Arch Linux Revolts Against ATI Catalyst Driver

[deanjo]

Off Topic: No one upgrades for the sake of upgrading. Until there is a valid reason for people to upgrade from XP (Like Microsoft ending security support) they won't move to anything new. In some cases even when that support ends XP will stay in place. I know of a place that is still using NT 4 as an interior file server and until the hardware dies they see no reason to upgrade it. That is not an uncommon situation.

That is far from the truth, if that was the case there would be no need for the retail versions nor the upgrade versions both of which sell well. What applies in the corporate/business sector does not apply in the home sector. People upgrade their OS's all the time. It happens in linux, OS X, windows, insert favorite OS here.

[yotambien]

That is far from the truth, if that was the case there would be no need for the retail versions nor the upgrade versions both of which sell well. What applies in the corporate/business sector does not apply in the home sector. People upgrade their OS's all the time. It happens in linux, OS X, windows, insert favorite OS here.

Honestly, I don't know anybody who upgraded their OS for the sake of it in Windows land. All the people I know who use a computer runs the operative system that came installed with it. Hardware is today much more affordable than some years ago so I expect this to be the general trend even more than in the past. Is it slow/have a tiny problem? Well, buy a new one (of course I don't share this way of thinking).

I don't know how well the retail versions are doing. However, the point is not whether they are doing 'well' but how do they compare to the number of OS preinstalled in new systems.

[RealNC]

Same here. I don't know a single person who upgraded to Vista. Not a *single* one. Everyone who uses Vista got it pre-installed when buying a desktop or laptop. No one upgraded to it.

[DestroyFX]

What is the problem with ATI drivers?
They don't give you the choice for no multilib drivers??

Did you know that the majority of the Linux user base use a multilib system when on x86_64?

After that, ATI are better and better on each drivers release and I tested both on my system:

Setup : Q6600 4.0Ghz, 8GB DDR2, two screen at different resolution (Xinerama required)

Nvidia 9800 GTX+ :
-I play Eve-Online full screen on my first screen and the rest of the display is laggy (laggy consoles, laggy windows....)
*No solution found, but it seem to be a problem with Xinerama : Thank Nvidia
-Sometime my X start to take 100% of one of my CPU core and the system is "frozen" until I ssh in my box to kill X
*Fix from Nvidia FAQ : start computer with maxcpu=1 or nosmp : Know problem since like five drivers release... WOW! This look so professional!... (this happen more when you use a lot of CPU power(who say BOINC?))

ATI 4870HD :
-I can play with two EVE Apocrypha (the next beta release that use heavily GLSL, and like 246 vec4s in there shaders uniform). Not only I can use two in same time with highest setting with bloom, HDR, but I can use a console and play some movies in the same time (And yes, the consoles don't lag... unlike with Nvidia cards)
-I don't have any X takeover with my ATI.

OK, for ATI, they have a bug in GLSL.. That bug is simple : the drivers did not report the good value for Varying and Shader/Fragments Uniform so OpenGL stuff that use GLSL can choke over that. ATI have this problem since more than two years and people just kept whine about that... WE (EVE-Online user wanting to get EVE Apocrypha working on ATI hardware) isolated and contourned the problem by modifying the way WINE use GLSL. I have posted the facts on the no so secret ATI bugzilla and know what? This problem is now internally fixed in AMD drivers (this took 1 week)...

You want thing working : STOP WHINING AND GO BUG REPORT (Detailed with log and any stuff useful... No whining on bugzilla please)

http://ati.cchtml.com

PS : Sorry for my bad english

[alec]

I know a few, but they didn't pay for it, pirated.

[kensai]

You want thing working : STOP WHINING AND GO BUG REPORT (Detailed with log and any stuff useful... No whining on bugzilla please)
http://ati.cchtml.com

LOL, the problem has been reported upstream long ago. I know you are an ATI fanatic, well, that doesn't help, they have bad support for Linux period. They are improving, but the improvements are so slow that it might take a few years for them to release quality drivers like nvidia, and by then, the open source ati drivers hopefully will be better than the closed source one.

Yeah, nvidia has its issues, but are not as catastrophic as ati. And we are not whining, we are telling our users that by the time xorg-server 1.6 goes to the main repository and ATI hasn't come up with a driver which fixes the issues we are experiencing, which are no non-multilib support, and the compatibility with newer xorg we will remove them. We are a true 64 bit OS, and we follow that philosophy, we have a lot of users content with that, is having that philosophy a crime? I guess not, in fact it supports better the future, which is 64 bit architecture.

