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ATI's Radeon Linux drivers no longer supported?
SuperBug writes "After viewing the previous story on Slashdot about the Radeon 9800 vs GF FX 5900, I checked out ATI's web-site which seems to have been re-designed relatively recently. It seems strikingly similar to nVidia's site regarding the driver selections. I thought "great, ths should be much better to find my drivers now. At least a little simpler." To my surprise. I found this message for Linux Graphics Drivers "Not Supported". Thinking this had to be a mistake, I took a look at the "Discontinued Products" list under the customer care link and lo and behold. Just about every recent card is there. I just wanna know, what gives?"
Looks like they answer a lot of Linux questions in the FAQ.
Mike
Since ATI gave them the technical specs.
The guy who wrote them got hit by a bus and they didn't find the source code.
http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati. html
ATI's Alexander Stohr still works on these drivers (and is a lurker of the dri-devel mailing list.)
Lastly, why don't slashdot editors do some sort of background checking. What are they being paid for?
Sunny Dubey
All of their FireGL cards still seem to "be supported", so just fork out the additional $600 or so and grab one of them. :)
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
the thought of sco made them curl up in a little ball and hide in a corner.
I write code.
My radeon driver came with Red Hat 8 so while ATI might not support linux Red Hat did.
Check here for more information. I am not sure though.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
"Discontinued products" simply means they aren't manufacturing them any more, i.e. anything that isn't in the current "Products" section.
It looks like ATI have great faith in their new card(s) with this step. I hope that eventually a linux driver will emerge, but the reason for the "not supported" is likely to be due to "not written yet". Even though there are precious few games on linux to stretch a card of this calibre, if any at all.. it would be a dubious step not to support linux eventually, since you can be reasonably sure that nvidia will !
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
I believe with all their new releases, they don't release linux drivers for a short time after the card has been on the market. I believe its always been like this with ATi, and in the past they never had support for Linux at all. I suspect to see them in a matter of weeks... unless of course I am wrong.... but I do think they take a bit more time to release them
If all we had left were Vulcan Jedis... would they say: "Live long, prosper, and may the force be with you?
...before someone else does.
CONSPIRACY! I say conspiracy! Microsoft is paying ATI to cut off support for the linux drivers. They secretly made a large cash payment in a bag with a big '$' on it, probably made the drop somewhere in Daily plaza. This is their new strategy -- paying blood-money to other companies to get them to cut off support for our beloved linux. It's world-wide, dammit! Why won't anyone believe me?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
ATI XFree Drivers have always been written by third parties. ATI does not support them and never has. They merely provide specs to open source developers who in turn write drivers. nVidia, OTOH, actually writes drivers, but keeps the source closed.
So you have to decide the between the lesser of two evils, I guess.
My journal has hot
We'll git dat dag-gummed, low-lying varmint, wipe dat grin offen his pie-hole, an' string 'im up fer the bears ta' git 'im!
Com'on, boys! We'll learn 'im good!
Um that probably doesn't include 3d acceleration using openGL.
It sucks when a vendor won't consider supporting their products in OSes that don't have massive market share, but it sucks worse when they stop supporting them after they've started. Many people using Linux don't have nearly as many choices for hardware as it would seem initially.
As a group, people should email or write to ATI and ask for drivers. If they've already written them, it shouldn't be too much trouble to get them to post them again. If they still decide not to provide support, we just stop using their products.
I know that the ATI Radeons are the new hotness of the video scene. Remember though, Number9, Rendition, 3dFX, and many others have held that title, only to be almost completely out of business by now (or completely, in some cases).
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Sheesh. Slashdot: News for Screamin' Mimis
I don't read German, so I suppose it could be, but for many people, "drivers that some guy built" just don't cut it, even if he is associated with ATI in some way.
Linux Drivers for ATI products
ATI actively assists qualified 3rd party Linux developers writing software for the majority of ATI products by providing them with development kits and information.
I take it this means to say they'll help out if someone wants to write Linux drivers for their products, but they're not committing to writing Linux drivers themselves.
http://www.slo-tech.com/clanki/03032/03032en.shtml
I've been a fan of NVidia for a long time... since the Riva TNT2 came out back in the day. One of the major things that contributed to their success (in my opinion) is their driver support. For Windows, there's only 1 download for all of their graphics cards. Granted, it's about 30mb, but it works. With Linux, they've always been forthcoming with drivers, even when the kernel supports the cards (in the most basic way).
With the release of the Radeon 9800 and above, ATI is (arguably) finally catching up to NVidia in terms of quality graphics cards... it almost seemed a matter of time until something broke, and I guess the Linux drivers were the first thing. I just hope they keep their All-in-Wonder cards coming. If I ever save up enough money to buy another video card (holy crap, $400 for a modern one these days?), I'll definitely get one of those (I have a GeForce 4 Ti4600 right now).
I still like NVidia, I just hope their next card is better (and quieter) than the GeForce FX.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
... is dead as well?
The ATI Driver's Page includes an option for linux. Select "Graphics Drivers" in the first tab and "Linux" should appear in the second. Not for all products though.
FreeBSD
I just bought a laptop with their graphics chipset BECAUSE of linux support. ATI better do something, quick.
The drop down DHTML menu doesn't work right with Mozilla. The menus are offset to the left. Looks like ATI doesn't like open source software anymore. With the performance of NVidia's and ATI's products so close to eachother, this might be the drawback which concludes the decision which card it will be next fall.
It seems strikingly similar to nVidia's site
Yeah, I guess ATI needed to keep up with those cheaters at ATI.
I found the new ATI site to be riddled with optimized gifs and using stylesheets for positioning that stops working if you go "off the rail" with another browser.
I just wanna know, what gives?
Hopefully their website if /. can hammer it enough... that'll teach them to not help us Linux people out, or maybe we'll just have to take our business to nVidia (but then again 'doing' and 'saying' can be two completely different ballgames).
By the way I have a Radeon 9500 Pro on an XP box, and the Catylist drivers still suck... I have to throttle down the hardware acceleration functions to stop XP going screwy (well, more screwy than usual).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
but for many people, "drivers that some guy built" just don't cut it, even if he is associated with ATI in some way.
Your lame post does not cut it. As if you personally know every author of the Linux kernel, each GNU utility, KDE, GNOME, Samba, NFS, MySQL and Postgres. But that does not stop you from using their free software, idiot.
ATI themselves "used to" provide an XFree86 driver themselves. you could download it from their own website, and it came with a very nice program that would auto-generate the correct Xfree86-4 config file. It looks like they're dropping support for it, now.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Damnit I just bought a 9700, overclocked to pro speeds. guess I gotta play in windows now :(
Competition in America: If you can't beat 'em, Sue 'em!
See TruckNumber at Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc..
As far as I know, their normal Radeon cards have never supported linux..
...
