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ATI Releases Drivers for XFree 4.3.0
Kyouryuu writes "ATI has finally released official drivers for XFree 4.3.0 and updated their Linux drivers to 3.7.0 for supported XFree versions, several months after the originally proposed release date of April last year. Although Schneider Digital has previously made available unofficial drivers, Linux users who have ATI Radeon cards can now benefit from an official release. Unfortunately, ATI still insists on using RPM exclusively and keeping the drivers closed source."
ATI has been offering drivers for XFree86 4.3 since some time late last year.
What's new is that there are new Linux drivers. No mention of whether they support GLX 1.3.
No, rage chipsets, radeons use the rage chipsets, 9800 = Rage 350, and so on down
Setec Astronomy
from the readme:
Some notes for debian users:
The debian Linux distribution in most cases does not come with the
ability to handle rpm packages with the rpm tool. But there is a
tool called "alien" which allows you to convert rpm files into the
debian supported *.deb package format. Please consult your debian
documentation on how to operate this tool.
A typcial debian installation commandline will look like this:
dpkg -i <ati_package_name>.deb
In order to override complaints (which might be caused by an already
installed package "xlibmesa3" that also provides the file libGL.so.1.2)
please use this installation command line:
dpkg -i --force-overwrite <ati_package_name>.deb
Hopefully this helps!
I downloaded fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-3.7.0.i386.rpm over 2 weeks ago. Why do you post old news?
There is always rpm2tgz
Setec Astronomy
1. ATI has offered drivers since last year.
2. the RPM has nothing to do with being closed source. It has a binary "IP" library that gets linked in when you compile it... if you want to install on a non-rpm system use alien or some other method of unrpming it, then compile and install. Yes, it's still closed source, but rpm the reason for this.
What I'm upset about is that they have all the hooks for 64bit amd support in the wrapper code, but the binary IP driver is not released for x86_64.
> So what if the drivers are closed source?
No porting to ppc. No fixing minor bugs if they come up. No customizing the drivers to a particular application. No tinkering. No learning.
> ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors.
They can but they won't. Their competitors have competent engineers that can reverse engineer the stuff if needed. It's all in software anyway.
> Whats the difference anyway?
see above.
> It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written?
I think you are naive. There are plenty of smart people that do alot of linux work. Surely they know linux better than ATI, and thus they may be able to improve the drivers since it's not just the hardware that these drivers are specific too. Also they may be able to port the drivers to PPC or BSD.
> And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...
What's your point? It would be better if they did.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
3.7.1 has been pulled because it doesn't work. Unresolved symbols in fglrx_drv.o prevent X from loading, so it's back to 3.7.0 but with a much more recent release date, giving the impression that it was just released, if you weren't paying attention :-)
ati just released an XF86 driver, not a kernel driver. only part of nvidia's kernel driver is compiled, and the xf86 driver most definantly isnt compiled.
Portage downloads the rpm, pulls the content out and puts the pieces where they need to go.
Douglas P. Price
I checked out the site and cannot find anything regarding AMD64 support. Is it there?
What's worse is that RPM is NOT the only binary package availabe for linux. Hence Debian, Gentoo, and Slack users are missing on it. At least NVIDIA's binaries are written in sh, something any linux distro has...
Why do I say this ?
.... (check out #ati on Freenode for more )
Because this story is pretty much misinformed. Support for XFree86 4.3.0 is nothing new at all. It has been for quite sometime.
Additionally the previous article about ATI's support for linux/XFree86 has also been totally wrong as well.
And apparently there is a port of the driver to FreeBSD going under way
Sunny Dubey
Why do people keep spouting this BS? It took nVidia a full two years to incorporate 3Dfx technology into their own products when they bought all the 3Dfx IP. By this time, the entire industry had moved on.
Maybe you should actually research these things before you spout out crap, you pretentious fucking idiot.
Dinivin
One suggested way to compile and install the ATI drivers is to use a package called rpm2targz.
/
./make.sh ..
./make_install.sh
Just run it on the rpm
untar the tar.gz to
cd lib/modules/fglrx
cd build_mod
cd
Modify your XF86Config-4 or run fglrxconfig
That should be it. If you have AGP 8x you really should use Kernel 2.6.X. You can get it to work with 2.4.X but it's a pain. Search google for 2.4.X.
Daniel
ATI driver is closed source. It means that after installing you will have one piece of system (kernel module!) without source available. It makes your system not 100% free. It is almost same situation like with nVidia. Almost, because ATI driver it's little different - without all win32 shit inside.
I am pro-Radeon, because ATI released almost-complete (without HyperZ!) specification for older Radeons (r100 and r200), but I am not going to buy their new cards (with r300). If you have old one - I recommend using open source DRI drivers.
That's ood, I'm happily using the drivers on two Debian systems.
