ATi Drivers for Linux that Work?

James F. Hitchens asks: "I used to run Red-Hat Enterprise vs.3, just recently I switched to fedora core 3. The reason for my change was because I could not get my ATi Radeon 9600 All in Wonder to work. I hoped that Fedora was a little more advanced in the area of 3D acceleration (so I could play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tux-racer). Yet again it was not to be, ne worke pas. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make this work? The drivers that ATi supplies on their website are, in short, crap."

Comments

I wonder if...

[wowbagger]

We had a discussion at my place of work that I'd like to let the /. peanut gallery review:

Currently, there is much discussion about the meaning of the IBM sell-off of its PC division. One of the current conjectures is that IBM might be preparing to release a low-cost PowerPC based machine for home use.

Now, if that is the case, I could see IBM going to both ATI and nVidia and saying:

OK, Sparky, here's the deal: we need a good video chip for our systems. That chip needs to have a Free driver for Linux - binary is not acceptable as the system will be PPC.

Now, our buddies over at Apple also want in on this action, so this chip would have to have accelerated 3D that was worth a damn, as well as other features to make Aqua run well - and we are working on the same sort of things with Xorg.

So, this can go down one of three ways:

1. We could spend the millions to design our own GPU, using strained silicon on insulator, low-K dielectrics, and copper interconnects, and blow you out of the water.
   
2. You release the specs on your chip, and we will help you remove/replace any IPR you don't own in the drivers. AND, we would offer to fab your chips for you, using SSOI, low-K, and copper. Your chips get a performance boost and power reduction, we get what we want, and everybody is happy.
3. OR, we could go to your competitors and make them the same offer.

So, which shall it be?

Now, the question is, how likely is this?