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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?"
Um that probably doesn't include 3d acceleration using openGL.
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
I just bought a laptop with their graphics chipset BECAUSE of linux support. ATI better do something, quick.
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!
Almost, there is no direct payment of money involved; this is just one big plot around the new GPU for the XBox II. Yeah, that's why they are doing this! "Look Bill, no linux shit on our site."
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
See TruckNumber at Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc..
Interesting...
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 had bought a TV tuner card about 2 years ago, (it was brand new at that point)... the drivers went from beta to discontinued. The beta drivers were a hunk of shit. It took me hours to install them: there was no installer provided, just the drivers with .inf files, there were 6 distinct drivers for one physical card, and unless you found the exact sequence to install them in, they would BSOD the computer *during installation*. (I had to go through quite a few permutations). UN-F*CKING-ACCEPTABLE!
That is why I swore to myself that I would never buy an ATI card again (and I won't).
I went through the same thing, probably with the same card. ATI is permanently on my WNC (Will Not Consider) list both at home and at work.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
I know what you mean. I avoid ATI's products specifically because they have a reputation of having really crappy drivers for *any* os.
I bought [and use] an ATI TV Wonder VE. The way this thing gets installed is kludgy at best, and under XP I get some crazy lines going all over the place randomly. They have some beta drivers for it, but using them made this card worthless as it never worked. pretty much had to reinstall after that.
and under linux theres no way to actually capture audio when you do a video capture under linux.. its a known issue. I got this for cheap which is the only reason why I got this.. but really. If I paid full price I would have taken this back and wrote ATI a letter.
Ah, thanks! Well, if you call that kind of information hiding suppport your demands are really on the geek end. Nice to have a driver, but why not give a slight hint somewhere on the ATI page that it does exist?
So, for the not so curious public, here is the head of the README file for the Fire GL X1, Fire GL Z1, Fire GL E1, Fire GL 8800, Fire GL 8700 LINUX X4.1.0 2.9.13 driver:
Doom 3 has been reported many times that it will be available for Linux and I'm sure that it will stretch the envelope of "though there are precious few games on linux to stretch a card of this calibre" statement.
--Dweebs0r
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?
> why don't slashdot editors do some sort of background checking? What are they being paid for?
.. saying the quality is sub-par is a gross understatement. but, then, i keep coming back here - mainly to see what daily travesty spills forth from this outfit.
.. and i find myself almost hoping that this whole SCO mess buries linux, just so we can get this schlock off the netwaves. nothing contributes so much to the dumbing down of whatever little net society we have than these bozos (and others like them) providing a very high profile forum for the rest of the id10ts to spew their views.
.. nowadays nobody has to do anything to earn their stripes. its ill.
this is the eternal question. there are one man news sites out there that somehow manage to post more and varied content than slashdot ever does, and they don't dupe links or provide the same level of ignorant commentary.
i think, and think, and keep on thinking, but i still can't figure out why slashdot is so popular other than momentum
i use linux. i've been an admin and programmer for a long, long time
i long for the old days - where you had to really Know something to get out there
OSDN - suck my wangnad
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except for the TV-out stuff, it has something to do with macrovision and is really lame
):
After a year of frustration involving daily machine hangs, GL glitches and many cursing animators, we switched to nVidia Quadro cards (not sure which one). Since then, we've had almost zero crashes. There are still GL glitches in both Maya and Houdini, but the drivers are of MUCH higher quality.
Even when ATI "officially" supported Linux, that support was in name only. So they're finally dropping even that? Big fuckin' deal.
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).
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
FireGL drivers support the OpenGL extension that allow UT2K3 to run. Probably why ATI released the drivers too - every last Linux gamer needed an nVidia card to play it before.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
The DRI supports ATI cards with 2D and some 3D. On my laptop I have an Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500] that works well with DRI. I was playing the Linux version of RTCW last night. However there are a few "proprietary" features that the DRI does not support because ATI does not release the specs. The NVidia cards on the other hand, have a common driver core. So any feature under the ms-windows driver will be present under the Linux driver. While I prefer open source, I don't mind if a manufactuer releases closed source drivers such as NVidia if they are of good quality. The NVidia drivers are just great IMO and I will only purchase from them in the future.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
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).
