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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
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 $600 or so and grab one of them. :)
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Check here for more information. I am not sure though.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
"Discontinued products" simply means they aren't manufacturing them any more, i.e. anything that isn't in the current "Products" section.
...before someone else does.
CONSPIRACY! I say conspiracy! Microsoft is paying ATI to cut off support for the linux drivers. They secretly made a large cash payment in a bag with a big '$' 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
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
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.
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
Sunny Dubey
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!
but for many people, "drivers that some guy built" just don't cut it
I guess you don't use Linux at all then eh?
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.
Maybe a gal wrote them? Would that be ok?
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.
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.
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?
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?
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Except for the TV-out stuff, it has something to do with macrovision and is really lame
):
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.
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.
"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."
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
"ATI actively assists qualified 3rd party Linux developers writing software for the majority of ATI products by providing them with development kits and information. We have also made every attempt to provide hardware 2D acceleration for all shipping products and will continue to assist XFree86 developers with their work."
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
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
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'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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?