.. which is probably where the past assumed 'linux support' came from
Its only the FireGL cards which do
However, the FireGL drivers also run the Radeon cards
"cogito, ergo sum"
There might be drivers available on the dri project site according to the FAQ.
.
/ linux/radeon8500linuxdrivers.html
The dri project page is here
Try doing a google search you might be able to trawl-up a link to the drivers (the radeon 8500 drivers still seem to be available) http://www.ati.com/support/products/pc/radeon8500
The writing is already on the wall, people are moving to GNU/Linux. If ATI doesn't want to support them, Nvidia will sell them cards.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
The Direct Rendering Project is also writing drivers for many products, ATI included. They're even mentioned and linked to on ATI's site.
You see... This is why I support Nvidia with my linux box.
I know Nvidia only releases binary drivers they are doing a good job supporting linux users.
Check out the forums at http://www.nvnews.net and see the linux support going on.
Who really cares which card is faster when you cant run it on your linux box? --- slackr
--- slackr
Does anyone else think this is just woeful performance? I haven't been able to get those stupid ATI binary modules to load either, so ATI better get off their arses and give the DRI project a hand or play catch up to Nvidia with their closed Linux driver support. If I can't squeeze anymore performance out of my ATI soon, I'll be voting for Nvidia with my wallet for my next desktop upgrade.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
Interesting...
Will 3dfx's Voodoo2 12MB be able to run Half-Life 2? That's all I'm wondering...
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
A search round the driver page reveals that Linux drivers are still available for the FireGL series of pro cards, and as the latest Radeon cards are based on FireGL technology, Radeon 8500 or later are supported by the driver. If you download the latest driver rpm for "FireGL X1, FireGL X1 128MB, FireGL Z1, FireGL 8800, FireGL 8700" then the package description lists "ATI Radeon 8500, 9700, Mobility M9 and the FireGL 8700/8800, E1, Z1/X1" as supported cards. Hopefully ATI will continue to produce updated versions of this driver, with new extensions, support for new versions of glibc and new versions of XFree86. It would be much better if they could list this driver in the standard section so that users would know it was available and supported Radeon cards.
I am using this driver currently with my Radeon 9000 Pro, and have had excellent results.
It was probably shar archive. That's where you bury a file(s) within a shell script, and it reconstitutes it on the other end.
.tar.gz files... or for that matter, .zip files, .a libraries, etc.
If that qualifies as "source", then so do drivers delivered in
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I used to have a Radeon 9700 pro (until my new motherboard decided it didn't want to work with it... it's a Gigabyte GA-SINXP1394 fyi) and I used it under linux using the ATI drivers. The thing is, with the newer r300 based cards (starting at the 9000 I believe) the interface is so similar to the FireGL cards that under linux you use the FireGL drivers, not some r300 specific drivers. I looked on the ATI site and the FireGL drivers are still available under linux. Sorry, I don't remember which FireGL drivers they were (I haven't used them in awhile), but I'm sure somebody else here knows.
In a related note: Maybe ATI just hasn't had the time to move the linux driver section to the new design? Sure, that would be the wrong thing to do, but nowadays in the "release now, fix later" world it happens all the time. Just don't go bashing ATI until there's official word on the subject.
First IBM and now ATI? No one is safe!
Everything Zen;
Everything Zen;
I don't think so!!!
I've given up on ATI because of their crappy drivers. Sure the drivers are no longer the huge bottleneck that they once were, but it's all still a big mess on Windows, and they are real bastards about just being upfront and posting decent Linux drivers for download. Since buying my Radeon 9700 Pro I have had numerous problems trying to run games on it under Windows XP and Mandrake Linux, and at this point, I'd rather just lose some performance and go back to running Nvidia cards with detonators.
The "Discontinued Products" page has nothing to do with Linux drivers. "Discontinued Products" simply means everything except for the current line-up (Radeon 9800, 9600, and 9100); these are no longer being manufactured, but they are still supported.
The removal of the binary-only Linux drivers (not to be confused with the "radeon" XFree driver) is news to me, though.
These are two separate issues and neither is really news.
Item 1: Linux is not officially supported throught the site for ANY products.
Item 2: Some products are discontinued.
Just because a product is discontinued does not mean it is unsupported, they just don't manufacture it any more.
When I buy a computer (even if its for the company or a friend), I check for the linux support.
ATI does'nt support linux? They don't deserve (need) your money since you use Linux.
This page tells you how to compile ATI Radeon support plus DRI/XV into X.
Now I don't know (or have I tried) anything about their Radeon support. I simply don't have a Radeon card. But if it works as well as the Rage and AIW, then these are definitely the drivers for you!.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that this may some day be the case of ATI right????
Well, I'm really sorry to disapoint you, but, in brief, never gonna happen.
All of the above companies were almost 100% focused on the entertaiment business, and PC market. This said, you should figure out for yourself that's not the ATI case. For the time all those rulled the entertaiment, ATI build strong positions on the *BIG* graphics stations and with Apple. Both moves proved themselves to be quite succesfuls.....
For the last couple of years ATI obviously tries to gain on nVidia on the ET market, but even if they're not No:1( cause, I wouldn't say that the Radeon is the hot thing on the moment, accept for the laptops, where, I admit, I prefer a 64mb shared Radeon, than a 16 GeForce 4 420), don't event think for a moment that they'll disapear as some Rendition company, which I never, and I mean never really put out a good 3d card....(simply their first one was the first one....);o))
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
but there are opensource third party drivers that work exclent with ATI's. I have a Radeon 9000Pro 128MB and I use the Gatos Drivers (http://gatos.sourceforge.net) with dri from http://dri.sourceforge.net and I get exelent performances. It is a bit difficult to understand which is the right package first, and how to install, but when you finally get it, it works great. I use it now with kernel-2.4.21. They also have links to a page where you can download a utility to control the tvout and the dual-head features.
By the way, if one want's the real ATI drivers, one should get the FireGL drivers, which I already confirmed, they are still on the site, as always were. Those were the only Linux drivers ATI ever had in its site.
Onda Technology Institute
A 3270 is all you need, maybe a 3279 if you are a graphics professional ... freggin' Win/Mac/Linux lamers and their fancy color graphics and games.
Interesting. Note the phrasing on the page:
For XFree86 4.1.0
Released/Not Supported
Posted August 19, 2002
Hmmm...
My Systems
Not for any products according to that page. It says "Not supported." How does that mean not for all products? They don't list any!
Call me suspicious but ati get the xbox2 contract and then stops with the linux drivers - CONSPIRACY - ;-)
Before you post stories to Slashdot and stirring up the masses, why don't you try to contact ATI customer support either through email ? That seems to be much easier, and much more productive, than taking up front page space.
The lack of support by vendors makes it real difficult for people to really have confidence in Linux, and makes them keep that partition with that other OS on it.