Not with NVidia. Take a look here:
Nvidia Linux
They support Linux IA32, Linux AMD64, Linux IA64 and FreeBSD. They support their chipsets, etc. I also think a good portion of Intel's stuff is "offcically" supported under Linux like their graphics chips and audio. And even if they do not release a driver, they provide the specs which is more usefull to Linux then a proprietry driver in most cases.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
What AGP video card with TV in and out DOES have decent Linux support?
the humour here is that every post above this level has a story about crappy ATI drivers/products...my story is no different, except that I had problems with an Xpert@play card about 5 or 6 years ago -- and they did the same thing to me then. I have yet to buy another card from ATI, and probably never will. It appears, from your posts, that some things never change.
Good Luck to those who need it.
To the rest, I say - go buy Nvidia, and save yourself the hassle.
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
So, how did NVidia hardware get into the current one?
Microsoft paid them BIG BUCKS to develop the next generation processor that would be used in the XBOX and the technology from the Microsoft money was also then used to further their Geforce line development.
Then NVidia decided that wasn't enough because they weren't making enough per chip for the XBOXes, even though their entire GeForce project was expanded and funded by Microsoft.
So NVidia played the we will take your money use it to make our products better and then run with it.
Which gives us two things, better Geforce Chips based on Microsoft funding, and Microsoft denying NVidia any more funding money for the XBOX II chips.
Even though NVidia and the press played it like NVidia chose not to be in the XBOX II project, it was actually Microsoft that was not offering them the chance once NVidia wanted more money for each chip sold in the XBOX.
(Inside MS information from late last year - can't quote sources, just have to trust me on this.)
In reality, like Microsoft or not, NVidia kind of screwed them. They used the infusion of cash to expand their GPU development to make the Geforce3, Geforce4, and GeforceFX what they are.
So if you are a NVidia card owner, you are using chips that Microsoft had a hand in funding.
Ironic, uh?
PS. Sad if it is true that ATI is dropping official Linux support, but I seriously doubt MS had anything to do with it. Especially considering there is not a deal with MS and ATI yet for the XBOX II, official or unofficial. (Again inside MS information)
The only ATI/MS alliance is the full support of DirectX 9 and DirectX in whole in hardware that ATI has been more committed to than NVidia, even pushing the MS envelope of what needs to be in the DirectX Video standard.
I have always found hardware that is supported fine in Linux for each category. The problem being, that by the time Linux supports it -- the product is no longer available at the stores, because it has been replaced with a new model. This is a vicious cycle. The memory reader is a perfect example. When I bought a USB CF reader I did much research and found that the SDDR-61? worked perfectlly on Linux -- and about 40 others did not work at all. I was lucky to find one in the close out bin at my local best buy. I used it for 2 years and was perfectlly happy. Then one day I bent the pins on it and decided I needed a new one. Again I did my research on what current CF readers were supported under Linux. Guess what, the same as the first time I had checked 2 years previous. You can walk into any store and find at least 20-30 different card readers....but guess what, try finding one that was manufactured 3 years ago....Damn. Same goes with webcams, digital cameras, video cards (to some degree), etc. This is frustrating. At one time (about 3 years ago) I had carfeully purchased all my external paripreals to ensure that everyone worked on Linux. And now that some of these things are wearing out, I am finding it very difficult to replace them without going "dumpster diving" on ebay..... You would think with the increasing popularity of Linux that hardware support would be getting better -- not worse.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Personally it looks like a going out of business sale. Looking at the list of discontinue cards it makes me wonder.
:/
I've had issues with several ati cards and Linux. Been working for weeks with various groups to hammer the problems out. Basically they work ok on a monitor however I'm now trying to build a pvr using freevo or mythtv and the composite out just isn't working. I'm about to trade up for an Nvidia card. Ati simply isn't interested in linux and this is another nail in the coffin
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
did you notice that FAQ is almost a year old and was printed before the 9000 cards were released?
Didnt MS convince Creative Labs to discontinue support of OS2 Warp drivers. If I remember right, didnt Microsoft threaton to somehow hinder Creative if they continued to support the competition.
This is the same fucking trick here I suspect, They want to cause us to think badly of a hardware company that was supporting open source OS users. Now if they manage to get us to stick with OSs that hardware manufacurers will support (because if they do work for microsloth they get to continue to remain in business).
