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AMD's Legacy Driver Will Not Support X Server 1.6

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  • #31
    Originally posted by Stormking View Post
    You seem to live in a parallel universe. In my world, people just want a working driver and don't really care if it's open source or not.
    Why don't u use Windows/Mac then. Or maybe better, why on earth are u using Linux then?

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    • #32
      Originally posted by phoronix View Post
      Phoronix: AMD's Legacy Driver Will Not Support X Server 1.6

      Early this morning we shared that AMD is dropping R300 through R500 support in the Catalyst driver. Beginning with the Catalyst 9.4 release, the Windows and Linux drivers will only support the R600 and R700 series (and eventually, R800) of ATI Radeon graphics processors...

      http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzExOQ

      It's an inevitable move with a proprietary solution... However it comes a bit too soon IMHO, because the free alternative has still a long way to go before it reaches a complete expected feature set (with stability and performance).

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      • #33
        Originally posted by Stormking View Post
        Well, right now it doesn't work at all. Before that, OpenGL didn't work with WINE. And before that, there was no support for Compositing or AIXGL. And before that, it crashed on a regular basis. And before that, XVideo-on-TV-Out was broken for 18 months. Not to mention that the *whole time*, logging out or trying to switch to the console froze the whole system.
        Are you saying that you have currently have no opengl in wine, no compositing, no aiglx, regular crashes, and no tv-out? Last I checked, AMD had addressed all these issues, so what exactly is the problem? "Doesn't work at all" isn't very descriptive you see - you have no x output at all, or what?

        You seem to live in a parallel universe. In my world, people just want a working driver and don't really care if it's open source or not.
        Yes. I live in a parallel universe. It's called "reality".


        So I have to be thankful that after not being able to deliver a working driver for about five years, ATI now finally decided to do the absolute minimum to help the OSS comunity to write their own driver?
        AMD/ATI's drivers have dramatically improved in the past two years, since they properly started to support linux for the consumer. And their "minimum" help was more than OSS community was asking for.

        Next time when you buy a brand new car and something is broken, try to imagine the manufacturer promises you to fix it "next month". Five years later - your car still doesn't work - they give you some papers and tell you to fix it yourself.
        This analogy is so full of holes that not even a disused space station such as B5 could be used to plug them.

        I get that you want to rant on and vent some frustration. Fair enough. But it's time for reasonable discussion now.

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        • #34
          Originally posted by MaestroMaus View Post
          Why don't u use Windows/Mac then. Or maybe better, why on earth are u using Linux then?
          Are you serious? In your mind the only reason to use Linux is because it's free?

          Originally posted by mirv View Post
          Are you saying that you have currently have no opengl in wine, no compositing, no aiglx, regular crashes, and no tv-out? Last I checked, AMD had addressed all these issues, so what exactly is the problem? "Doesn't work at all" isn't very descriptive you see - you have no x output at all, or what?
          First, there were minor quirks like the freezing issue (no, it never got fixed for me). Then, suddenly, the video overlay did not work on tv-out, anymore. This was left unfixed for 18 months. In the meantime, "Textured Video" was introduced, what helped a little bit but was far from stable. Then, suddenly, it got disabled on the second head.

          Both got fixed, eventually, so that after 20 months I had XV on TV-Out, again. Did I mention that ATI teached me patience?

          Soon after that the driver became more and more unstable. Than the new codebase was introduced and was supposed to bring Compositing and AIXGL. Of course, it didn't work at first. But I was still patient.

          Than, support for XServer 1.5 was introduced, so that I could finally upgrade my distribution. But instead of this, fglrx stopped to work, completely. It still doesn't.

          Originally posted by mirv View Post
          Yes. I live in a parallel universe. It's called "reality".
          So in your so-called "reality", there are only mainstream Windows users and hardcore Open Source Evangelists? Nothing in between? Seems to me like a very limited "reality".

          Originally posted by mirv View Post
          AMD/ATI's drivers have dramatically improved in the past two years,
          Not for me. Instead, it got worse. Whenever something was fixed, another, even bigger problem appeared.

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          • #35
            OK, that's not a good choice by AMD. Supporting recent Xserver is not a huge work (as a driver can still usually use API's from previous versions, maybe with minor tweaks), and sometimes it's just recompiling.

            If Ubuntu R300-R500 geeks start spamming ATI support forums and channels, they will start thinking about releasing an update for the 1.6. Although Canonical is maybe crazy enough to downgrade to 1.5 just because of binary blob compatibility (if they weren't pushed by Fedora to go more with the bleeding edge stuff).

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            • #36
              Originally posted by Stormking View Post
              Are you serious? In your mind the only reason to use Linux is because it's free?
              Dodging the question by asking one yourself won't help. It still isn't polite either.

              Since you seem to mix up open source software with free, I'll explain why I think it is important to have access tot the source code of programs:
              1. It allows for debates and different views on how something should be programmed best. Professionals from all over the world and from different company's can look at the code, and debate about what's the best thing to do. I know it has a flip side, but I'll consider that necessary evil.
              2. It allows professionals to check whether is has security errors, which is very important in a world where virtually everything is connected by computers.
              3. It doesn't make you dependant. Open source software doesn't limit you to specific file types or programs that other Operating Systems can not have. This makes it possible to switch any time you like.

              Oh and one other thing, Open source software isn't free (it is, if you choose to be irresponsible). OSS will only get moving when governments/company's/users keep/start contributing to it in any fashion; whether it is by hacking themselves, or by donating money (I donate money to the Gnome Foundation if you wish to know).

              Can you answer my question now, please?

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              • #37
                I'm a bit pissed. Not because AMD are dropping support for the old chipsets, I know what it's like maintaining legacy codebases and I think it's a good idea.

                What I'm pissed about is that if they just recompiled the driver for X server 1.6 the people that want to use Catalyst 9.3 could have done so for the next 6 months at least, until the next X server upgrade hits the major distros. But now they won't even be able to use it with Ubuntu 9.04.

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                  I seem to remember you asking, on this very site, for someone to kill the fglrx driver as a favour to humanity

                  Other than 3D support (which a bunch of devs are working on now) where do you see the open source driver being deficient ?
                  I may be wrong but I think remembering I suggested to kill the driver and make the people working on it move to the open source development work.

                  Anyways I'll bounce the question back to you:

                  If I have an ATI 9600XT card, how exactly will it work? Is everything complete (excluding 3d)? Is 2d accelleration really done? Xv? etc etc etc .

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                  • #39
                    AFAIK everything except 3D is already working at least as well as fglrx. EXA, XAA and Xv are all supported, including both textured video and overlay.

                    Overlay is tear-free, not sure if textured video is tear-free today (might just be 5xx and up).

                    Video is flicker-free with compiz but the usual tearing issues apply (since with a compositor you want the compositor to sync to vblank, not the Xv driver, and that is still iffy with Compiz).
                    Test signature

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by bulletxt View Post
                      I may be wrong but I think remembering I suggested to kill the driver and make the people working on it move to the open source development work.

                      Anyways I'll bounce the question back to you:

                      If I have an ATI 9600XT card, how exactly will it work? Is everything complete (excluding 3d)? Is 2d accelleration really done? Xv? etc etc etc .
                      Why don't you try it?

                      (To answer your questions, great, yes yes and yes).

                      Comment

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