[yogi_berra]

That is far from the truth, if that was the case there would be no need for the retail versions nor the upgrade versions both of which sell well. What applies in the corporate/business sector does not apply in the home sector. People upgrade their OS's all the time. It happens in linux, OS X, windows, insert favorite OS here.

It is not far from the truth, I know of people that are still using Windows 98 as their OS. Their needs are met by it, their firewalls still work as do their anti-viral solutions, they see no reason to upgrade, so they don't.

[hunterthomson]

Boy this is and old thread but I would just like to add my 2cents

I am an Archlinux Lover. I have tried many other distro's (Ubuntu being the most used and it is vary good for what it is, Bloated) but I can't stand to use them anymore now that I have gotten a tast of what a Linux OS sould be like. Anyone who has not used Archlinux should try it out. Arch dose what you tell it to do, works and "Says Working". Unlike Ubuntu that just randomly brakes 90% of the time do to all the bloated packaged that I never use and the fact that it installs Every driver known to the Ubuntu dev's. Then 6 month latter the whole bug hunt starts agin. But, Ubuntu is the best distro if you know nothing about Linux.

I messed up and thought that ATI had good Linux support. I feel like a dumbass now. ATI suport is a joke. The catalyst dosn't work in SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, which is clames to support, without major tweeking. This is no joke, the ATI catalyst is complet crap and there is no hope for it getting better.

While it sucks that the Catalyst is not supported by Arch now and is left up to the comunity. I have the AUR package installed... That was not hard. The current maintainer has it set up nice and patched to work with 2.6.29 (Though Arch will be on 2.6.30 soon). The hard part was getting it to work. I first did it in Ubuntu becuase Ubuntu is officially supported. Learnd all the tricks to get it to work and then applied what I learnd to Archlinux. Now a month and a half latter I finaly found all the tweeks and pached Xserver and all this crap to get it to work.

So, I was pissed at first but ATI needs a wake up call. Good for you Arch devs. Drop support, I don't expect you to have to deal with this POS catalyst. I am never buying ATI ever agin. I am not even going to buy AMD. I don't even care if I have to pay 10 times more for nVidia or AMD has some super cool CPU. Now, Intel that is a company to support. I love Intel as much as I love Arch

[alec]

You are being unfair to ATI/AMD
Video part of linux, xorg, 3d and 2d stuff is a mess. Yes its a progressing mess, but it only means that driver devs need to keep up with changes in the mess.

And in the end we win, because oss driver gets more attention.

[tball]

I am and Archlinux Lover. I have tried many other distro's (Ubuntu being the most used and it is vary good for what it is, Bloated) but I can't stand to use them anymore now that I have gotten a tast of what a Linux OS sould be like. Anyone who has not used Archlinux should try it out. Arch dose what you tell it to do, works and "Says Working". Unlike Ubuntu that just randomly brakes 90% of the time do to all the bloated packaged that I never use and the fact that it installs Every driver known to the Ubuntu dev's. Then 6 month latter the whole bug hunt starts agin. But, Ubuntu is the best distro if you know nothing about Linux.

I messed up and thought that ATI had good Linux support. I feel like a dumbass now. ATI suport is a joke. The catalyst dosn't work in SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, which is clames to support, without major tweeking. This is no joke, the ATI catalyst is complet crap and there is no hope for it getting better.

While it sucks that the Catalyst is not supported by Arch now and is left up to the comunity. I have the AUR package installed... That was not hard. The current maintainer has it set up nice and patched to work with 2.6.29 (Though Arch will be on 2.6.30 soon). The hard part was getting it to work. I first did it in Ubuntu becuase Ubuntu is officially supported. Learnd all the tricks to get it to work and then applied what I learnd to Archlinux. Now a month and a half latter I finaly found all the tweeks and pached Xserver and all this crap to get it to work.

So, I was pissed at first but ATI needs a wake up call. Good for you Arch devs. Drop support, I don't expect you to have to deal with this POS catalyst. I am never buying ATI ever agin. I am not even going to buy AMD. I don't even care if I have to pay 10 times more for nVidia or AMD has some super cool CPU. Now, Intel that is a company to support. I love Intel as much as I love Arch

I agree 105 % the first part of your post. I have moved to Arch recently and I love it. Especially AUR

But I don't at all have had those bad experiences with ati you got. Which gfx card do you have? My 3650 have always worked with Ubuntu, Suse and Arch without any problems installing it. Though I have had some struggle booting to X with Ubuntu without the option DefaultDepth 24.