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AMD Backs openSUSE with Huge New Infrastructure

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:09 PM
from the money-where-mouth-is dept.
AMD Software Linux
apokryphos writes "AMD has helped sponsor the progress of openSUSE with leading-edge hardware and development expertise. "AMD is helping to ensure that the openSUSE Build Service continues to be an important collaboration and development platform for developers of all distributions," said Terri Hall, AMD vice president of Commercial Systems Marketing. Are these continued announcements of huge support from large OEMs an indication of a new era?"
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Submission: AMD Backs openSUSE with Huge New Infrastructure by apokryphos (869208)
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  • microsoft connection? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by datapharmer (1099455) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:19PM (#20178405) Homepage
    I'm curious about this sudden SUSE push and the recent deals with Novell and Microsoft. I'm curious as to what is going on behind the scenes... is Microsoft working on a linux GUI? Something even more sinister? Or perhaps it is just a coincidence... but then again I don't believe in those.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swokm (1140623)
      I think everyone has to admit that if Novell plays their cards right, they have a real shot at eventually winning a large portion of the enterprise desktop as well as the back end. IMHO. I like SUSE quite a bit, anyway. And I think AMD sees that a possible low-power platform win over Intel (those'll be harder and harder to come by).

      As for MS... they think of Vista as their linux GUI, don't they? ;) If I had that much money, I'd invest in ever competitor too... you never know.

      BTW, made account to thank the O

        • Re:it's MS Linux isn't it? (Score:5, Informative)

          by houghi (78078) on Friday August 10 2007, @12:52AM (#20179297) Homepage

          so SUSE takes a big share of the market, it's just ms windows box being swapped for a microsoft linux, or am I missing something with the ms-novell thing?


          Yes, the fact that the MS-Novell deal was about SLES and interopreability, not about making RPM and DEB packages on a remote machine (because that is what the Build Service is in the end)

          AMD doesn't care who owns linux, I guess they bet MS-Novell will sell lots of linux where everyone else failed


          Sure AMD does not care. Perhaps they just use it, because for them processors are cheap and that is the cheapest way to get advertisement.

          All packages are build on an olmost daily basis (e.g. for Factory, that resulted in the now out Beta 1 for openSUSE 10.3) and that needs a bit of power that Novell did not have.

          Perhaps AMD will use it as a way to tell people: You want to switch to Linux? Well, we sponsor Novells Build Service, so we are the best choice.

          It is strange to see that Linux is winning and everybody is scared of it. Why? Do you WANT it to be an OS for just geeks?
          • Some people do, and those people seem to think the linux system could drop all the new users and common folk, and still retain all of its shiny drivers, applications, and well written code. Those people are morons.

          • Perhaps AMD will use it as a way to tell people: You want to switch to Linux? Well, we sponsor Novells Build Service, so we are the best choice.
            Unless you want open source drivers. Or working drivers for that matter.
        • Y'know, I wouldn't care about the MS monopoly if their OS was actually decent! Bring on MS Linux, if that's what it takes to go mainstream (have the majority of full commercial games and apps being ported over), and as long as it's still Open Source. :p
        • Yes, you are missing an awful lot [opensuse.org]. These type of statements where people say "yeah, but MS owns Novell", "Novell sold out to MS" or SUSE is "MS Linux" are plainly just childish (honestly now) and show a clear ignorance of the functioning of the business world. Novell made a business agreement with Microsoft, and it's turned out great for them. Not some general partnership, just an agreement. It would have turned out better (and, as a consequence, better for Linux in general) if a few people didn't spread e

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mrsteveman1 (1010381)
          The installer and the Yast system were enough for me to stick with Opensuse, I have found both to be invaluable daily. I also like the fact that the X11 and curses versions of Yast are equivalent in functionality, since you can always configure the system easily over SSH or when X11 isn't even installed. In particular I like the partitioner (for its LVM and crypto features), the user, network services, and runlevel configuration panels.

