Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

adaptivesupport.amd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 254 posts

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#131

Post by lukan »

pocksuppet wrote: post #126
lukan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most don't want to work on something big, with a high risk of being sued into oblivion once released?

It's a pretty low risk if you don't put your identity out there. I know there's at least one Git forge that's a Tor onion service. Even on GitHub 99% of the time this ends with a DMCA takedown of the repository. You should probably put it on a pseudonymous alt account but you don't actually need to use a Tor onion service. You could also get someone else to put their name on the web hosting and so on. Don't know who…

"Doing the work is what's most important, and the rest can be figured out later."

I would say for most people his means they won't start the work if they don't know whether there is a way. Also most people like to get credit for their work. So the number of people capable AND willing to work without getting credit is low. And that is not surprising to me.

It is not my skill set, but I certainly would not invest much into something like this.

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#132

Post by Aurornis »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #122
Aurornis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset? I’m actually fully in favor of empowering customer-facing representatives to put reasonable limits on responding to customer abuse. It should not be the job of a forum moderator to take abuse. Warning them about the rules of the forum and then enf…

> I’m actually fully in favor of empowering customer-facing representatives to put reasonable limits on responding to customer abuse. That's not the question that was asked. Neither calling a company's actions disgraceful nor anything else in the posts that triggered that official reply were abusive to customer service.

I actually support companies who empower their customer facing employees to enforce civility.

It means the company cares more about their employees than sacrificing them in favor of maybe getting a few more sales from angry customers.

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#134

Post by snarfy »

It feels like bean counter logic. They have a development budget with x% towards linux support which is not enough to fully support linux, so they want linux users to pay to help fund the development. It makes sense in some ways, but I would think the entire software suite would be a loss leader to sell hardware. Less barriers to entry and all that.

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#135

Post by stavros »

speff wrote: post #103
cumshitpiss wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD is not a person. It has no emotions. Any perceived emotional harm by humans is them projecting themselves onto the AMD entity. Whereas AMDs actions here cause real harm to individuals.

AMD and any other corpo is made of people, who do have emotions. Abuse towards these people impacts corp operations. This is an entity protecting itself from damage that it feels is not worth the benefit the offering would bring. And I question your assertion of real harm to individuals, by not offering free support, being worse than receiving verbal abuse.

Right, but saying "this policy change is disgraceful" and saying "you, customer support person, are an insufferable dickhead" are very different things. From what I can see in the link comments, people seem to be saying mostly the former.

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#136

Post by dismalaf »

This is the absolute dumbest decision imaginable. The only people hurt by the removal of free trial software for Linux are students and amateurs.

Even Apple, possibly the greediest company in the world, knows the importance of cheap hardware and free software for students. Because those students and amateurs eventually become pros who make money decisions.

AMD is always so close to pulling ahead of Intel and Nvidia but somehow manage to shoot themselves in the foot constantly...

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#137

Post by xerox13ster »

jdiff wrote: post #124
PaulHoule wrote: post #101

[flagged]

So obviously none of this is realistic, even the foundations of it don't align with reality, so what point are you trying to make with this comment? I'm afraid it's going over my head.

AMD is acting like French Aristocracy and they’re telling Linux users to eat cake. It’d be nice if there was digital infrastructure and social will to metaphorically take their heads.

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#138

Post by mort96 »

tekchip wrote: post #88
Drakim wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your point (that AMD does a lot more harm than what they are indignant about) but not the way you go there. If emotional abusive behavior is not "physical harm" because it's just emotions, then financial abusive behavior is not "physical harm" either because it's just numbers. When you consider what incredible harm being emotionally unwell can lead to, I don't think it deserves to be dismissed. AMD is cl…

The replies here are horrifying. Yes corporations are not people. But they are made up of people. I'd imagine most here work in them yourselves. Often less well paid support staff who have to read, and try to respond, to such terrible behavior. As one of those support people myself I can assure you it takes a toll.

Do you genuinely think that support staff reads "this decision made by AMD is disgraceful" and feel personally attacked because they identify as "part of AMD" and therefore an attack on AMD's honor is an attack on theirs?

Don't get me wrong, support staff often gets abuse thrown their way in a way that is absolutely not okay. There's a lot of people out there who get angry at the support personale. That's not what we're talking about here. Support staff needs thick enough skin to hear, "AMD did something bad" and not take it personally.

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#139

Post by manwe150 »

Joker_vD wrote: post #50
londons_explore wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh, I think they should just charge for the chips and keep the software free.

Yep. Strategy Letter V by Joel Spolsky (2002): "Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements". Also, from the 2004's "How Microsoft Lost the API War": The logical conclusion of this is that if you’re trying to sell operating systems, the most important thing to do is make software developers want to develop software for your operating system. That’s why Steve Ballmer was jumping around the stage sho…

Although it also means Windows could rely on Intel so long for compiler tools, that when I was trying to build for ARM customers, I realized a lot of the expected developer tools are just barely functional or don’t exist (ifort, MKL, gdb, mingw, etc)

Re: Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?

#140

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

gilrain wrote: post #95
jmull wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about this situation, but basic logic says if you want someone to give you free stuff, be nice to them. It wouldn't surprise me if AMD is scaling back their free offerings due to the impact on support.

> It wouldn't surprise me if AMD is scaling back their free offerings due to the impact on support. They’re welcome to hamstring themselves in the market; it’s just not a smart move.

Who are the alternatives to Xilinx on the high end currently? Altera? Lattice and the others make comparatively small FPGAs IIRC.
Post reply on HN