OF course, I would be happier if they drivers were open source, but not because they're simply packaged as RPMs.
Dinivin
I've been using ATI drivers (with full 3D hardware support) in Gentoo for over half a year. They existed before that. They run fine, OpenGL is supported, you can play Neverwinter Nights, etc.
How about we stop spreading FUD on very old news? I use both Nvidia and ATI cards in my linux machines. Both are closed source, which sucks, but both work just fine (on 2.4 and 2.6 kernels btw). And they were "just released" as the story implies, even the 3.7 drivers have been out for some time.
- Quitcherbitchin. Gentoo can use RPMs just fine
... install RPM. Or is that too hard for an 3L337 63|\|700 |-|4x0r?
- They link against glibc 2.2, so it works great with either 2.2 or 2.3 installations. I'm running it on a 2.3.2 system right now. This could become an issue
... but it is not at this time.
- Then you should, at this time, get a damn NVIDIA card. This does suck a bit, and is a perfect example of where having competition is a good thing. OTOH, you could also use a 9100 or earlier Radeon and use the open-source drivers, or do withought 3D acceleration. You have options.
Sheesh. No one is holding a gun to your head saying "Buy an ATI video card or die!". If you don't like 'em, don't buy 'em.Would it be better if both ATI and NVIDIA released their X servers as open-source? Hell yeah! OTOH, it is a very good thing that they are supporting Linux with current cards. The rest, we can work on with time.
This is news? I downloaded those exact drivers from the ATI site 2 months ago (exact same driver version for XFree 4.3). No telling how long they were there before I got them. In fairness to ATI at least get the release date information correct before implying that they have been taking forever to respond. The poster should say, I just discovered that these drivers were released, not say they were released today. They weren't. Not news, no definitely not.
You use gentoo? Try this:
emerge ati-drivers
fglrxconfig
You now have ATi drivers installed on your gentoo box and you're setting up the configuration file for them! Congratulations!
hey!
This is the way that nVidia writes their drivers. The part of the driver that they distribute in source form is the *glue* between Linux hardware API and the driver.
The 2D drivers for X and Windows glue is not nearly as difficult to write as the actual drivers which are device (video card) dependant.
v3.7.1 driver was PULLED a few days ago due to many complaints. See this ATI Linux driver forum for the complaints. I had issues with both v3.7.0 (Xscreensaver's OpenGL didn't work) and v3.7.1 (X server didn't start at all) drivers on my old Red Hat Linux 7.2 box.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
They have had support for 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 for the last six to eight months at least.
If you read the README these are all "officially unsuopported"
Unfortunately, ATI still insists on using RPM exclusively...
Again, if anybody cared to read their instructions, there are specific details on how to get these RPM's converted to debs via alien.
The only real news concerning ATI and Linux drivers isn't even mentioned here. I wonder how this passed as news, since these unofficial drivers have been out for the longest.
The real news is that ATI released 3.7.1 on the fourth. There was only one sentence in the changlelog: "Support added for the Radeon 9800XT"
Of course this, and the fact that that the new driver trashed alot of X servers, sent the Rage3d crown into a flame frenzy. ATI promised linux driver updates every two months, and after waiting and waiting (with numerous issued datailed here)
they added one ChipID for the 9800XT which results in some unstable X servers for people who don;t even have 9800XTs?
As a result the 3.7.1 drivers were pulled several hours after being released with no explanation given.
I'm happy they are making an effort, but their enthusiasm seems misguided at best. After declaring that they re writing the ATI drivers from scratch (as oppesed from upgrading the Schneider drivers) they rename them from 3.2 to 3.7? What? Shoudn't the rewritten drivers from scratch be labeled a alpha or beta release at best?
I currently have two radeon cards, and have gone back using the open source Xfree 2d driver and dual booting into windows for playing games until this mess gets sorted out.
S3/Via provide full source to their official drivers, and have also released the code to the CLE266 MPEG decoder. These drivers will also support the new chipset they are currently developing.
SiS have provided source and support to the SiS driver project (Done by one guy whos name escapes me right now).
As you note, Matrox used to but stopped providing drivers right around the G400/450. Then they had an anurism, went crazy and even pulled the entire Developer Relations program which used to provide full documentation on all their chipsets. Now their a closed "La la la I can't hear you!" shop.
Shame really.
http://www.google.com/search?q=install+rpm+debian
IS there a decent card for gnu/linux with:
* hardware acceleration
* decent performance
* support for multiple simultaneous X displays
* open source drivers
Check out the DRI page. Seems ATi has reelased the specs to their older Radeon cards; you can get hardware 3D with Radeons upto a 9200 series. Not to mention fixed Xvideo support.
You can get a 9200 with 128MB of RAM and DVI for 44 bucks on Pricewatch. Another bonus is that their fanless; that's if a 6000rpm fan bothers you.