          In addition on my laptop with opensuse I was able to fix X11 from a grap

    • Re:microsoft connection? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by apokryphos (869208) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:47PM (#20178583) Homepage
      The Microsoft deal on interoperability and customer patent protection is still ongoing but more in the background these days. The real "new push" is coming from Novell's relationship with IBM (and AMD, like this story; and I'm sure you know about Dell). For example IBM and Novell just launched a Big Green Linux Initiative [zdnet.co.uk], or how IBM, Novell Team to Tap Open Source App Servers [tmcnet.com], and the list goes on (see LWE announcements, or Google News). Novell is really trying to push Linux on the server -- and just as importantly -- the desktop into the Enterprise, and they're making major deals with large OEMs (that is, AMD, IBM/Lenovo, Dell) to make it happen.

  • To AMD: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pajeromanco (575906) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:27PM (#20178433)
    Save your hardware infrastructure and give me a god damn free driver.

    Signed,

    ATI user.

    • Re:To AMD: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zantetsuken (935350) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:48PM (#20178585) Homepage
      No - I don't even care if its free (F/LOSS free). As long as it fucking works and gives me 3D hardware acceleration under Linux on my laptop, I'll be happy (Radeon xpress 200m)...
      • I'm typing this on an Acer Aspire 5100 with the same graphics and using Compiz-fusion with most of the plugins enabled. Ubuntu 7.04 has a feature to download and install the needed "restricted" files.
        • I'll have to give Ubuntu a go on that machine again then... Would your Acer machine also happen to have an internal Broadcom Airforce (don't remember which exactly) wifi working "out of the box" (or close to out of box) under recent Ubuntu spins? I've gone from Fedora to Debian so far, but somewhat stayed away from Ubuntu because it indescribably feels somehow "dirty" to me...

          As an added note, I haven't gotten that ATI graphics to work using either the ATI drivers from the ATI/AMD site or any of the ones
          • The wireless works perfectly with <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=197 102">this</a> (First link in the thread is the deb). Second option listed there uses ndiswrapper and the closed source driver. I use the first one with out any problems, although I've not done any serious testing for range to compare the two and my laptop is only 10ft away from the access point most of the point. Not quite out of the box support, but it's getting there.
      • And doesn't package drivers with show stopping bugs for an OS that is listed as supported. Yep I used Suse and I live in the US, don't know if the drivers were available in other countries though, but open source drivers that "worked" were free.
      • Good news! The Xpress 200m is supported by the open source r300 driver. Yes, it was reverse engineered with no help from ATI. It can play ET, run googleearth from what I've tried. AND it's stable. That's a far difference from when I tried fglrx with my Xpress 200m.

        • It wouldn't even recognize my Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition. I spent $250 on that thing only to get fundamentally broken bus management on OSX and no 3D at all on Linux.

          -:sigma.SB

        • How would I go about enabling the r300 driver? Right now I'm still using the "ati" driver in xorg, and it certainly doesn't seem to accelerate anything. I've read about r300, but I can't figure out how to actually use it. Does it only exist in unreleased versions of X?

      • Re:To AMD: (Score:4, Insightful)

        by BESTouff (531293) on Friday August 10 2007, @04:15AM (#20180277) Homepage

        No - I don't even care if its free (F/LOSS free)

        You already had your non-free driver, it's called frglx. It kind of worked for some cards, but exactely because it's NOT Free, it's never been improved to work on newer kernels, with newer Xorg techniques (compositing, randr, ttm, etc.), or with all kind of cards.

        If one day ATI releases another version of their proprietary monster for the card of your choice, you'll have no warranty it'll work the year after. Just because you didn't care.

        • For those of us who have installed, uninstalled, updated, removed, forcibily found, hand-loaded, mod-probed, and editted the dreaded /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for:

          it is called fglrx.
        • "If one day ATI releases another version of their proprietary monster for the card of your choice, you'll have no warranty it'll work the year after. Just because you didn't care."
          I would like good free ATI drivers. I would take good drivers for ATI.
          But I have to say your statement is baloney. You have NO warranty that a free driver will work a year or two after. If the person maintaining it decides not to and no picks it up it will die. There are a good number of Linux drivers that have bit rotted over the
      • "As long as it fucking works and gives me 3D hardware acceleration under Linux on my laptop, I'll be happy (Radeon xpress 200m)..."

