[–] GodofGrunts 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The "elitist" as you call them aren't the problem though. There is literally nothing stopping Nvidia and AMD from making a better driver except for Nvidia and AMD. They are the ones who chose to put minimal manpower and budget into the driver's development.
[–] lawofchaos ago (edited ago)
I hear you and I definitely believe that there is an unspoken deal between Microsoft and a lot of companies but it's also a two way street. Linux has been a viable alternative to Windows for a long time now and there are a couple of Linux based companies with enough power and money to have arranged some sort of deal with AMD or nVidia a long time ago. The elitists not only scare away new users who are eager to learn and stunt the growth of Linux as a product but I believe it can also make a lot of companies less eager to support an operating system where all the users know better and insist that they do it in a way that they aren't willing to do it in.
I don't know, this is all just personal speculation really. Yes you do have a very good point, these companies are full of it. But I also believe that it's a two way street and that steps could have been made in the right direction a long time ago if people would have just accepted that we will NEVER see open source AMD or nVidia drivers or drivers for any of the parts in our computers, unless it's a hardware company that specifically has Linux in mind. I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure that one of the biggest problems with official AMD Linux drivers a few years ago was the fact that AMD was constantly butting heads with distros that wanted them to implement it in their way or the highway.
Again let me just say that I'm not disagreeing or arguing with you, I'm simply conversing and speculating and considering all possibilities.
[–] GodofGrunts 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
AMD used to require a certain build of Xorg. This was a huge problem (on their part, not the distros) because it would take months before they would support a newer version and distros are always updating software.
For an example, this is Nvidia's current xorg requirements:
xorg: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14, 1.15, 1.16, 1.17Source
AMDs is:
Xorg/Xserver 7.4 and above (up to 1.16)Source
Xorgserver 1.17 came out in February. Source
4 months and AMD doesn't support the newest release yet. Let's see what the main distros are on now.
Ubuntu 15.04 = 1.17 Source
Mint = 1.15 Source
Fedora 22 = 1.17 Source
OpenSuse 13.x = 1.17 Source
Debian 8 (Jessie) = 1.16.4 Source
Arch = 1.17.2 Source
Those are roughly in order of most likely to be used by regular users. 4/6 are running 1.17 and would not work with AMD's driver.
EDIT: Forgot source for AMDs requirements.