Just over the past month, I've got a digital camera that isn't supported. Actually, I think I nearly fried it trying to get it to work, but that's another story. Then I went looking for a 6 in 1 adapter for it. As I was browsing through the store and on the net, I was thinking to myself "If just *one* of these dang things said it supported Linux, I'd buy it!".
There's a market for vendors for people who don't want to compile major parts of an operating system like the kernel, X etc.
Hey vendors, this is a growing market! Come on in, the water's fine!
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
To all of you people ranting about companies not delivering at least a binary only driver (or retract them or do not officially support Linux, or, or, or)
I do believe its quite fair for you to be treated as you treat your own minority - the non IA32 Linux/BSD users.
>If ATI doesn't want to support them, Nvidia will sell them cards.
1. ATI stops R&D/support of Linux -> Lower costs.
2. ATI provides technical specs of cards to Linux community -> ATI drivers will be produced by hordes of raving Linux/Anti-M$ programmers.
3. Nvidia sees how ATI saved money.
4. Repeat steps 1,2 for Nvidia.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Isn't ATi lined up to produce the graphics hardware for the X-box? Maybe, Microsoft gave them an incentive to support Windows, and Windows only?
First let me state that I gave up on ATI back in the rage days after having all kinds of troubles with the drivers (and the whole quake vs quack thing ... ). I would be curious to move back from nvidia to ati now that ati has really improved quite a bit and has some realy interesting features (eg well done fragment shading capabilities) that nvidia is still trying to catch up to (IMNSHO).
From what I can tell there two different drivers for ATI products: the (binary only?) FireGL drivers (which AFAIK work just fine on radeon cards), and the DRI drivers. What is the difference between the two in terms of features and performance?
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
How come every time someone wants to get a lynch mob together the assume the voice of a redneck.
I would think that lynch would have a much wider appeal. Mulholland Dr., Lost Highway, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet I mean COME ON ! Those are classics.
Go here ATI service and tell them how they suck for dropping their Linux support. Also mention how from now on you will only use NVidia products.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
perhaps this may be the price they pay for being a part of xbox?
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except that in my experience the Fire GL cards suck for consumer uses. They are highly optimized for CAD and other high end 3d tasks. I wish I could get the Fire GL on my dev machine ripped out and tossed in the gutter, it is awful at 2d graphics which is what a majority of the work for a windows workstation is.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I have the opposite problem. I just installed Windows Server 2003, and I can't get my nforce-based sound working. I have to boot into linux to get my hardware working, nvidia won't support my Windows OS.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
I know that mac supports these cards, and isn't a mac unix? just kidding.
AN ATI support/promotion guy said this in an interview regarding linux:
Richard Huddy: ATI gives Linux drivers quite a high priority - but there's just way too much intellectual property exposed in the low level chip interfaces so we don't put that into the public domain. I'm amazed that people can really reverse engineer drivers from our binaries - but I guess that shows just how keen the Linux community is to get the best out of their machines. Sorry I can't offer more on this!
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
WHEW! Nvidia it is. Thanks ATI!
"They have pulled off Linux support at our request.
If they had continued to offer Linux support, we would have sued them for IP infringement about using Linux to develop drivers for the illegal Linux platform."
yeah, but what if you're a subscriber?
Die Terrorist scum!
I can't seem to find any Windows drivers for my Raedon 8500 128MB... It's not *that* old, one of the reasons I buy a name brand card is that I know the manufactures website will have the drivers I need in the future. What the hell is the point of having a website if you aren't going to share the drivers, it's not like I'm going to go there to hear the latest propaganda about how good product X is.. no I want friggin' results. Sorry to rant, but I ran into the same hassle trying to find Windows-based USB drivers for a SupraMax 56k modem. Supra was bought by DiamondMM which is now Rio I think.. I was still pissed at them for not carrying it, but at least they had some kind of excuse (vast restructuring and all).
Until last month, the 3D accelerated Linux drivers for 9500/9700 were on the website. However I couldn't use them because I was running XFree86 4.3.0. I was just waiting a little bit until they got new drivers out....
Apparently the FGLX driver is supposed to work with all Radeon cards. But I have heard that the FireGL drivers only work with "built by ATI" cards and not "powered by ATI" cards.
I will have to try this tonight, so I can find out if I should be righteously indignant about this.
...
Slo-Tech: When will ATI provide open source (Linux) developers with information about yours hardware so that they will be able to write drivers instead of reverse engineer them?
Richard Huddy: ATI gives Linux drivers quite a high priority - but there's just way too much intellectual property exposed in the low level chip interfaces so we don't put that into the public domain. I'm amazed that people can really reverse engineer drivers from our binaries - but I guess that shows just how keen the Linux community is to get the best out of their machines. Sorry I can't offer more on this!
The Xfree86 status page for ati shows accelerated support for the newer ati chips.
Maybe ati sent them the specs?
Read, L
What AGP video card with TV in and out DOES have decent Linux support?
Since open-source operating systems can only be used by terrorists: The War on Terror was called on Linux. Much like a war on a country, first you stop supporting it totally. Next will be air strikes. Then finally it will be changed to closed source, then the drivers will be back in full force!
I commend Canada for its high-caliber and decisive strikes against terrorism.
With glxgears, I can get like 650fps out of my old G400 (and 115fps maximized at 1024x768); that having been said, I wouldn't mind having a faster card to make NeverWinter Nights look prettier... :)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Apparently you have never emailed their customer support. I emailed their customer support 3 weeks ago and besides the automated "read our website!" response, I have gotten no response from any actual customer service people at ATI. Thier telephone support is a 1-900 number as well. They don't seem to be very interested in actually helping their own customers at all.
I think we'd all enjoy a nice cold beverage. -David Letterman
Yer frum Mrs. Sippii, ain't ya?
[teamhasnoi] YOU! YOU'RE OUT OF THE MOB!
[me] What?! I'm out of the mob? This mob sucks anyway, I'm going to find a better mob!
--with apologies to the water boy...
you are off topic - the Linux drivers and
performance are in question.
if you do only care about 2D anyways,
why dont you use the DRI/XFree86 open source
drivers?
The drivers on the ati website are in rpm format and only work with xfree 4.2. I have 4.3. Is it possible to use the 4.2 rpm for 4.3? I doubt it though.
probably made the drop somewhere in Daily plaza
Umm, nowdays that'd be Daley, and it's not the plaza, it's what used to be the runway at Meigs Field, ya know the most famous airport in the world where pretty much every geek learned to fly a Cessna in MS Flight Simulator. Chicago's evil mayor had the runway secretly bulldozed in the middle of the night, destroying public property,so that he can build a casino there instead to further line his pockets with gangster cash.
err, sorry, that is bad. With my GF4 ti4200 in linux, with a Athlon XP 1900+, i get something like 4000fps (I think, might have been 8000, actually...I'm at work right now so I can't check) in glxgears if I remember, and that's without cheating by moving the picture off of the screen or anything like that. 260fps sounds to me like you are using mesa's rendering instead of something else. If you post your XF86Config-4 file, or email it to me by deciphering my URL (not counting the strip part), I might be able to help you out.
