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ATI Updates Linux Drivers
GraWil writes "Famed graphics card maker and documented Linux supporter ATI has refreshed its proprietary Linux drivers (3.11.1) for the Radeon and FireGL series cards. Unfortunately, many of the previous comments still apply and it seems that ATI is not yet committed to supporting Linux well. The procedure for installing is now documented in a separate how-to but it seems that quite a few are stuck in an endless cycle of compiling kernels with/without DRI/AGPGART/RADEON/DBE (insert random module here). For those with strong enough feelings, ATI is seeking feedback on these drivers."
The nVidia installer is GPLd, they could use that rather than writing a huge howto. I guess ATI using software from nVidia would be a bit uncomfortable for them though ...
I use the ones provided with XFree86 and/or from DRI. Runs like a charm. I don't bother with those binaries at all.
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I'll believe that when my crappy Radeon supports 3D and my TV tuner at the same time.
If ATI's drivers don't cut it for you, this project has been helping out for a long time.
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try nvidia--they have 64 bit drivers both for windows and linux.
Seriously, many people here rag on nvidia for their binary-only stuff, but they DO provide drivers for a VERY broad range of OS's, unlike many other companies. They may not support open source, but the DO support their customers in a greater degree than many companies, even when those customers want to do some fairly weird stuff!
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
The best part is how if you click on the "documented" link, it takes you to a mailing list post from ATI announcing a press release or linux support page or something... I can't tell what it should have been since the link is dead. :-)
before people started comparing the ATI drivers on windows vs linux..
here's my take:
I've got a laptop and a desktop, but with ATI cards in them. Setting up the video card properly on my laptop (windows) was a huge pain. It's a "mobile" card so finding the exact driver was... well.. painful. Go to HP (laptop manufact.) go to ATI, try this.. try that. Nothing worked right (often the installer would say I didn't HAVE an ATI card).
Then I went to install the ATI driver for linux (gentoo). Same problem. This driver, that driver.. big pain in the arse.
In hindsight, I would have gotten an nvidia card. I got my PVR (which also runs gentoo) and stuck my old geforce2 card in there. Not a single problem from day one getting the card to work in X... svideo out and everything worked almost flawlessly the first time (any problems I found out later were my own).
so, my take... but nvidia. they might not have the super duper fastest card all the time, but it's close enough that the saved time on driver headaches makes it well worth it.
The 3.9 driver is much higher quality than the 3.11.1 drivers... I have had a ton of user complaints regarding black textures related to ARB_fragment_programs... Disabling the ARB_fragment_programs caused the driver to run the system out of RAM and die. Having the users revert to 3.9 solved all of those issues. It has caused that drivers advanced functions to get blacklisted in at least one commercial game.
Piss me off. Got a Dell 2001FP to work with a second machine I set up. Figured for what I needed I didn't need to get a 9600 so I went for a 9200 only to find out that for some reason the DVI output is hosed. After some googling found no one else can seem to make it work either. Not a hardware problem as it works fine in windows. Never again for ATI.....
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
I knew that sometimes /. isn't exactly quick on the uptake, but these drivers first appears AUGUST FIFTH, very nearly a month ago. It really doesn't take much to get a front page posting anymore.
Hey, did you guys here about this crazy Utah company suing International Business Machines???
It's more like lack of staff, I believe. They've got something like roughly 4% as many developers doing Linux development as they do Windows developers- and these are developers dedicated to Linux driver development.
And they HAVE recently hired relevent experience- Michel Danzer just hired on out there and he's one of the DRI team's better developers. I don't know if the problems are due to them not doing something like NVidia (which is that their driver core is largely the same codebase for Linux and Windows...) or if it's that combined with the shortage of capable people working on them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Still no support for the Radeon 7500.
Gatos and DRI both provide functionality. It's not really necessary, though, the stock kmod radeon and stock Xf86 radeon drivers work.
Except for that pesky s-video port. The kernel has no trouble putting the console screen on the TV but only the VESA driver is successful for Xf86. The VESA driver isn't fast enough to watch DVDs.
Pick and choose, I've tried all the combos:
kmod: 2.4.18-2.6.7, Gatos, DRI
drivers: Xf86 4.1.0-Xf4.3.0, Gatos, DRI
Put the kmod on the x-axis and the drivers on the y-axis and make a matrix. I've tried them all. Only the VESA driver will correctly get the sync values for the s-video port with a Radeon 7500. I've tried the math to convert VESA screenmodes to modelines with no luck.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
It's most certainly an ATI problem.
Instead of still supporting crap like XFree86 4.1 they need make sure their driver installs without incident on the most used Linux distributions at present time. That means that at least on Fedora Core, SuSE and Mandrake it should be as easy as running "sh ati-installer.run" (like the Nvidia installer). There's no second step to that procedure, just restarting X. Also how hard could it be to provide some AMD64 builds? Who cares if nobody uses them, the lack itself reflects poorly on the company when compared to Nvidia.
The fglrxconfig utility is a joke, asking you everything from your keymap to mouse model. It's a fundamentally flawed concept. They need to swallow their pride, study the Nvidia installer and replicate it exactly.
I have cards from both manufacturers, the most recent one being an ATI. However, if this situation doesn't change I know what my next card and my recommendation to others will be.
It's like deja vu all over again.
ATI has been steadily releasing newer versions of their linux drivers over the past year (and I commend them for doing that). What has been frustrating is that the general experience has been that performance has degraded with many of the recent 3.xx releases, at least in comparison to the old 2.8 release which was already pretty fast and stable for my ATI card. I think part of the problem has been the push to support the most recent chipsets which has definitely complicated the driver releases.
btw, this http://www.rage3d.com/content/articles/atilinuxhow to/how-to hosted by Rage3D has been a god-send to those of us linux users suffering with ATI cards....
How bout 12000+ signatures of annoyed linux users. http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.html
Also this issue and petition has been submitted to /. for 2 weeks now.