        I was happy to see that once AMD bought ATI, one of the first thing they began doing was releasing proprietary closed source Linux drivers. Prior to that ATI just referred you to a link to the open source third party versions. I will be honest, I do not run ATI hardware, so I cannot comment on the quality of the driver, but here [amd.com] it is.

    • I don't care about drivers from them. I want good and public documentation of the hardware.

    • Save your hardware infrastructure and give me a god damn free driver.

      Unfortunately I could not agree with you more. I used to be an ATI fan through and through. But when they changed their policy I could not get proper drivers support for my OSes I switched to its main competitor and haven't looked back. But I also suspect the competitor's driver problems with Vista are related.

      Seems like hardware vendors are going to have to align themselves with an OS. Similar problems exist with wireless cards and

      • Or at least one where I can have a different resolution on the second monitor. Currently, that has me f****d.
        That's because you're not supposed to have two different monitors. Don't you see? Instead of hogging that power-hungry 15" CRT as a second monitor, buy 22" LCDs. In pairs.
  • From the Build Service End User page:

    The openSUSE End User Frontend offers distribution users easy access to all software, which has been built in the openSUSE Build Service. You can easily search for software for your distribution. This includes all openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise and foreign distributions (Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu).

    How is this different than apt-get, or even just using Google to search for packages?

    • Re:How is the build service different from apt (Score:5, Informative)

      by spyowl (838397) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:58PM (#20178653)

      How is this different than apt-get, or even just using Google to search for packages?


      You missed the part where it's a build service for developers. If you are a developer and have used or looked at their tools and interface, you'll find it will save you a lot of time, hassle and resources - write your software, upload it, and have it packaged and readily available for multiple distributions on multiple architectures. Your package has dependencies that have been updated by their developers? No problem, the service will automatically trigger to rebuild your package using the updated dependencies. Read more here [opensuse.org].

  • That's real nice... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kilgortrout (674919) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:43PM (#20178539)
    but if you really want to help give us some open source drivers for ati graphics cards or at least closed source ones that don't totally suck.

  • Leading Edge (Score:5, Funny)

    by Iam9376 (1096787) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:44PM (#20178553)

    AMD has helped sponsor the progress of openSUSE with leading-edge hardware and development expertise.


    So they donated Intel processors?

  • Excellent Question! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cyphercell (843398) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:55PM (#20178633) Homepage Journal
    I was just thinking the same thing, the past several days have been very dynamic in the way of licensing/FOSS in big business. We have sun, bittorrent, mysql, amd, proprietary AV systems, a DUI driver wins code, NewYorkCountryLawyer [slashdot.org], Dell with on-board virtualization, openSuse, and well I'm sure I'm missing something somewhere because /. has had a good story every couple of hours for a few days now. It's almost scary. Ooh, Linux kernel developers coming under fire for not paying enough attention to the desktop, too. Anyone know how Vista is doing these days?
    • Oooh, just browsed and found another one. the Red Cross vs Johnson & and Johnson (the baby co.) fighting over a red cross used in trademark. This might be the "year of the linux desktop" scenario where things seem more intense than they are, but I can't deny what I've read lately.
    • We only talk about Vista when there's nothing more important to discuss.
    • Anyone know how Vista is doing these days?

      Yup, our website stats: 10% and growing constantly.
      • not really surprising given how most OEMs are practically forcing it on home users (yes I know a few still offer XP on selected systems and that you can buy a buisness version and downgrade if you have appropriate media but most home users would never think of that and probablly don't have the approrpriate media for a downgrade either).
    • I think over the past few months, Linux has been inching toward that magical critical mass that the OSS evangelists have predicted would come some day*...

      I mean... all the signs are in place. I've toyed around with linux on and off for years, and have *always* reverted back to Windows or Mac OS after a few months full of small frustrations.

