AMD Catalyst 8.8 Linux Driver

[taipan]

I've got Debian/sid (sidux) with KDE 4.1 (from kde4.debian.net) running and I don't have any problems... the desktop effects work very well with OpenGL (mostly).

Let me guess you have a r500 card !
AFAIK only r600 have performance issues on KDE4.

[d2kx]

Let me guess you have a r500 card !
AFAIK only r600 have performance issues on KDE4.

R580 Didn't know about R6xx+ issues.

[stardancer]

Catalyst 8.8 on 2.6.26 and 2.6.27 on Fedora 9

Fedora is in an odd state with regard to ati drivers, the default xorg-server is 1.4.99x so to install catalyst you need to downgrade mesa and the xorg-server. On top of this problem, I require a 2.6.26 or higher kernel in order to avoid some of the problems in 2.6.25 with my network card (iwl4965) and some usb-audio realtime timing issues. Unfortunately, Catalyst didn't support kernels higher than 2.6.25 until now so I have been without 3d for months. Thankfully, the 8.8 drivers do support kernel 2.6.26 and, with a little hacking, 2.6.27.

I won't repost everything here but click on these links if you are interested in how I got:
Catalyst 8.8 on kernel 2.6.26 with fedora 9
or Catalyst 8.8 on kernel 2.6.27 with fedora 9

Hope someone finds my hacks helpful

[energyman]

emm, there are simple patches in the wild to make the 8.7 driver work with 2.6.26

[stardancer]

emm, there are simple patches in the wild to make the 8.7 driver work with 2.6.26

*shrug* 8.8 works with 2.6.26 out of the box. It is also a pain to recompile the kernel on Fedora which I think some of the patches seemed to require. In any case, vive le Catalyst 8.8 which is what this thread is about anyway.

[seeker010]

Fedora is in an odd state with regard to ati drivers, the default xorg-server is 1.4.99x so to install catalyst you need to downgrade mesa and the xorg-server. On top of this problem, I require a 2.6.26 or higher kernel in order to avoid some of the problems in 2.6.25 with my network card (iwl4965) and some usb-audio realtime timing issues. Unfortunately, Catalyst didn't support kernels higher than 2.6.25 until now so I have been without 3d for months. Thankfully, the 8.8 drivers do support kernel 2.6.26 and, with a little hacking, 2.6.27.

I won't repost everything here but click on these links if you are interested in how I got:
Catalyst 8.8 on kernel 2.6.26 with fedora 9
or Catalyst 8.8 on kernel 2.6.27 with fedora 9

Hope someone finds my hacks helpful

I'm not sure why AMD refuses to provide drivers that support Xorg 1.4.99 considering Nvidia has for months. Sure nvidia has their own set of problems, notably for 8xxx series and up, but for the most part it's still a lot less hassle to get working 3d support, open source or not. and that's really the bottom line, getting things to work, where AMD still fails.

[grantek]

I'm not sure why AMD refuses to provide drivers that support Xorg 1.4.99 considering Nvidia has for months. Sure nvidia has their own set of problems, notably for 8xxx series and up, but for the most part it's still a lot less hassle to get working 3d support, open source or not. and that's really the bottom line, getting things to work, where AMD still fails.

If you want things to "just work", why are you insisting on using a prerelease version of xorg?

[energyman]

If you want things to "just work", why are you insisting on using a prerelease version of xorg?

and think about the fact that only one distribution does this ...

[Inkaine]

My experience on this month's release on a Radeon 3200 (AMD 780G chipset):

DVD videos are choppy when in fullscreen mode. In 3D games (linux native, opengl) I often get pauses, with the game standing still for 1 to 2s. Especially annoying in online games. :-( My CPU loads stays the same all the time so its definately a graphics problem with both. All is fine again after going back to 8.7.

The wine problems also still exist. (The virtual desktop hack in xorg.conf only partially works) In other words, I'll pass and have successfully reverted back to the working 8.7 drivers. Hope these issues will be fixed in 8.9.

[bridgman]

The choppiness seems to have something to do with the PAT (Page Attribute Table) option which seems to be enabled by default in 8.8 (at least that's what I'm seeing other users say) but which doesn't seem to work well on some systems. I think the "nopat" boot option (IIRC) might get rid of the choppiness.

I think PAT support first appeared in the 2.6.26 kernel.

Check posts 101-104 in this thread.