Slashdot Mirror
KDE KWin May Drop Support For AMD Catalyst Drivers
An anonymous reader writes "The KWin window manager maintainer for KDE is looking at removing the legacy OpenGL 1.0 renderer from the KWin code-base due to the costs of supporting legacy hardware. This means dropping support for non-GL2+ graphics cards, which are all over six years old, but in the process would mean that for now there is no longer any support for the AMD Catalyst driver on the KDE desktop. Due to driver bugs, AMD's proprietary Catalyst software only works well with the GL1 renderer even though their latest hardware supports OpenGL 4."
Six years is a long time in the graphics world and AMD / ATI have had plenty of time to fix their broken stuff.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Wont this result in Linux losing out on the "old PC" use case?
6 year old PC's can still run XP, and once XP support is withdrawn, they will have to either sell off those PC's or move to Linux
By withdrawing support for old PC's, they are losing out on a decent amount of the already tiny marketshare Linux has in the PC market
I haven't heavily used Linux since I was in highschool. What's up with the graphics situation on it? I always hear/see problems with it, and I find it confusing because it's such a fundamental thing
That said, the loss of Catalyst is not a big one.. I recently had to uninstall it on my Win7 machine because it caused constant blue screens.. after analyzing the memory dumps, it was the culprit..
I remember when they first started out. Their gui-system would replace windows, but better. With less bloath and more freedom for users. Those days are long gone. I do hope the guys at kde understand that this will mean a new (and probably) big lost of users. AMD should get their drivers straightened out, but I can't help but have the feeling this will bite KDE in the butt and not AMD. Still a shame those gui's became so bloathed and slooowwww. And thank God for fluxbox and the likes.
Compositing using OpenGL 1.x
So what is suggested here is to delete support for compositing using OpenGL 1.x.
Personally, I can hardly blame the developer for wanting to prune that list a bit.
And, if you don't want to see this feature deleted, now is your opportunity to step up to the plate and contribute!
I had more than my share of problems with the Catalyst driver. Switched to the radeonhd driver in its infancy, and got better results, albeit more crashes. It quickly matured. Later I switched to the radeon driver, once it had reasonably mature support for my HD3870 or whatever it is. The performance is great, the stability is great, and I expect that compositing will continue to work.
Basically, AMD has helped the open-source community to develop this driver sufficiently for it to take over as far as I'm concerned.
I really could care less because I already determined that suicidal thoughts decrease significantly when you just don't even bother trying to use AMD/ATI graphics on Linux.
I am trying to imagine a world-view in which this is "news that matters," and somehow, it is just not coming to me. How this got posted is beyond me.
Actually, a long way beyond, but hey.
You see moving the desktop compositing on to the GPU removes load off the CPU, therefore making the entire system faster.
With newer GUIs, there's more work, therefore, despite a GPU being able to help in theory, in practice, they're not being allowed. See subject of thread.
Even without effects, the speed will be LESS than it would otherwise be unless you buy a newer card.
And the opportunity to keep with a lighter version of KDE is precluded by dropping the earlier versions.
The problem comes in with the fact that the open source drivers don't support everything. I seem to be in a real minority -- I really use Linux for all my desktop stuff, except playing the odd game. All my music, movies, everything I do from my linux laptop generally. The open source drivers won't allow me to do all the stuff that I do -- mainly, I won't be able to watch high def movies -- no hardware decoding support. There probably never will be either, without using catalyst. Do not also forget that since I'm on a laptop, I've got concerns regarding my power usage too on occasion, and the open source drivers consume a lot more juice. So the open source drivers *I would much rather use otherwise* don't support all the features that I use frequently. So this is bad for me, at least. My laptop isn't old, either -- its video card is a Mobility Radeon 5870, still pretty spiffy if you ask me.
Also, the desktop effects do more than just look pretty, a number of handy features for organizing windows and seeing what apps you have running require it.