//FIXME: Bad
Nice. Ati's site didn't have Xfree 4.3 drivers, but
his does.
Binary drivers worked this time, anyway.
------ Nope, Not me, you can't prove I said that!
...what I want to know is, when will the GATOS project code be merged into XFree86, so that those of us with ATI All-in-Wonder cards don't have to muck about to get support?
ATI has never ever been good about providing drivers for their products, they don't even provide new drivers for their existing lines when new versions of windows come out. They just string people along with the promises of new drivers that never materialize or if they do, they never get past beta because they don't work well. ATI would rather you buy a new card than just use what you have so they don't bother to make newer drivers. Their linux support is abysmal and their windows support isn't much better. Learn your lesson and stop supporting ATI until they change their act.
The only thing less cost effective than supporting the idiotic Mac OS is supporting Linux.
Get a life.
Best (hell, maybe the only!) reference to software engineering principles on Slashdot ever.
--- What
I am trying to get information about the ALL in Wonder 9700 Pro card concerning Linux. I would very much appreciate to know what support you have, or you plan to have, for this card. My aim is to build a media centre around this graphics card and while the card is an expensive choice (and therefore requires me to purchase cheaper software hence Linux), I feel that it is a wise investment. However, my purchase is dependant on your policy for the future availability of drivers for Linux as it is directly related to whether this card is, in fact, a viable option for me. Hence this request for information.
Cordially yours, xxxxxxxx xxxxx
Do you know what happened after I clicked "Submit"? I got a "This message has been recorded and will be treated as required."
Required by whom? ATI or ME? hmmm, stupid question really...
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Ah say we sandpaper 'is nutsack and set 'im down in turpytine!!!
"YIPPE-KI-YAY, Motherfu**er !!!" John McLane - Die Hard
If you want good ATI support in a Unixlike environment, you might want to check out a Mac. The G5s are primarily available with ATI cards. And hey, you can even run a big selection of proprietary apps and games! :-)
Perhaps ATI decided that the energy going into supporting Linux should be going into better MacOS X support instead...?
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I have a ATI card with VIVO, that i bought about a year ago to use cause i wanted to watch movies on my tv (Before i bought a standalone DVD player) and it works great in Win, and in LInux but no TV out yet in linux. I'm currently putting together a MythTV box (http://www.mythtv.org) and i had a really old STB systems Velocity 4400 card laying around (i believe it uses the original TNT chip), threw that in, worked right away and with TV out. So my next card will be a nvdia.
-MacNean
I just tried this guys drivers on RH9 with a 9800 and everything seems to be working fine.
2D support has been availble for some time AFAIK. It's hight-performance 3D drivers that are lacking - and the XFree86 team can't engineer those w/o a great deal of technical info, and probably a team of full time experts.
Does anyone know where drivers for the oldie
but goodie Radeon 7500 can be found?
I haven't seen the 7500 series mentioned in any of the posts here.
Just because it doesn't say on the box that is supports linux doesn't mean it won't work. My new HP digital camera worked with RH 7.3 out of box. On the other hand, I had a Siemens speedstream that said linux supported on the box. But when you got to their website it said that 'they' didn't support it, but that someone does. It took me a little bit, but I got it going too. Typically hardware devices that follow stardards will work fine with linux as soon as that standard is supported.
=)
Here are drivers for Radeon, (I had bookmarked the link before they changed their site) but it seems that they are the fireGL drivers anyway (fglrx-glc22...), and they are for XFree 4.1.0 or 4.2.0, not 4.3.0.
I need to buy a new computer in a month or two.
... no official support for Linux ? That's a veto.
I'm used to nVidia but the recent reviews & stories made me think a change could be a very good idea.
I was going for an ATI 9800 Pro but
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
I know I will get bashed for this, but why doesn't Linux use Microsoft video driver model. That way Linux will gain instant support to all video cards that support Microsoft's OS's.
You said:
They get paid to select the stuff from the submissions bin that goes on the front page. No, wait -- that's done by a squadron of stealth monkeys. Um, maybe the editors feed the monkeys?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe this will help, can't hurt. Just a little digging. Hey, maybe the following link is fud?? Maybe the first link was FUD!! Call em, ask em. http://www.ati.com/support/faq/linux.html
What is perhaps most impressive is how fast Microsoft have innovated with DirectX. They're produced a new version about once per year for the last six years, and they've now achieved the impressive step of releasing DirectX 9 which has support for all of next year's hardware already built in!
In bed with the beast.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Back in 1995 I had just bought an ATI video capture card. Soon after that Windows 95 came out and the card wouldn't work under 95, only Windows 3.11. ATI refuesed to port their drivers for the card to 95 and discontinued support for the card.
t i& ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en
Just look at all the open letters to ATI complaining about their lack of support.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=open+letter+a
I will never buy an ATI product because of this.
I did one hell of a double take on the phrase "suck off your parents".
The Radeon Linux Drivers were never supported. They released the FireGL Linux Drivers which work with Radeons (because they use the same chipset) but they never offered support for Radeon cards under Linux.
BTW the Xfree4.3 drivers do exist...
Checkout this link
Well, it installed and ran fine with demos etc, but
trying it in RTCW:ET blew up, and the visuals had some artifacts.
Gug.
------ Nope, Not me, you can't prove I said that!
I recently bought a Sapphire card, a Radeon 9200, from Newegg.com. According to the DRI status document, Radeons up the 9200 are supported. I wasn't able to get the card to work with XFree86 v4.2.0, but it works in 2D with 4.3.0. 3D, however, doesn't work with 4.3. I've tried to check out the latest DRI trunk via CVS, but checkouts (and updates) always hang in the same place, at xc/xc/util/patch. Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I try the binary driver at dri.sf.net? I've tried the ATI FireGL binary drivers, but they've just hung the system. I'm running 2.4.19 with the preemptible kernel patch. Should I get on the dri-users mailing list and ask there? Google searches haven't turned up much. Thanks for any help.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
And please, don't mod me funny, I'm serious.
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
This is probably another "me too"...
... Their drivers WORK..
Much to my misfortune I bought an ATI All In Wonder board a couple years ago. About 10 minutes after I got it home ATI "discontinued" it and pulled all the updated drivers off their website. I never could get the bloody thing to work right, and they refused to help. Fortunately the thing was under warantee still, and I got my money back...
I got a GeForce and life has been good.
Now nVidia has received some bad press recently try to bolster their performance numbers. I don't really give a crap... Their cards WORK
ATI treats thier customers like shit, and as the subject sais. They can bite my ass.
