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Insight Into AMD's Linux Driver Development

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the they-should-all-wear-hats-while-they-code- dept.

Cowards Anonymous writes "It's no secret that ATI Technologies has had a rough time in the past delivering display drivers that met the expectations of their customers. When ATI started out producing a FireGL and Radeon Linux driver they for some time were greatly behind NVIDIA's feature-rich driver. The early ATI Linux driver had lacked essential functionality such as PCI Express and x86_64 architecture support and was also affected by stability and performance problems — not to mention a great deal of bugs."

9 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. rough start by phrostie · · Score: 3, Informative

    when i switched from NVidia to ATI, it was a rough start.
    for the longest time i couldn't get the driver to build/install, then one day everything just worked!
    i can't tell you which version it was, but from then on, i've had no problems or complaints.

    an open driver would be nice, but even still, my compliments to them.

  2. ATI and Fedora 7 / X.Org 1.3 by harrypelles · · Score: 5, Informative

    I made the same mistake as many Fedora users - jumping (to Fedora 7) before looking. I'm not poking at Fedora here, on the contrary, I am a loyal Fedora user. It's ATI I'm upset with. ATI released a new fglrx driver (version 8.37) since Fedora 7's tests and final release that also does not work with X.Org 1.3. We're all sitting around waiting for the 8.38 which ATI claims will be compatible. And don't even get me started on ATI's absent AIGLX support for Linux. My next card will nVidia.

  3. Re:The best way... by the_humeister · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're using some sort of Linux/*BSD/etc, you shouldn't have to worry because X.org has had mostly full and useable R100, R200, and recently R300 open source drivers for quite some time now. They're decent. I've been playing Unreal Tournament (and variants) without problems. The only issue is visuals with Doom 3 do to S3 Texture compression being patented. If you're using Windows, well good luck!

  4. Re:Nvidia is not the competition by the_humeister · · Score: 2, Informative

    Or you could use an R100, R200, or R300 based ATI card. They're not hard to find, relatively inexpensive, and still powerful enough for a casual gamer (at least R300s are, possibly R200). Oh, forgot to mention that they have mostly full open source drivers written already.

  5. Re:Misleading summary title? by bouchecl · · Score: 2, Informative

    WTC does this have to do with AMD?
    ATI is now part of the big AMD family. Where have you been in the last few months?
  6. Re:Three years of problems by lp_bugman · · Score: 2, Informative

    I had huge problems with all my AGP nvidia cards. The video use freeze. After a couple of minutes using X in my AMD Athlon 64 with a VIA chipset. The problem was VIA implementation of AGP. There is a setting in the closed source drivers to disable the NV AGP implementation.

    Section "Device"
      Driver "nvidia"
      Option "NvAGP" "0"
    EndSection

    Hope it works for you :).

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  7. Intel has not release docs by dmoore · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs.

    Actually, Intel has not released docs for their GMA X3000. Their current stance is that the driver is the documentation. That's fine and good, except the driver is still very incomplete (missing OpenGL features, no XvMC, no tv-out, etc.). See here:

    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-Ma y/024582.html

  8. Re:what a joke by revengebomber · · Score: 3, Informative

    The community COULD do their own drivers, but the specs aren't available. Everything about how to interface with the card would have to be found via reverse engineering.

    I'm fairly sure the reason the specs aren't open, is because it would disclose some "secrets" about how the companies optimize their cards.

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  9. Re:Not really surprising by yourexhalekiss · · Score: 2, Informative

    This also not a troll... I just figure that the people that read this thread might find this relevant.

    I had a hellish time installing ATI drivers for my laptop with a Radeon Xpress 200M chipset on Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty.

    I ended up following the instructions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=321766 and it worked great.

    The instructions are written for Ubuntu Edgy, but they also work for Feisty if you use a newer driver from ATI's site and adjust the instructions accordingly. The instructions seem generic enough that they should work for other distros as well, although I don't want to be quoted on that.