It's long been said:
"AMD never misses a chance to miss a chance."
In this case, the chance to trash its reputation with customers.
AMD has long been the proof that hardware is easier than software. Apparently, hardware is also easier than marketing.
Should be the first of the two chances for the phrase to work.
Non-paying users aren’t customers, though, so they must view all this outrage seems irrelevant. Which suggests that they view free-tier Linux users as significantly less likely to ever pay for its use. That matches my understanding of the (non-Steam) Linux as a miserly and demanding target market, so I don’t really fault them for the choice — especially given how brutally expensive it is to support the IDIC of Miscellaneous Linuxes. Kind of surprised they haven’t just withdrawn free support for anything but Steam Linux, in order to lower their costs (and to produce a ‘free’ build that anyone can run privately but doesn’t interop at all with enterprise). Maybe they want it to be a ‘shareware trial’ for enterprise? Or perhaps they just haven’t thought of it yet.
especially their marketing dept which made this decision seems to be run by absolute buffoons