years I buy that hardware that supports with a free driver va-api or somethign like that.

Sadly AMD doesnt seem to have the goal to get that running. So it will then be a Intel thing... So yes you dont care if one people does that, but if somebody is frustrated most of the time tausends of other people do have the same problems.

but even if thats not the case and you will not loose even 1% of your sales because of that stuff, even if you dont care destroying the environment letting million of cpus work with 100% cpu time to decode videos and have double the energy consumtion, I have to switch away anyway...

[devius]

Am I the only one who thinks that Win8 tablets won't be the most awesome thing in the world like every tech news site seems to imply?

Even if Photoshop or MS Office were fully functional with a touch interface (which they aren't, and productivity apps seems to be the usual argument as to why win8 tablets will be amazing) who would want to do actual work in a 10" screen anyway? Doesn't make any sense... is it because of the big array of windows games? I doubt they will run acceptability on a low power ARM system (assuming that porting to ARM will be easy), so that leaves the x86 tablets, which will cost how much? Will they be powerful enough that it makes sense to buy a tablet rather than a regular notebook?

[DaemonFC]

Right, I even updated the article to include that quote, nothing in the article was meant to confuse potential customers. I guess we'll see how the support is at launch.

In other words, they just don't care if it works or not, but they won't be doing anything malicious to make sure that "only" Windows can work?

If it's similar enough to other AMD hardware, it may "just work" anyway, and if the difference is small, someone outside of AMD will probably spare a few hours to make it work.

It is sad that AMD is throwing their support behind that toy cell phone OS with the new Active Desktop-like tile spam. (Vista 8)

[89c51]

In other words, they just don't care if it works or not, but they won't be doing anything malicious to make sure that "only" Windows can work?

If it's similar enough to other AMD hardware, it may "just work" anyway, and if the difference is small, someone outside of AMD will probably spare a few hours to make it work.

It is sad that AMD is throwing their support behind that toy cell phone OS with the new Active Desktop-like tile spam. (Vista 8)

Its the same situation with any other manufacturer/product. If it doesn't state that it supports linux then they don't give a fuck even though it might work. And i don't think that there are many -if any- that make sure it won't work.

[chithanh]

If it doesn't state that it supports linux then they don't give a fuck even though it might work.

Can you name a computer or even motherboard vendor who claims that its products support Linux? To my knowledge, these supply only niche or embedded markets.

[89c51]

Can you name a computer or even motherboard vendor who claims that its products support Linux? To my knowledge, these supply only niche or embedded markets.

Some intel ones. Nothing z77 based afaik.

Learned the hard way.