Before the loss of Creatives driver support I was headed to OS2 in a big way because I was hearing how well it handled windows and dos software. I had to stop dead in my tracks once I discovered the lack of soundcard drivers (I am a video editing and Game playing fool) because sound support was pretty high on my list of of "Good Things" to have in an OS.
Im not so sure this will work with Linux or other open source OS's but I think that did play a large role in killing off OS2.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Although RedHat9 came with the ATI driver for my card, and there seems to be lots of places to download the drivers, ATI, Xfree86, and everybody I could find basically shrug their shoulders when it comes to TV-out support for my Radeon.
I thought GATOS could be what I'm looking for, since it seems to support the VIVO card that I have.
Sigh. Same as everyone else. Under the option that allows TV-out support:
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Are you nuts? ATI has given DRI docs up to the r200 core. IIRC ATI chose to use DRI as the framework for their binary only drivers, which is about the only thing DRI and ATI have in common.
Sunny Dubey
"If anyone thinks Linux will ever capture more than Apple's current market share you're kidding yourself."
If I'm remembering correctly, Linux already has more market share than Apple does.
Besides, it's a chicken-in-the-egg problem. If vendors don't support a product that competes with the dominant product, then the competitive product has a harder time growing. By the same token, the vendors use the excuse that it's not widely used as a reason for why they don't support it, yet if they did support it, they'd have 1) an exclusive relationship with those who use the product, and 2) they'd help the product be more widely supported in general, since people would be more inclined to jump on the bandwagon.
Nvidia has a binary-only driver that works, Matrox does too, to a lesser extent (I'm still pestering them about getting a good 3d accelerated X server for the Parhelia). These companies see significantly more linux purchases for brand new hardware than others do, because the cards can be made to work. I don't know how much of their business it is, but they'll have repeat customers, which alone is very important.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Hardware will be supported in Linux by OSS programmers until there are enough people using Linux that hardware companies would be insane to ignore the percentage of the market they are ignoring by not supporting it.
I think you have too much technology experience and not enough real-world economic and business experience. Companies go along with Microsoft because it makes business sense to do so. When 10, 20, or 30% of the market is using Linux it no longer makes sense to blindly accept everything Microsoft dictates.
Don't worry, the sky is not falling.
One could also just view the site again, this time actually reading it. The drivers for linux are there, up to the 9700 Pro. Perhaps this person caught the site in the middle of an update? That is all it takes for the horde to start putting together Microsoft, Xbox, and SCO conspiracies. Try this link, remember slashdot will insert the stupid %20 space in there:
e on -linux.html?type=graphic&driveros=linux&prod=produ ctsLINUXdriver&submit.x=12&submit.y=8
http://mirror.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/rad
They also will not provide unified linux drivers, as it just is not worth it.
and every single one of us needs to write them a letter explaining why we will for the forseeable future only buy Nvidia and only reccomend nvidia to friends and relatives.
Nvidia supplies us binary drivers, but at LEAST they supply us drivers! I will buy only nvidia and reccomend to everyone to only buy nvidia cards. I have influenced at least 10 video card purchases in the past 2 months just by my reccomendations to co-workers.
If ATI would like to increase their sales, they had damn well get us IT people on their side... we influence far more people than they realize... and that can make or break a company.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
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!
That is the main reason why I can't sleep at night. You see I have a GeForce, and I sometimes like to play games under Linux. But the GeForce only has proprietary drivers for 3D acceleration. Yeah I have to admit - I sometimes use them. I don't really know when my problem started. All I know is that I'm pretty fucked up now, and I know it has something to do with nVidia's proprietary drivers. I hear that someone is trying to write a DRI driver for nVidia cards, though. Man that would be sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Imagine it. 5 times slower, and hardly any features of the proprietary drivers, and crashing all the time and stuff... I hope it's not just a rumour.
Grow up dude. If you're in a position like me, where you HAVE a fucking Radeon 64MB DDR and can't use it because the DRI drivers don't support S3 Texture compression, or lock immediately when running Tribes 2, or are slow as shit running Neverwinter Nights, or TV-out isn't supported because they don't give a shit, or capture doesn't work because the authors have a problem with gcc-3.x then you say "fuck it!" and borrow your best friend's Geforce, and install the evil proprietary drivers and STFU.
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.