My point exactly. And if you are foolish enough to not use SuSE or Red Hat, you can expect a world of hurt. My situation is close to the worst possible one:
Nvidia Nforce2 chipset with an ATI Radeon 9700 AIW. On Gentoo!
Sure, getting Gentoo going is a little bit of work, but it is stable. But, forget about 3D on linux. Yes, Nvidia released its AGP drivers and there are some funcky ATI linux drivers, but getting them to play together is like getting Jews and Palistinians to sit down for tea.
But, installing the ATI drivers for Win2000 was a nightmare, culminating in a complete reinstall of the OS. Ironically, getting 2D working under linux was a breeze.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Funny...
When a hardware company gets 'on-top' of the market, USUALLY the default is to broaden their market spectrum through the power of more support - i.e. support more platforms, devices etc.
Sadly this is not the case with ATI.
In the past 3DFX, with their glide - they supported almost anything. Then Nvidia, they support the most with their binaries - with the most features. (No dri does not count as per platforms, because it is garbage sorry. You go look at the dri mailing list or use a radeon on dri and try to run the xscreensaver progs and then come back and argue. Funny how a screensaver can hardlock your comp, no not funny actually sad.)
I am thinking maybe ATI just has
1) no skillz
2) no ballz
Either could be the case really. I know from personal experience I will never deal with them again. I was a disgruntled nvidia user and went out and got a rv200 (ati 7500) to use the open source dri, swayed by their summer promo of $50 rebate. Needless to say I never got my rebate and dri sucks.
Too bad I lent my geforce to a friend and the suckhole he is, he broke it.
On the case of no skillz, even the newer Ati drivers are buggy, and now it disturbs me even more that Ati wants you to pay for an updated 'ati dvd' and 'ati media' player suite on anything lower than a 9000. Doesn't matter that I bought my 7500 less than a year ago or that they still have not discontinued it.
So now neither of the 'big two' offer cheap good performer cards. Ati still pushes the 7500 garbage (!stay away!), and Nvidia is now pushing their dillhole fx 5200.
Nvidia needs to lower their prices, and Ati needs to get their head out of their ass.
As for me, I'm just waiting for a new Kyro to see what they've got up their sleeves, now that they've synced their windows and linux driver rev's. Come on baby...
If it ain't available directly from ati.com (http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html) it ain't official.
I don't even know how the person above found that link and I suspect most other people will have the same problem.
As far as I'm concerned ATI doesn't offer official linux support for 900X series. I'd suggest those of you considering a graphics card for linux go with a company that not only officially supports linux, but has been doing so for a while now.
If ATI is unwilling to say officially on their download page that linux drivers are available and supported then they won't be getting my business.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Next, the Geforce 4 911, the perfect card for flight simulators...
Who cares? We can write our own open sores drivers.
I always figured that driver unavailibility is par for the course, when it comes to the Linux experience.
Of course I am only kidding about this being a good thing.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
Parent should get points for using the term "irony" in a sentence.
Funny.
I was curious, and tried their website, which is much better than it used to be, now it is like nvidias.
Lets see-----Graphic Drivers, Linux, 8500.
Funny, their are drivers there. Sure, they are a little old, but whatever, ATI always has old drivers on their site.
Then, lets see. Where I usually go---
Fire GL, Linux, FireGL 8800
The new drivers---> Both packages above are the fglrx drivers. Both unofficially are supported on the Radeon 8500 through the Radeon 9700.
Get a life, people. ATI driver support has not changed. They have always unofficially supported linux in this fashion--->if their drivers cost you $10,000 in hardware, thats your problem. I'll bet that NVIDIA's 'official' support, however, has a liability wavier associated with. The only difference is that NVIDIA supports their card, if their driver fries it, while ATI will not.
But, I've never seen any device's driver fry the hardware from its manufacturer.
Besides, which of these two manufactures releases the specs on their cards? Which of these two manufactures has active open source drivers in development? ATI has been MUCH better to the linux community than Nvidia.
Even if their hardware/drivers are slightly buggier.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
As far as I can tell, linux is fully supported and they even have a feedback area just for linux users...
May have been a temporary slip on the new site (which I find appealing btw)
There's more info here and here
All this proprietary driver stuff is nonsense. There is little more reason for a 3D graphics card to have a proprietary architecture and closed source drivers than there is for the entire PC. Graphics hardware has gotten powerful enough that we should be able to afford the slight loss in performance associated with having a standardized, general-purpose architecture in place of all these proprietary cards.
Its not a redneck accent, its a southern accent. That is the accent employed on TV and in Movies for a racist person. Rarely will you see a show with a strongly racist person that does not use that accent. Lynchings are strongly associated with racism.
Reality does not match the idea though.
TO all who recently bought ATI onm behalf of there being linux support (I did, a 9700 cuz there was a link to a driver ON THE ATI PAGES!):
/Dread
Send a polite email ASKING for 'commitment' regarding the linux platform in respect of your newly purchased ATI product. Point to them you bought it, because they had 'links to supported drivers before, but now you cannot find them anymore (on their site)'
Tell them you will otherwise be forced to not buy anymore wonderfull ATI products, and also unfortunaly have to send your recently purchased product back (only if you are willing to do just that)
Obviously your local LUG will have to be advised to 'not use ATI' anymore too.
Also, with only two players in the market, and them being evil, and more evil, dont expect that your buying boycott will actually bother them.
Wait a minute, were we supposed to try for positive moderations?
Maybe useful... if you check under "Multimedia Center" rather than "Graphic Driver" and then check "Linux" as the platform, drivers for the recent ATI offerings are listed, along with the familiar download page that I remember seeing a couple of months ago when I was looking for this stuff. This is visible here. It would appear that these point to the FireGL driver anyway, so all this does is offer some reassurance that recent cards are still listed with Linux drivers...
I don't actually have an ATI card at the moment, so YMV.
As far as I'm concerned this is no big loss. I bought a 7500 AIW a while back and had nothing but problems trying to get UT2003 running. I even bought the might-as-well-be-unsupported Xig drivers and STILL had nothing but problems. glxgears would hang X hard. Tried an 8500LE at Xig's request and still couldn't get X stable. Put in a Ti 4200 and I was up and running in under an hour from cracking the case to starting X with the latest nVidia drivers. I'm sticking to nVidia, thank you.
I bought one of the first dual-chip ATI cards. It was a Rage Fury Maxx. Not only will it never work in Linux, it won't work on anything past Windows Me! I bought it specifically for Windows 2000 at the time and the drivers page said "coming soon". I waited a couple months refreshing the page until there was finally a PR response saying they couldn't write a Windows 2000 driver that could detect both chips, and it was Windows 2000's fault! Come on folks, I know my Voodoo5 will probably never run in dual-chip mode in Linux, but at least they got it working with one chip!
