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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?"
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.