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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 was just waiting for xfree 4.3.0 to eventually enter debian
!
^_^
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!
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.
So what if the drivers are closed source? ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors. Whats the difference anyway?
The difference is that this is Slashdot where the cranks di tutti cranks hang out. ATI could give away free video cards, open source all their drivers, and hire a bunch of strippers to come to your house and make you birthday cake... and the Slashdot crowd would still piss and moan.
Even if we don't count idiological issues, closed source drivers mean numerous annoyances to the users.
For example:
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Portage downloads the rpm, pulls the content out and puts the pieces where they need to go.
Douglas P. Price
Because when nVidia wants to know something about ATI drivers it's only slightly less trivial to get the information when the driver source is closed than open.
> It is naive to think that you could even
> understand, let alone improve,
I get to stare at "professional" code every day. It is nothing like what was in the textbooks. There is acres of room for improvement. silly little things like something called a buffer overflow are present in many of the implementations. I cannont believe my eyes somedays, and it's a wonder that the product that this certain company puts out, functions at all. It is under the cover of closed-source that these things are allowed to persist, and will probably never change. The company just keeps issuing patches and revisions and fixes what is terminally broken. Futhermore, the only reason these "bugs" exist is simply do to human laziness; something that could be overcome by another simple human, with the right principles, without an "intimate knowlege" of the hardware.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
blender comes to mind. Furthermore there is the chicken and the egg problem. No 3d drivers untill the applications come. No applications untill 3d comes.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
It's used for 3D modelling, for which there are a few open source applications now. It can be used for some extreme 2D accelleration, too.
Displaying HD video will make many a XVideo overlay driver puke. Using OpenGL instead may work, and in some cases work faster.
Do I here someone saying "No one uses Linux for video, and certainly not HD"? You're wrong. Of course, the kind of shit we have to put up with from NVidia and ATI (and Matrox, too, I think) makes Linux a marginal choice for such applications.
The apologists are just too willing to defend the hardware manufacturers because they provided drivers for their platform. Anybody using another platform must be weird, eh? Anybody using hw-accelerated GL for something else than gaming is weird, too, of course.
Empathising with weird* people is hard, I know. But it won't hurt if you try.
* People with other interests than you
This guy seems to have it right:
"Suppose you create and design feature X into your chipset. You might find, via a lawsuit, that feature X is patented by company Y. I've talked to vendors who would like to open their hardware but are scared to do so for this very reason -- they might have designed a patented feature into their hardware without realizing it."