Perhaps Matrox is the answer or even NVidia.
Matrox has nice support with their online forum
when people from Matrox actually answer your questions.
P.S. This isn't meant to be trollish or inflamatory. Only pointing out that we can't stoop to a lower level in our attempt to reach a higher level.
I believe its called Myanmar now.
I think that the problem is that ATI (and others) focus too much on the 8xxx and 9xxx and forget that they're still selling a bunch of 7xxx derived chips that are also being used for Linux.
ATI of course would say that we should get our drivers from Sony - Sony's linux support is of course worth shit (yes we know you spent $3k with us go away)
I don't recall the ATI drivers ever being supported.. it was always a "they'll be out in like 6 months after the product release.. maybe" I don't really think they care for supporting linux. And the fact that their drivers are not that good is going to hurt them in terms of competition with NVidia.. Even though Nvidia's drivers are closed they at least reagurlary update and support them and they work really nicely too.. Driver quality unfortunatly are more important that power.. Even if the ATI cards are faster if the drivers suck it's not going to be worth it as you won't GET that high performance..
yes, ATI does support Linux.
yes, it looks like the reason for that temporary
removal was simply due to the web update.
yes, the drivers are now availabel again.
You fucking idiot, I'm a consumer, providing feedback to a company who manufacturers video cards concerning their products is NOT a terrorist activity.
What is a lower level? What do you propose, instead of contacting the company and "spamming" them with our feedback and opinions and letting them know where our dollars will be going as a response we should what?
Sit on our rumps and take it up the rear, never bothering to tell ATI we as consumers and their potential customers don't approve of what they have done? Never tell them if they continue down this road they will lose our business completely?
I'm not saying DDOS their website or really spam them for godsake, I'm saying email them with your opinion on what they've done.
Jesus and I thought I was a karma whore!
how is making a suggestion to provide ATI feedback on their business practices flamebait?
Please update the front page... I know that slashdot is a timesink, and severely decreases productivity. Yes, I realize it also has a healing effect on the damage psyches of those addicted to reading it every so often. However, this story reaches a new low.
Some dude, who's failed to spend a couple of days figuring out what's really going on posts an inflammatory and stress inducing story on the front page of this green rag.
From posted comments (no I never read slashdot comments) there appear to be binary drivers and XF86 drivers available.
An update on the front page would probably save abou 358,654 hours of wasted time by slashdot readers.
http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_a
For the original radeon and close derivatives (radeon mobility M6, M7, mobility 7500, and IGP 320M/340M but not regular radeon 7500 or anything above), the way to get TV output is to boot the computer up with the TV plugged in, and run atitvout. This program clones the normal display onto the TV. All acceleration features that are normally supported on the display are also supported on the TV.
For radeon 7500 and above, a different technique is required: there you simply boot up the computer with the TV attached, and TV output is automatic. But, if you want to run X on the TV output you must use the VESA driver and not the radeon driver. Consequently the card's acceleration features are not available in X on the TV output. However, as a special case, video playback overlay acceleration is available on the TV out using the xvidix driver in mplayer.
Basically, the situation is not ideal, but it is a long way from being hopeless.
The binary drivers are back on ATI's website. They recently changed their website and I would guess that the "missing drivers" were more a fuckup on the web-admin end than a change in Linux policy.
A lot of posters are confusing ATI's "official" binary-only drivers with the XFree "radeon" drivers, which are completely independent.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've read through this thread and read "ATI is great and you're a moron" and "ATI sucks and YOU'RE a moron"
Let's review:
ATI's website has been revamped. Completely replacing a website this large in place is, one would expect, nontrivial. We can expect a few glitches here and there. It's not like some guy at GeoCities unveiling his new "Pamela's Yummy Tits" website. It's certainly NOT worthy of this level of discussion (term used VERY loosely) when the simple fact is, as you're about to see, it's all about
After reading all about the horrors facing innocent Linux-using high-end Radeon owners, I did the unthinkable: before posting ANYthing I visited the site for myself. I know, I know, the ancient Greek method of simply thinking about something and then expounding on it rather than actually sullying ones' self by investigating
First I went here.
Then I clicked the big link called "DRIVERS". That brought me to here.
In the left pane I clicked "Graphic Driver". The pane to the right of that then presented an array of choices. I chose "Linux" and then from the pane just to the right of that I chose "RADEON 9700 PRO".
And what did I find after clicking the little red and quite intuitive "GO" button?
And there you go. Emergency over. After reading all the pure CRAP in this thread I must say it was a bit of a letdown.
And for those a bit braver, beta drivers for X 4.3 can be found HERE If you want to know what the deal is with these drivers (which are much newer than the ones on the main ATI site) just head over to HERE and you'll find lots of comments made by people who have (*gasp!*) actually USED the drivers instead of just making uninformed and mostly WRONG sweeping statements about them on Slashdot.
I apologize. I don't normally post things this mean-spirited but watching this thread unfold just kind of disgusted me. So many people ready to spout whatever bullshit pops into their minds, so FEW people who take a look at what's actually going on
Mod me down all you want. In this case I really, really very honestly don't care.
I am cleaning off the Cola I atomised with my nose on my keyboard and monitor. This was fucking funny and caught me totally un aware. ROTFLMAO
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
MS is paying less than the cost of manufacture for the integrated chipset/graphic controller in the xbox. See this report and scroll down to the Microsoft Agreement heading. Microsoft also needed changes to the encryption keys hard coded into the chipset and left Nvidia with almost 10 million chips that they couldn't sell at all. They settled on February 6, 2003 with Nvidia agreeing to help further reduce the costs of making the current xbox. Just a couple of months later, MS announces they are partnering with Ati for the xbox2 design. Don't be fooled into thinking that nvidia made money on the xbox chips.
I now think that when microsoft describes a company as "partner", they really mean "loss leader subsidiary" or "biatch".
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
This doesn't mean that ATI has stopped Linux support have they?
except how the HELL did you get the sound to work?
I can't, for the life of me, get the sound in the tuner or composite working. What am I doing wrong?
It's all hunky-dory in linux, OTH. WTF??!?!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
... ATI was a good manufacturer that supported its customers. Once way back in the 80s I asked them about bios updates for what was then their last-but-one video card (EGAwonder?) stuck in my IBM-PC/XT (it's still in there and works!). They sent me a new BIOS chip gratis, only asked for the old one to be mailed back to them, which I did. That impressed me with their level of support. And I haven't had trouble with my current ATI cards (ok I'm still well behind the latest, still using Mach64 in a couple of PII machines). But the unhelp for Linux makes it look as if the ATI ethos has changed at core, or has it? Maybe someone could work out with them a way to overcome whatever the obstacles are?
