Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ATI's Radeon Linux drivers no longer supported?

Posted by Hemos on from the back-tracking dept.

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?"

4 of 666 comments (clear)

  1. Re:possible answers? by pVoid · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Even further: ATI has never officially supported many NT/XP/2k drivers either...

    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).

  2. Re:possible answers? by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:possible answers? by iamnotaclown · · Score: 5, Interesting
    When the 3D effects company I work for finally made the switch from SGI Octane2s to PCs, we decided to go with the ATI FireGL 8800. ATI support assured us that Linux support was excellent. At the time, their Linux support actually WAS actually better than nVidia's.

    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.

  4. Re:DRI vs ATI ? by lavalyn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.