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AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go
Michael writes "Back in September AMD had announced a new ATI Linux driver as well as opening up their GPU specifications, and today they have taken an additional step to better support the Linux OS. With the just-announced Radeon HD 4850 RV770 they have provided same-day Linux support, and the Linux driver is now shipping alongside the Windows driver on their product CDs. In addition, they are encouraging their AIB partners to showcase Tux on the product packaging as a sign of Linux support. Last but certainly not least, AMD is committed from top-to-bottom product support on Linux and they will be introducing high-end features in their Linux driver such as MultiGPU CrossFire technology. Phoronix has a run-down on AMD's evolutionary leap in Linux support along with information on the open-source support for the RV770 GPU."
will there REALLY be accel HD video support?
hell, even on windows xp nvidia (piss be upon them) has not released accelerated video drivers for their year-old 8series cards!
I was one of the suckers who bought an 8-series thinking the 'hardware accel' onboard would finally solve my HD playback tearing issues. nvidia is infamous for video stutter and tearing unless you use 'magical commercial' dvd playback programs. the regular free ones don't seem to have the magic and the magic is NOT in the xp driver, that's for sure. and there's no way in hell I'm going to convert to vista just to get their new driver support. so basically, I have a 'fast frame buffer' in the 8series card but there's a whole lot of hardware that is sitting idle due to their 'push' to vista and how they want to force the DRM of vista on people.
ATI was worse; but maybe things have changed? I simply want to have glitch-free playback of HD sources on some kind of video card and NOT be locked into vista or commercial players.
but for now, I've settled on the popcorn hour box. it Just Plain Works(tm), is fanless and does NOT care about which OS you use to serve networked files to it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Phoronix already got the Radeon HD 4850 working with the open-source "Radeon" driver too: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12503
Hauppauge cards are supported to some extent but getting their remote controls to work is a pain in the butt, even on MythTV based distros!
In fact, getting the remote control to work is more of an exercise in frustration than anything else.
http://www.pchdtv.com/
Not sure about your troubles with remotes, but that doesn't have anything to do with the TV card.
Shared video memory harasses the memory bus and has a huge impact on general performance. Linear reads are nice, until every few cache lines you have to wait for a fresh row precharge and a card toying with a new chunk of video memory, then do another precharge and CAS to get back on track. Back to random memory reads.
NUMA architecture-- Intel doesn't do it-- really, REALLY helps with this on all but one of the CPUs in the machine.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Yadda yadda yadda...
Please stop playing the FOSS zealot if you don't know what your talking about.
ATI HAS released the specs to their cards unlike nVidia. The new card already runs with the FOSS driver. The FOSS driver is improving daily.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Dude, the card already works with the open-source xf86-driver-ati thanks to the code-sharing and documentation provided by ATI. Pretty soon the R6xx series (The generation I've got) will have 3D hardware acceleration as the R5xx series has now. It's not perfect and complete support, but it's getting there and progress has been excellent. If you really want to support a company that's supporting Linux, you would buy an ATI (Or Intel?) card. NVidia sure as hell isn't talking about any F/OSS drivers.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Anandtech
Tech Report
Those are all ID titles. ID have always been very strong Linux supporters, way before Linux was even beginning to catch on, and have offered native ports of most of their products.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Bork bork bork!
Don't forget Savage, worth a mention as they've been supporting Linux for years. They're Indy too, no DRM bullshit, just good games.
Any scripts in /etc/acpi/battery.d will run when the laptop is unplugged. You could create a script in this directory that kills compiz, and also create a script in /etc/acpi/ac.d to start compiz when you plug it in.
If I think something is funny, I will probably mod it +1 Insightful. "It's funny because it's true."
ID appears to be done with Linux: John Carmack not as interested in Linux (and OpenGL)
AMD also gave a lot of help to initially port the Linux kernel to AMD64 processors (they kind of coordinated the whole thing via www.x86-64.org), and they continue to be an important contributor to the Linux kernel (I see many patches related to chipset drivers, SATA, etc). The also contribute to OpenSolaris, OpenJDK, KVM (NPT support, Vista / XP 64-bit bugfixes, etc). AFAIK most of these open source contributions are made by AMD employees from the OSRC (Operating System Research Center) group.