These people are drinking the Redmond kool-aid.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
Nothing wrong with a company not wanting to give out their source code
Unless my computer's processor is not an x86 or a PowerPC.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Last I heard, recent updates in the FireGL drivers now allow WineX users (linux gamers) play with decent framerates comparable to nvidia drivers! Just and FYI that development has been going on for linux, and good things are happening. cheers, -p0z3r
k thx, bye
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Won't the Xbox 2 need to have an Nvidia chipset as well in order to be binary-compatible to Xbox 1 games?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why not ask ATI instead of your slashdot buddies? I bet an employee there could give you an actual answer, rather than a bunch of speculated ones. But, if there's some pressing reason you can't do that, then maybe check out Rage3d, since just about anything related to ATI can be answered there.
Ati must be another company in MS back pocket. The money they make on Linux customers, MS can cover easily. Keeping thier windoz monopoly going. If your a windoz user and you buy a Ati card and later want to switch to Linux and find out that the Linux drives suck for your New Ati card and it makes it look like that Linux sucks. When in fact it's just Ati copping out to MS. I have an Ati Rage Fury and 3 different Ati Radeons. The driver for Linux stink. That why I refuse to buy any more Ati's untill I see driver support for existing card's not just the highly expensive ones. The idea the their older card are a trade secert is BS because who in Hell would want to clone a older card when the newest one your selling are more advanced. I say boycott Ati untill they come around and give full support for they Linux communty just like Nvidia has.
Linux doesn't support them?
Seriously... does Linux provide the materials, sdks, documentation, support staff, conferences, etc... that MS does? Hell, do Linux gamers count at the sales counters of Best Buy and other big stores? The answer is a resounding no, and it really bothers me that ATI would even bother doing anything for Linux... same with Nvidia. I would rather them stop the fratricide and spend the money on RnD and real driver dev for the 95% of people who use their products.
see parent for details.
Read, L
I'm happy with the NV driver (so far.) I built a 6 headed Xinerama box at work with a single G550 Matrox (dual head) card and FOUR Riva Nvidia TNT2 cards. The next day we put another TNT2 and a GeForce 4 MX in there.
That makes six Nvidia cards in the same box. (Running 8 monitors, and all PCI slots filled.)
It's been flawless using the MGA driver and the NV driver.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In other news, the SCO filed an injunction against ATI to have the Linux drivers for most of it's newest cards removed from it's website, claiming that 11% of the source code for the drivers actually belonged to the SCO.
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I finally got my Radeon 9600 Pro working with XFree86 after a week of effort. The 2.9.12 version of the binary drivers, which works with XFree86 4.3.0, is in the Gentoo portage tree now; just emerge ati-drivers to get the new drivers. You'll also need to go into your kernel sources and make sure you compile /dev/agpgart support as a module, and turn off DRM support in the kernel, since the drivers and the XFree86 code want to "do it themselves."
Once I made those changes to my kernel, everything was working well, although the card doesn't want to run higher than 1024x768 with my NEC XV17 monitor.
So, at least for Gentoo users, there seems to be a workable solution for the latest ATI cards. I'm very pleased with the performance. I've noticed some video corruption when playing certain DVD or DiVX videos in mplayer, but nothing worth getting excited about.
I've watched slashdot come and go, shift this way and that with the wind, and of course I've shifted with it at times, but I've never understood Slashdot's love affair with ATI when nVidia has always seemed far more Linux-friendly. I'm far from the most Linux-savvy person in the world, but since I bought an ATI card really cheap from a friend (because it didn't do what he wanted in Linux), I've been constantly frustrated at my inability to set up seemingly simple things such as TV-out which my linux newbie friends do with their nvidia cards without breaking a sweat. I know there's projects out there, but I'll be damned if I can get any of them to work.
Maybe now the winds will shift again.
I dont know about you billy, but thats probably the best troll i've seen out here all day.
Well, how many linux games have come out... recently... as a product that makes money? ATI has to spend alot of money on things like chip design, fabrication plants, board layout, espionage to see what NVidia is up to, counter-intelligence to make NVidia think they're further ahead than they are, bribes to magazines to publish rave reviews, and of course bribes to benchmark authors to get details about what will make their cards work faster in those benchmarks.
That's alot of cash! They expect ROI, and nobody out there will buy the bleeding-edge 3D graphics card with vibrating codpiece cooling system if the best they can do is run TuxRacer, or 2 year old ports of Unreal Tournament.
If you want hardware which supports linux, you have a few options.
(1) Reverse Engineer and write them yourself... excpet that's now illegal.
(2) Haul Microsoft up on monopoly charges so competition can flourish... oh wait, that's been done.
(3) Ummmm, convince the RIAA that there's a new Windows-ONLY file sharing protocol that uses the latest video drivers to convert mp3's into explosion graphics?
(4) Setup a windoze machine to play games on, and keep it quarenteened off in its own DMZ
(5) Play games using WineX and software drivers and enjoy how solid and uncrashable solitare is!
I chose option 4 and just pretend it's an old Atari 2600 -- pretend that the reboot between games is the tube-type TV warming up!
...from grief over the demise of it's partner FreeBSD?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"Not Supported" has been replaced with links to linux drivers. So I would say that complaining on Slashdot is much more affective than contacting customer service :)
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
I got a TV Wonder VE, and it worked great in Windows 98SE running with a Radeon 7500, but in Windows XP you can only put the system in standby mode once--the second time the system locks up. Removing the TV Wonder VE or disabling its drivers fixes this. I've sent this to ATI support before but they ignore me. Stores still sell this card. I've also met other people with the same trouble.
In the olden days of 8 and 16MB graphics cards, there was this company called 3dfx was top of the game for a while. They also had fantastic Linux support, releasing Linux drivers right along with Windows drivers. Then a big, bad company called nVidia bought them out and discontinued all of the 3dfx lines of products that /. knew and loved. For a while after that, nVidia was the only guy in the game that was worth a damn. Everyone feared a Microsoft-esque monopoly situation coming to the video card industry. Then, out of the clouds swooped ATI to save the day with some good old-fashioned free market competition. So, in the end, even though nVidia now has better Linux support, it's cooler to like ATI because they saved us from an abusive monoply and stuff.
/. loves ATI.
And that's the story of why
If you're good children and eat all your hot grits, tomorrow I'll tell you the story of PHP, the Little Scripting Language That Could.
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No Big Mystery. Microsoft has selected ATI graphics for their next version of X Box. The fact that ATI has never supported TV out for Linux will make using Linux on Microsoft's next version of X Box a whole lot more difficult. I hope this plan will backfire by giving the Linux Cracker/Hacker community the incentive to write some ATI TV out drivers. It's ironic that Microsoft and ATI are playing this anticompetetive game on a Game Box.
remember the experimental drivers for 4.3 mentioned in the parent post? here is an excerpt from the readme for those drivers.
