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ATI Updates Linux Drivers

Posted by michael on from the second-class-citizens dept.

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."

2 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Comments from an ATI engineer by Wordsmith · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "who think 'we' need to follow ...?"

    are you purporting to be an ati employee?

  2. Used the ATI drivers, they're actually nice by phorm · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Granted I'm a more experienced linux user, but I recently installed the ATI drivers on a machine and had very few problems. At the worst they're binary-only but not much worse than NVidia in that aspect. I'm using debian so I converted the RPM to a DEB (pet peeve there with the RPMs), dpkg --install'ed it, and in the end it actually handled more automagically than I would have needed/expected

    I have for awhile been an NVidia fan, but not a fanboy as I expect some of the commenters here are. Certainly the machine I installed (not my own) with a Radeon 9200 performed beautifully in OpenGL/3d apps, even compared to my own NVidia-based ones.

    My only annoyance is the older ATI cards, no official support and I haven't figured out what to use (binary, source, DRI or Utal-GLX drivers?) for them.

    Yes, I would appreciate more open-source support from card manufacturers (and come on guys, NVidia ain't perfect here either). But I CAN appreciate some of the issues around releasing a full open-source driver that hints at card functionality. OS is wonderful, but perhaps we need to be more flexible as far as binary drivers, coming to a midpoint (partial-open-source? Open-source SDK?) with manufacturers in order to really get things to move into supporting linux better.

    That ATI's driver download support page actively lists Linux nowadays to me is a big plus in itself...