So yeah, I just can't see this making AMD finally bring their drivers into the last century. Speaking as a Militant Linux Zealot who aggressively hates and seeks the destruction of everyone who doesn't wholly agree with me -- The linux desktop numbers are fairly low, I personally think they are higher than most people think -- but thats still a low number. Then cut that into a third or so which is the KDE desktop people. Thats one third of a small number ... I doubt AMD gives a shit. I see what the developer is saying here, but it seems that his choices are 1) Irritate a lot of users who use AMD graphics, probably lose a number of them who use the catalyst features, 2) Continue to support code for the sake of AMD being kind of a shit company.
I'd rather not get screwed by this, so I hope he continues to support GL1 for now, and maybe we can find another way to push AMD into updating their drivers because I don't think he'll get the response from them that he thinks he will.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Because it sounds like you care at least a little bit, else your position couldn't be one that cared less if you didn't like it a little bit, which would be phrased in the active mode with: I COULDN'T care less. Your version you care a bit, maybe a lot, but definitely more than nil.
Why , does a window manager to be tied to DRIVERS? Give me a break! I would recommend just dropping KDE and using XFCE, or even FVWM, its fast, it doesnt use much RAM and it actually follows good X design philosophy.
Another question, why not just allow Kwin to use an OpenGL software renderer (Mesa) if there isn no hardware support. OpenGL is an A P I, that means that you should be able to drop in a software renderer as a backup if there is not adequate hardware rendering. Whats so hard about this for this dolts to figure out?
...or it didn't happen.
When Unigine, with all it's impressive features, can run just fine on the Catalyst drivers, but KWin can't draw a couple windows without crashing, where do you think the problem is?
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/
Why the hell is everyone whining about the Catalyst drivers, when the existing Xorg ports work, are stable, and really should be the center of our attention with regard to effort/coding/bug-reporting.
It irritates me to no end to see STOO-PID-ass reports of "AMD/ATI is suxxor because of Catalyst, use proprietary NoVideo bullshit-bullshit"...when I know better to begin with.
Stop loading crappy-ass binary drivers, start feeding back bug reports to the Xorg devs, and maybe you'll get something that's better than "I clicky-clicked the proprietary driver in Urbunghole Maya Calendar 2012.9997 Edition, and it loaded but now suxxors my system".
Seriously, I want to hear a list of why the Catalyst drivers are even needed. Give me good reasons why I absolutely positively MUST install Catalyst & Co. when the existing efforts are working.
Bonus points if you can tell me why I can decode AND PLAY 1920x1080 HD just fine with Xorg drivers, but shouldn't be able to.
After spending all night R-ingTFM and finally installing ATI Catalyst on my Arch with KDE, this is the love I get!!!
would mean that for now there is no longer any support for the AMD Catalyst driver on the KDE desktop. Due to driver bugs, AMD's proprietary Catalyst software only works well with the GL1 renderer even though their latest hardware supports OpenGL 4
Doesn't that kind of contradict its-self? Even if AMD's software is buggy with newer GL, buggy doesn't equal "no longer any support".
It sounds to me like the cards would be supported, and might finally get some attention and bug fixes if the desktop were actually using the newer library and thus tripping on the bugs.
No, stupid. You should give up on Catalyst ever becoming something other than a suck fest and just use the open drivers like the rest of us.
By the same standard, you can still load an old Linux distro that is still tons newer than XP.
Even assuming old PC with brand spanking new distro, KWin is far from a hard requirement...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I run it on an EEE Netbook.. and it's no problem at all. It's responsive and quite usable. Granted it may not be equal to a hot-rod desktop, but it certainly not so slow as to be in the way. It simply works and does a nice job of it too.
Specs: Asus EEE PC 1005HA-M, 2GB RAM, running openSUSE 12.1 with KDE4.8
KDE making such a move doesn't really affect me one bit, for many reasons. First of all, no AMD/ATI on Linux for me, no thank you, never. Second of all, no more KWin for me at all, thank you very much. KWin has been nothing but a slow-ass source of trouble ever since KDE 4 series was released, and I've replaced KWin entirely with OpenBox in all of my KDE installs, resulting in a snappy well working system. Now if only the Plasma desktop could handle using any other WM than KWin... fortunately I can run most KDE apps without both KWin and Plasma, so I can still access the remaining, fewer-by-every-release good parts left in KDE.