ATBye

As you might know from my UFBlue Linux pages, Linux has been a way of life for me for the last couple of years now. In that time, I've managed to completely switch from all that is evil to something... well maybe a little less evil.

My only concern when it comes to Linux still has to be vendor awareness. Why is it that a vendor (and large vendors such as ATI), simply puts Linux on the back burner the majority of the time?

I guess I can understand in some ways; you've got to lean towards the majority... but why are core issues simply ignored for months on end? It seems to me as though some companies throw together initial dev teams, and then as soon as a version of the driver is released, they are disbanded.

Of course I am being specific here, talking about Fedora compatibility with the ATI flgrx driver, but nevertheless, this is something that happens Linux-wide so to speak, with a wide range of vendors. In their defence, at least ATI actually have taken the time to create a Linux driver even if that driver may be closed source so that the community at large cannot even redress the problem.

The low down with the flgrx driver is that the new version of XOrg that accompanies some distribs (such as Fedora 9), is not compatible with the driver and therefore XOrg must be downgraded on the distrib, sometimes resulting in instability.

Another rant for me has to be x64 compatibility at large, across the field of computing. Come on people, are we or are we not supporting x64 computing? Using both Windows products and Linux distribs I've seen a huge lack of interest for x64 support. The Windows platform for example took a great many months to catch up, failing still to this day to release an x64 version of Office 2003, and Abode with it's flash product failing to install in to the x64 version of Internet Explorer.

Linux-wise, in my experience, has created similar problems in unstable distributions and software not building properly.

The net result to all of this? Simply put, people with x64 hardware have just been installing 32 bit operating systems and distribs. What a waste of technology. I think I'm done ranting for today.