There is reason in roasting egg
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ATI updates its Linux graphics display drivers
AMD HAS RELEASED a new version of its proprietary ATI Catalyst Linux display driver for both x86 and x86_64 systems.
The ATI Catalyst 9.8 suite updates the software to version 8.64 and supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 - and therefore most Red Hat based Linux distros - as well as the current Debian based Ubuntu 9.04 known as Jaunty Jackalope.
The release also supports RandR 1.2 to manage display rotation, desktop sizing and multiple display arrangement.
It also works better for users of the popular Ubuntu 9.04 who use multi ASIC configurations. They can now use normal mouse cursor movement between displays, which means the end of the static cursor.
The ATI Catalyst 9.8 works with Linux kernel 2.6 or higher and glibc version 2.2 or 2.3. If you want to have 3D display effects you also need to have support for POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm).
Also 64-bit users must have 32-bit libraries installed before updating or running the driver. The GCC compiler, kernel-headers and kernel-source are required to build the driver modules and enable 2D and 3D acceleration.
Although this sounds like your normal Linux "you have to be a computer scientist to install this" sort of warning, in reality it is a bit of doddle for those who are familiar with Linux.
It is nice that ATI is aggressively supporting Linux. It used to be that you could only run Nvidia cards on Ubuntu and its ilk. µ
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Just because AMD/ATI are annoying with their driver kernel capabilities doesnt mean you guys have to be!
You missed the main point of this driver, 2.6.30 kernel support... since kernel 2.6.31 is just about to be released, i wouldnt call their fglrx driver policy very aggresive.
Now how about a nice article on the progress of opensource ATI drivers?
At the moment I'm more interested in the VDPAU like qualities of AVIVO for Linux. For use with VDR-XBMC (HTPC OS). At the moment I'm unseing a Reel-eHD to decode all my MPEG-2 (SD) and h.264 (HD) DVB-C/S/S2 stuff. Sadly the Reel-eHD sucks at beeing able to decode things like DVD or other Media Filetypes (Divx, Xvid or Matroska). This is where AVIVO/VDPAU would eventually come into play. When all this "decoding" will be done on the Graphic Card.
Given the "Stories" I've read here on the Inq. I'm not really partial on nVidia Chips, but at least they work under Linux where as ATI is still lagging behind...
I wanna thank AMD for their decision to give support for Linux distros.That's a very nice step and I think linux -users will appreciate it!
The display(s) management is big improvement too.
Thanks boys! Keep it up !
Dang, maybe I can finally have multiple screens with different resolutions accelerated using the Catalyst driver?
NVidia binary drivers have supported multi-res TwinView for, I dunno, YEARS?!?!
Oh well, fingers x'd..
...these work, as the last round had some annoying instability with Ubuntu 9.04 and what you'd think should be a basic onboard 780G. AMD is doing the right thing, but we all wish they could've been there yesterday.
Meanwhile, nVidia seems to have blobs down to a science, but people are already whining that new releases cut support for some of the oldest cards - with little open-source support for those users to fall back on. At least AMD is leaving documentation and improving [but still somewhat lagging] open-source support in its wake.
So if they're still around in 5 years, AMD chips should have "equivalently mature" FOSS drivers by the time they're EOL'd.
There are no distros that will have 2.6.31 kernels available for upgrade for some time. If you always grab the latest bleeding edge kernel code and build & run it, more power to you.
How is ATI to do Q&A testing against an unreleased kernel anyway?
AMD has moved a number of DX9 ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators products to a legacy driver support structure. This change impacts Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux distributions. AMD has moved to a legacy software support structure for these graphics accelerator products in an effort to better focus development resources on future products.
from::
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Legacy/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.4.2&product=2.4.2.3.9&lang=English
I only want to say I love AMD
I bought a couple of ATI cards a couple of years ago when it was announced that ATI was releasing the technical specifications for Radeon. Everyone at the time was dumping on nVidia for not doing the same thing, and the prediction was that Linux would work much better with ATI using native drivers than it ever could using the proprietary nVidia drivers. Come to find out the FOSS ATI drivers don't even support 3D acceleration and the proprietary drivers provided by ATI are just awful. That surprised me since AMD is very popular with the sort of "roll your own" computer users that gravitate toward Linux.
So what ever happened to the spiffy new open drivers we were supposed to be seeing?
Does this work for older GPUs? I have a Radeon 250 on a Dell Inspiron600m and it won't play any games that require 3D, or even Compiz.
@XRandR 1.2
I have a X1600 ati card, open source drivers and two lcd monitors running without a problem. You don't need the proprietary drivers for that.
john