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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
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
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.
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
http://www.slo-tech.com/clanki/03032/03032en.shtml
Sunny Dubey
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.
Not anything beyond the Radeon 8500 is supported. ATi won't provide the technical specifications citing industry trade secrets and a bunch of other crap. Oh, they also don't think that Open Source programmers are capable of writing a real driver for programmable hardware like the 9600 / 9700 / 9800.
They also refuse to provide the information to XiG, so you don't even have the choice of buying a commercial driver.
The Xfree86 status page for ati shows accelerated support for the newer ati chips.
Maybe ati sent them the specs?
Read, L
What the hell are you smoking? The XFree team reversed engineered it themselves, all ATi did was steal their work and fling poo at them
From the Interview last week...
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!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
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.