Dell Asking ATI For Better Linux Drivers

Open Source IT writes "According to a presentation at Ubuntu Live 2007, Dell is working on getting better ATI drivers for Linux for use in its Linux offerings. While it is not known whether the end product will end up as open source, with big businesses like Google and Dell now behind the push for better Linux graphics drivers, hopefully ATI will make the smart business decision and give customers what they want."

Comments

Re:ATI Linux

[Nimey]

How is parent a troll?

I've gotten the ATI drivers to install on my old Athlon XP box (9600XT), and Beryl worked for a while, but then after an update it didn't anymore and it stopped accelerating 3D. Nvidia's drivers Just Work, and so did the Intel 3D accel on my old laptop with 830 chipset.

Re:ATI Linux

[stinerman]

I've got an X1600 that performs worse than the 9200 I used to have in here. Whenever I use ZSNES, MPlayer or any other programs that have a lot of motion for X to keep track of, the CPU usage for X goes off the charts. X barely keeps up when I'm watching a DVD! My system is getting old (Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM), but this is ridiculous. I'm looking to buy a 9600XT and sell the piece of junk I have now. At least then I can use the free Xorg drivers rather than the crap ATI puts out.

I've checked with several people who have no clue what the problem is. I'm running Debian testing with fglrx 8.38.6. Yes, DRI is enabled and running. glxgears gives me ~900FPS.

1650 pro 512mb AGP cheap (no linux)

[Odinson]

I bought a 1650 in early May. 3D has never funtioned in Linux. Just crashes the machine. Many distro, hardware combo's tried. Works fine in Windows. $50 + shipping takes it. $150 retail.

Yea ATI's drivers are great....

BTW I'll give it to any developer making a serious effort to write open source drivers. I'll even pay shipping.

Re:Better drivers?

[Gazzonyx]

I'm not holding my breath Me neither. I recently switched from ATI (on which I spent several days to get it to work but *still* suboptimal) to NVidia to get accelerated dualscreen and it Just Works. Never looked back. Sorry ATI, you're too late. Exact same here, I fought with an ATI X1050 PCI-E for 2 days before tossing it on the "I need any part I can find, right now!" shelf, and got a GeForce 8500GT just last week. This is running under Solaris Express Developer Edition.

The NVidia driver update was a single .bin that removed the old drivers, installed the new ones, and setup xorg.conf. It also moved the old xorg.conf to xorg.conf.bak, I was surprised to see that they did the Right Thing throughout the entire install. Fire and forget, reboot and move on to more pressing issues. These drivers were only a few days old, but they don't feel 'beta' at all; they feel very well tested.

I've been a long time ATI user except for a single Geforce4 back in my gaming days. So long, and thanks for all the fish, ATI.