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How do you become an AMD Catalyst Beta Tester?

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  • #21
    Originally posted by DanL View Post
    Is there an echo in here?
    Yeah, I just opened the thread and read the first post, and the answer seemed to be obvious

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    • #22
      Originally posted by bridgman View Post
      OK, let me try this one more time.

      The "beta program" started off with "real" beta drops (functionally complete, all features working but might still have bugs) but over the years we started providing earlier access into development, to the point where todays "beta testers" basically have a pipe into our upstream development builds, often getting access to code 4-6 weeks before "beta".

      You see or hear about new features in those early development builds, think they are "betas" because of the program name, and conclude that a "public beta" program would solve your problems, or at least those related to support for new kernels and X servers. When we don't give you public betas, you draw conclusions ranging from us being ignorant and incompetent to us being pawns of a certain large software company and committed to the destruction of Linux.

      Your logic is sound, but you are basing the conclusion on bad assumptions. The key point here is that public betas would *not* get you the kind of early support you want, since what would qualify as a beta is usually only a couple of weeks ahead of the final release. What you would need is "public release of early development builds" which is something completely different.

      Every additional release we create takes time away from other improvements in the driver. If you were really getting "early development build" features in the final beta releases then I agree that might be a good tradeoff, but that is simply not what would happen.

      I really believe that calls for public betas right now are missing the point, for the simple reason that they would *not* give you the new functionality you are expecting. If you focus on the real issue -- earlier support for new kernels and X servers -- I think we have more options for helping.

      Basically that's it. For the people expecting early support from the BETAs I'm sorry to say that you would be very disappointed. Those driver revision often have bugs, stuff that's broken, and even sometimes stuff that's missing.

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      • #23
        One other point is that since the upstream builds have only gone through regular development-level regression testing we simply don't *know* how good or bad they are, so "just releasing the good ones" is not an option.
        Test signature

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        • #24
          Originally posted by Qaridarium
          in windows only nonopensource software cann use this feature like POWERDVD or somsing else Comercial software with NDA and some other...
          Wrong MPC-HC supports the UVD2 decoder in windows just fine and is fully opensource.


          MPC-HC, the free, open source media player for Windows

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          • #25
            Originally posted by deanjo View Post
            Wrong MPC-HC supports the UVD2 decoder in windows just fine and is fully opensource.
            http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html
            Yeah, well, thanks to Microsoft, there really is only one video acceleration API on Windows, DXVA. You mostly only have to have your program support it and you should get video acceleration with all cards from all vendors. I guess the problem on Linux side was mostly missing someone to say "you do it this way, pronto" and everyone was free to make up their own solutions.

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            • #26
              Why not have the beta support actually open to users, so they can use a driver with the latest kernel and maybe have working support for them without having to wait a month or more for that support?

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              • #27
                because than people would complain that the beta driver locks up their box or destroyed their data?

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                • #28
                  I fail to understand what's stopping anyone from ignoring complains about a driver that says "beta - it might destroy your data and lock up".

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                  • #29
                    because the people will complain loudly and other people will use it to attack amd? it is a loose loose situation. If you ignore them, you get more flak. If you try to cater to them, you don't need betas.

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                    • #30
                      Is there a fglrx driver that does not lock up with latest kernels or some dual gfx configs?

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