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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."
ATI, Remeber Diamond wouldn't release drivers specs for Linux either....
I never had to compile my windows kernel to get video working.
Just saying...
ATI makes some nice cards, but only for Windows users. Their Linux drivers are infamous for a reason.
If you are using Linux and want properly designed drivers, you really have no choice except to use an nVidia card.
I think the "documented" adjective was a bit sarcastic. It was likely meant to point out how ATI supports Linux with their words, but not their actions.
I wouldnt touch an ati card with a 10 foot pole, the only thing less scarry then the linux drivers are their windows drivers, and they are not that much better.
It is more a difference in system architecture than it is a matter of one system being better than the other.
These drivers aren't new, they are out almost a month now and they suck just as much as every ATi driver before... I don't want a HOWTO to install a friggin' driver, I want to type ./install, restart the Xserver and have great framerates.
If the user interface is nice enough, does it really matter what exact steps are taken to install the driver? Even today, you hardly realize that a recompilation is going on with nvidia drivers, as they provide a nice little progress bar. To the user, the progress bar could represent copying files, compiling them from source, or whatever, he doesn't really care.
The DRI drivers only support ATI cards up to the Radeon 9200 (rv280). It appears that ATI will be following NVidia's footsteps by not releasing specs for their newer cards.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Part of it IS the installer. Nvidia's installer is what software installers SHOULD be like. After having to wrestle with ATI drivers, my jaw dropped when I put an Nvidia card in last night and had it installed and running about five minutes, including download time.
The REAL frustrating part is the Nvidia is an old one I had laying around, while the ATI is a brand new present from this summer. Under windows the ATI decimates the Nvidia card but the Nvidia pushes ahead in Linux.
Never confuse volume with power.
I made the switch about a year ago. I have never looked back.
I read ATI's instalation instruction for SuSE, and feel sorry for anyone who has to follow them. On my SuSE instalations, to install Nvidia's driver I just launch Yast2 and do an online update. I get the drivers straight from SuSE let Yast install them. It is a snap.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Are you kidding? They could get some numbers from Rage3D's Linux Forum and justify the expense easily. ATI isn't a small company. It takes very little to justify hiring one or two more people. It's a terrible corporate image to be perceived as writing shoddy software even by a niche market, because it's a niche market in their prime market share. When you go to an ATI based forum and people suggest that you buy an Nvidia if you get frustrated and return their $300 card, that's a bad thing(tm).
Never confuse volume with power.
Since I ran into a Linux brick wall with them (no specs, no binary drivers) my last two purchases have been Nvidia. I recommend the same for you if you use Linux.
I wouldn't. The thing is that proprietary drivers and no documentation are against the principles of F/OSS. If I had to recommend a graphics card, it would be ATI radeon 8500 which works well with Free drivers (accelerated OpenGL etc.)
If you encourage hardware companies to keep their documentation secret you will have a future where you have to use non-free drivers for all your hardware. That is a disaster from the perspective of both Open Source and Free Software movements. I would like you all to understand that the software freedom has a value and functionality is not the only meter of the goodness of software.
The other clue was that the documentation is almost 5 years old. They used to fund development of open source drivers, now they feed us binary only drivers that sort of work and we have to wait for their release schedule.
I agree completely, but once again I feel the companies will be hampered with the "but if we release the specs then company XYZ will start producing amazing graphics cards!" line on things. There's also the worry that, with full access to the specs, people will work around the "crippling" of cores that is supposed to mark the difference between a £100 card and a £400 card. Given the performance war that's been going on between nVidia and ATI since the year dot, I think the chances of either side relenting are slim.
;)*
So as a whole the problem is probably part IP, part marketing/management, like the AC in the post above mentioned.
*launches into "why can't we all just get along?" caterwauling
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I don't get it, what does Artificial Turd Industries have to do with geek news?
...the first graphics card vendor to release stable, open drivers for their top product lines is going to sell a shit load of cards to all of us that are annoyed by the current state of drivers ;)
I would resent buying another card this soon (I shelled out a few hundred quid on a GF3Ti500 a while back), but I'd spend a few hundred more for a card that was fast and worked flawlessly and I suspect many others would too. Hell I've even been considering giving up UT2004 and going back to an old Matrox card that is fully supported.
Having said that, I am grateful that nVidia have any support at all and being able to run native 64bit drivers on my amd64 rig is excellent and the nVidia installer generally does a pretty good job, but it would be so so much better if support was as much a part of the OS as for all my other hardware.
So, graphics card companies, take a chance!
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
I installed ATI drivers on Fedora Core 2 last week, and while it required a bit of patching here and there that wasn't documented anywhere on the ATI site, a quick google search for "Fedora Core 2" and "ATI" pretty much did the trick. It was astonishly simple, at least in comparison to the hoops I used to have to jump through (I've kept the same distro on the same Linux box since 2001 without updating it at all, just because it was working and there was no reason to mess with it). This is all to say that it seems the problem the author has with the drivers is that they're proprietary, and thus makes some end users have to do some wacky patching depending on how esoteric their distro is. It seems if you're using a popular enough distribution, it's relatively easy to find a forum post at Rage3D that documents the steps any bozo can take, using patch -p1 to the original ATI distribution, to get things working. In short, so long as you're reasonably close to the mainstream, there's a whole hell of a lot of user support out there. And if you're not, well... that's why you've installed a bleeding-edge distribution, right? Maybe it's just my memories of installing netatalk (one of the more horrendous file servers I've ever set up, by pure neccesity), but raising a fuss and making sardonic comments over ATI's lack of commitment seems rather ill-tempered when they seem to be releasing Linux drivers quite regularly. Would you rather they open-source the drivers once and stop supporting them and leave it to the community?
Not the only one.
I have a 9700pro which I love under windows, but which gave me grey hairs installing under linux.
My next card will very likely be nvidia. I say very likely, because I don't upgrade often, so if ATI manages to get some decent drivers together that are easy to install, I may stick with them.
However, were I to upgrade tomorrow, it'd be nvidia. I'm simply disgusted with ATI right now.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
My last 3 graphics cards are ATi. I'm not sure why I bought one last time, but I'm sure that part of the reason was that I'd had 2 before and they'd done the job very well.
Same reason why I'm buying another Palm pilot and not a Pocket PC.
Now, let's say that I want to get on Linux. I'll probably ask around for best card for compatibility. Then, I'll go with that and probably stick with it.
If ATi don't care about Linux now, they could lose mindshare/fandom on Linux in the future when ownership reaches a point where everyone has to properly support Linux.
In the business graphics workstation world, ATI cannot sell cards to Linux users as their drivers suck - OpenGL applications crash all the time. NVidia cards and drivers "just work". I will not recommend/buy another ATI product until they produce a stable driver.
The market for linux OpenGL workstations has to be pretty significant. ATI is loosing a lot of business because of their lack of quality Linux drivers.
ATI Helped open-source driver development where Nvidia just gave out binaries, ATI got praise for there stance but everyone bought nvidia because they couln't run quake3 on the ATI boards under linux, so ATI reliese a binary like nvidia, and we decide to slam ATI for it?
As far as I can work out, ATI are being a lot more open-source friendly than nvidia are. And in this day of licenced patented tech being used in drivers to allow any form of advanced graphics, there not really to blame.
Please moan about software patents.