      Now I've got Ubuntu on my Mac, and have no intention of switching back. Microsoft's latest operating system is horrible -- and the general public realizes it. Major ve

  • Debian GNU/Linux (Score:3)

    by wikinerd (809585) on Thursday August 09 2007, @10:59PM (#20178659) Journal
    I would very much prefer them to support Debian rather than openSUSE.

    • Re:Debian GNU/Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by T-Ranger (10520) <jeffwNO@SPAMchebucto.ns.ca> on Thursday August 09 2007, @11:07PM (#20178703) Homepage
      Novell hasn't had the greatest year. I guess if they sell of one of their two or three corporate jets, and Debian picks it up, then Debian may begin to impress the likes of AMD.
    • Amen to that.

    • That's a problem with linux.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by brxndxn (461473) on Friday August 10 2007, @05:38AM (#20180637)
      I would very much prefer them to support Debian rather than openSUSE.

      Well I'd rather them support Ubuntu and my friend would rather Redhat. My dog likes Gentoo because he loves compiling.

      Every time a company tries 'throwing a bone' to the open source community and chooses a system to support (which will inevitably filter to the other distros), the linux geeks go, "But wait.. I like this distro instead."

      Just be happy; it's linux.
  • "You may make and distribute unlimited copies of the Software outside Your organization provided that: 1) You receive no consideration; and, 2) you do not bundle or combine the Software with another offering""

    "You may not: (1) reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software"

    "The Software may contain an automatic disabling mechanism that prevents its use after a certain period of time"

    "No title to or ownership of the Software is transferred to You .. You acquire only a license to use the So

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by krgallagher (743575)
      What's the whole point of openSUSE again. If the GPL is such an onerous license then why don't Novell strip all GPL licensed code from SUSE Linux, after all, what's only valuable is the kernel, right 'elsewhere' ...

      You should have read the next paragraph:

      The Software is a modular operating system. Most of the components are open source packages, developed independently, and accompanied by separate license terms. Your license rights with respect to individual components accompanied by separate license t

  • Really, that's swell. But I didn't see anything about 3D chipset documentation. That means if I were to replace my computer today, it would probably have an Intel 965 chipset. (Sure, some people say it's "slow" but it's gotta be faster than my 7-year-old G400MAX. (Right? Anyone know?)) AMD, you don't happen to make processors that will plug into one of those motherboards, do you?

    It's weird for a hardware company to fund software whose users they're going to pressure into running on competing hardware.

      • Re:SUSE (Score:4, Insightful)

        by apokryphos (869208) on Friday August 10 2007, @09:47AM (#20182799) Homepage
        Yeah, sure, SUSE is a pseudo open-source project which an incredibly significant percentage of the open-source community is working on. Like who? Developers of probably 70% of the applications (and a higher percentage of software) that you regularly use. Like what, you say? Heard of KDE? Heard of GNOME? Heard of OpenOffice.org, the Linux kernel, GCC, ALSA, Compiz? Yes, it's often hard to not use them. :-)

        The tagline of the story is perfectly applicable here: money-where-mouth-is. You really don't want SUSE in the OSS community? Put your money where your mouth is: start ripping out all the contributions that they put in. :)

        Anyway, at least be sure that your hate is justified [opensuse.org], which it most probably isn't.
        • 1. Hate over software is never really justified.
          2. The person you where replying too probably doesn't even use Linux or just duel boots Ubuntu to be "cool".
          I like OpenSuse and I have been using it for at least 7 or maybe closer to 10 years but it was called Suse back then and frankly I loose track. BTW Ubuntu is pretty nice and I think CentOS great and should bet more attention. I had to throw that in so people wouldn't dismiss me as just a Suse fanboy.
          BTW I think you left out all the work that SUSE did wi
          • > That's about as believable as a search engine's "privacy policy".

            Why? You think they have no problem with suing each other's customers? If so, why? If not, then why do you care about the deal? BitTorrent and MySQL are curious examples because Novell has never not been a business, and neither has SUSE. If anything, SUSE is more open as a result of the Novell takeover.

            > And as far as I'm concerned, SUSE is a Microsoft product now.

            If you're going to maintain unsubstantiated beliefs and stick to the

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