ATI video comes out of the closet

[Dave Ihnat]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2007 at 04:05:17PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Is that something you'd suggest that your clients do for their desktops? 

No; I wouldn't have a client run Fedora.  It's nowhere near stable enough
for a production system, IMNSHO.

IF they are running another distro, and they required something that
wasn't supported in the current RPMs (or whatever) for the distribution
they're running, I'd tell them what I *do* tell them--I can build a
custom installation for that app.  It'll cost them in development time,
and support time, but it _will_ work.

Or, they can wait for the supported distro to catch up.

>  Or are you recommending Linux at all?

Sometimes yes; sometimes no.  Fedora, for production?  Never.

> Yes, there's a need for experimental things and a sometimes-booted 
> partition is a suitable place for them.  But that's not going to replace 
> Windows in the mainstream.

No.  And neither will Fedora.  Ever, under the model that RedHat has adopted
for it.

> Their old model clearly couldn't be sustained - they were backporting 
> every critical fix into every previous release in non-behavior changing 
> ways.

Yes.  I think the unfortunate thing is that they threw the baby out with the
bathwater--now Fedora is so bleedin' edge that it can't be used except by
hobbyists and experimentalists.

> And of course, the free clones are also high quality, but that comes 
> with the open source territory.

Some are; some I have questions about.

> But, I just think there is a product missing for desktop use ...

Ah--Well, I think there's one now missing in the RedHat stable.  

> ...although regardless of the quality I don't think I'd want to be
> in the paid Linux desktop support business.

Hm?  I'm not sure what you're saying here.  Supporting clients who have
Linux distros from vendors is both doable and can pay the mortgage.  If
you're saying you wouldn't want to be the vendor trying to come up with a
viable model, well, I understand the sentiment.


> I think it will be really interesting when distros built on OpenSolaris 
> with a userland similar to Linux distros have some traction. 
> http://www.nexenta.org looks promising and zfs would be fun to play 
> with.  At least maybe they will be able to keep the kernel working.

OpenSolaris is interesting.  I have to admit I'm not always sanguine about
where Sun is going with it.

Cheers,
--
	Dave Ihnat
	President, DMINET Consulting, Inc.
	dihnat at dminet.com
	773/550.0929