Where to start?

[Kjella]

So I finally did it, I abandoned nVidia and bought myself a HD 5850 to use as a Wintendo and to see what I can do with the open source drivers. For the latter:

a) Is it possible to get any development done using a R800 now?
b) If so, what distro/repos should I use?
c) Any suggestions for good intro beyond the AMD tech docs?

Something tells me I'm being ambitious compared to my C skills, but we'll see...

[chithanh]

See http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19446 for the current state of r800 support (in short, it is not in a very usable state yet).

I think the r800 docs have not been released yet. The sites

http://developer.amd.com/documentation/guides/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/

will probably have them first when they are released.