1.1 Requirements
----------------
1. Any Linux/x86 system that does provide a glibc 2.2 (=libc 6.2) compatible
environment is supported. If your system does have a glibc 2.3 then this
condition is nicley fullfiled due to the lib's backward compatibility.
research before posting like he said, OK?
Now that's just where you're wrong historically, here's why /. hates Nvidia, or seems to. First of all Nvidia develops drivers for their cards and doesn't release the source code for it, keeping most die hard Linux junkies away from that which they want the most, information! Second, they do a fine job of having fast drivers, and easy to use products, which makes most /.'ers and Linux users content with their closed drivers.
ATI, on the otherhand, "works with open source developers", by providing them information about their products, allowing them to write their own drivers. This keeps ATI from expending much money to support Linux, and it severely limits your choices as a Linux only gaming consumer.. to Nvidia...
I'd wager that in a /. poll most people would say that Nvidia is the card in their Linux computer...
Also, ATI was the giant long before Nvidia rose to power. Go look at your old OEM video cards, the name on them isn't Nvidia.
Since it's redundant, I won't make a seperate post for this, but I had my own bad driver experience with ATI's TV Wonder VE. I bought this card and put it in an XP computer since I was worried about the Linux drivers and wanted to be sure it worked before setting it up under Linux. The driver install went smoothly, but afterwards the computer would only boot to a BSOD. I threw it in a Mandrake box and it worked like a charm. Amazing to me that someone can reverse engineer a product and write a driver for it better than the company that made it, and had full access to the information....
I'm voting with my wallet from now on. ALL games, hardware, and computer accessories that I purchase from now on MUST have Linux support.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Since there has been alot of discussion recently about ATi, nVidia, and their respective cards, I would like to tell the slashdot community about this little gem.
ATi has been ripping people off with their professional line of cards. The FireGL X1 and the Radeon 9700 are identical in hardware - the only difference is whether the professional drivers will install. A bunch of russian hackers figured all this out. Please read the following article:
nvworld.ru
The article is in English.
Makes one seriously consider ATi's marketing policies.
I'm suprised they supported Linux in the first place! Why would any company bother to support a tiny tiny fraction of their market populated by arrogant geeks who whine all the time and never spend money?
Sounds to me like ATI has made a sound business decision.
the internal 3-in-4 pin connector from the "CD-OUT" of the ATI card to the aux input of my sound card.
I reiterate: it works with linux. Also, it worked (barely) before with the ATI drivers. I suspect it has something to do with detecting the MSP340x chip and installing drivers for it.
Did you do anything special during the install? Did you have the ATI drivers installed previously?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-li nux.html and they DO work on newer ATI cards.
how is making a suggestion to provide ATI feedback on their business practices flamebait?
Suggesting feedback is one thing. Calling for spam, word-for-word, is an entirely different matter.
At first, I was wondering why a 3d graphics chip company would not support for the platform that is growing fastest among 3d animation studios (note recent news stories about Pixar, Dreamworks, etc., moving from Sun or Windows to Linux/x86). Then I went to the site, and found that it was true, but only to a certain extent. They haven't dropped support - they never officially supported it. They do, however, support developers wanting to write the Linux drivers.
Yeah except the FireGL X1 offers dual DVI not to mention more support options, you don't only pay for hardware sometimes
I read this just after reading that ATI might replace nVidia in the next X-Box... Could this be part of the deal?
Mind the frickin' laser...
I checked when the story was first up. It said not supported. But after a lot of angry e-mails (I'm sure) they put up some non supported ones and let the good times roll. BTW, how's it feel to be wrong?
I just downloaded the Raedon drivers for linux, for X11 4.2 ... dunno buddy.
would someone check pefore posting this trash on slashdot's main page?
If you don't like ATI's (Or anyone's!!) drivers, just go back to your sliderule and paper and pen games, then!
I'm not a developer, but as an avid gamer and student programmer, there is nothing wrong with the drivers that going to an older version or upgrading them won't cure.
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
Must have been a temporary glitch on ATI's web site. I can find all the Linux drivers easily.
Yes, they do say they're unsupported, but that's always been ATI's stance - they make the drivers available but don't provide the same support you'd get with supported WinXP drivers, for example.
Actually, I remember when there weren't even any drivers to download at all a while back. You had to rely on whatever the DRI people could put together. So having a released driver from ATI that's unsupported is better than none at all!
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
I think they can no longer release the specs because open source drivers do no include DRM limitations thus doing so would violate their licenses to use the DVD decoding and codec technologies in their software and hardware. I also suspect they have begun to hide DRM in their actual chips which would be obvious for those trying to use the real spec.
it might be that even the PCB is different
and maybe the used memorys as well.
so people speaking of "the same board"
dont have looked that close to the object.
-Alex.
End user support that is!
Nvidia has employed former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to stir the pot.
Looks like it worked. FUD
but they don't work either. Oh yes, one liner. =)
HA! (to all those nonbelievers that commented on my responce about ATI's drivers - WEAK!)
I said earlier about ATI's drivers, they have no support about em! Nvidia is the way to go for Linux driver support
l33t...
SciTech provides commercial video drivers for linux. Has any one tried them? How do they compare to the open source or vendor supplied drivers?
At least Nvidia's Geforce graphics cards work... I'm happy I bought a Geforce 4 rather than an ATI then....
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
>term used VERY loosely
I've been reading Slashdot for quite some time, and I'm pretty sure that's spelled "losely".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So, I was really excited that ATI finally had linux drivers... and I've been saving up money...
and blam... I ain't getting an ATI card now.
Nvidia it shall be... again...
even though it's a bit lower performance... It will work!
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
Please turn on comments in your journal (unless you really don't want to hear what the rabble have to say! In that case, keep on doing what yr doing!)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Not that you need a response, but I was on topic both for the thread and the entire conversation. The parent (or one of its parents) mentioned that the Fire GL card was supported for linux and I was stating why this wasn't really a good choice for most peoples use. Also, if you use the DRI/XFree86 drivers, are all the windows rendered in 3d? If they are no problem (until you hit the console) if not then my point stands.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Out of curiosity, what do you do at work?
Thank you. Drive through.
These six and eight head boxes are used for telecom network monitoring. Surveillance techs watch 10 or 12 windows spread amongst the screen real estate. The windows show status of remote earth stations, undersea fiber optics, alarming equipment, etc.
Wanna bet?
^C
Sorry, I couldn't resist. However, I have absolutely no interest in ever running GNU/HURD or whatever it's called.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
This is a bit late, but what the heck...
It sounds like you are asking if Nvidia's Linux binary drivers will work on FreeBSD. I kind of doubt that binary Linux drivers would work, but Nvidia does provide binary FreeBSD drivers on their web site as well. I don't know much about *BSD, so I don't know whether such FreeBSD drivers would also work for OpenBSD and NetBSD.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.