ATI and Linux compatibility

[Jimbo]

You're assuming that the problems people are reporting about Evergreen under Linux are unfounded. A wide reading of the subject seems to suggest that it's far from uncommon to have issues with fglrx and Evergreen.

I think the real problem is that ati is always a little late to come with support, If you purchased an evergreen in october 2009 then really you had problems. This is a common problem with linux in general You have to know if your hardware is supported i guess a lot of problems were posted with ati were with 9.12 , 10.1. Evergreen + fglrx 10.4 + ubuntu lucid should be working fine now. If some evergreen (an experienced) user can post his comments should be fine too.

Nvidia blob is better? yes! mainly in 2d, are native opengl applications better in navidia blob than on ati blob? ummmm i would love to see a nice benchmarks.

[mugginz]

Why is that a strawman? ATi's FOSS drivers are miles ahead of nVidia's ATM, and this is closely related to the fact that ATi is not boycotting the effort, but investing money in helping it.

I should add that the reason I call it a strawman in this context is that when the discussion relates to what functionality one can expect from fglrx vs nVidia blob, and then it becomes clear that nVidia blob is vastly superior, most ATI fanbois then try to steer the argument into one of open vs closed source drivers.

If you're talking solely about open source drivers then the clear winner is ATI. If you're talking about full functionality, which is what I believe is being discussed here, then nVidia is the leader on Linux at the moment. They may change relatively soon, but that depends on AMD's development team.

To bring up the development methodology of the driver in this context seems to be largely putting the cart in front of the horse.

[Jimbo]

I should add that the reason I call it a strawman in this context is that when the discussion relates to what functionality one can expect from fglrx vs nVidia blob, and then it becomes clear that nVidia blob is vastly superior, most ATI fanbois then try to steer the argument into one of open vs closed source drivers.

Who says this post was a discussion about fglrx vs nvidia blob?

[mugginz]

I think the real problem is that ati is always a little late to come with support, If you purchased an evergreen in october 2009 then really you had problems.

Indeed. Many bought cards on the promise of good support coming along "real soon now"tm and got burnt. They watched their hardware go stale while waiting for good drivers.

This is a common problem with linux in general You have to know if your hardware is supported

Indeed and this is largely what's motivating this thread I would've thought. Someone's trying to ascertain the level of quality functionality of ATI on Linux before purchasing.

i guess a lot of problems were posted with ati were with 9.12 , 10.1. Evergreen + fglrx 10.4 + ubuntu lucid should be working fine now. If some evergreen (an experienced) user can post his comments should be fine too.

Some are still complaining of issues with fglrx and Ubuntu 10.04

Nvidia blob is better? yes! mainly in 2d, are native opengl applications better in navidia blob than on ati blob? ummmm i would love to see a nice benchmarks.

And better in 3D across a wide range of use cases as well. Wine support for fglrx seems to be improving though thankfully. Also, what's with the issues people are having with KDE4 compositing and fglrx?

[mugginz]

Who says this post was a discussion about fglrx vs nvidia blob?

Hi! I've been researching for hardware to buy a new computer. As I only use Linux but never used any ATI graphic card and a friend of mine said a while ago the combination is by any means no good, I wondered if the scenario changed over the years. Searching on internet, found AMD website FAQ, which states that "ATI Proprietary Linux driver currently supports Radeon 8500 and later AGP or PCI Express graphics products" (http://ati.amd.com/products/catalyst/linux.html#2)

You, Linux users, owners of ATI cards, would you please tell if it's possible to do the combination Linux/ATI and still play performance demanding games (on wine and natively)?

I searched but couldn't find useful and **updated** material on internet. Most of material are from past 5 years!!

Thanks in advance,
Rauss.

Given the first post is inquiring about high performance graphics I would've thought blobs were a prerequisite here.

[pingufunkybeat]

What has making your hardware work as intended got to do with open vs closed source software development methodologies.

This is a question you might want to ask on the lkml, or mozilla mailing lists, or anywhere else where Free Software is being developed.

Many of us used Mozilla even when Internet Explorer rendered webpages better.

Excactly. And where the best and complete functionality of hardware is required this is where people should look.

Fair enough.

This doesn't make a discussion about open source drivers "a strawman". ZFS is more powerful than ext4, yet many people choose to run ext4 for several important reasons:

- it works out of the box
- it works well enough without fiddling
- it is free and can thus be integrated into the linux kernel (like XFS, JFS and others, BTW)

If you want max performance, then Solaris + ZFS is clearly the way to go, but this doesn't mean that choosing an open solution is stupid, or fundamentalist. The open drivers work out of the box, and are integrated with the rest of the operating system (kernel modesetting, X+Mesa stack)

An Oracle SQL solution is superior to MySQL for many tasks, yet people are still right to use MySQL because performance is not everything.

How so? You can really care about open source software and also use closed source drivers.

You can also really care about open source software and use MS Office on Windows. It's all about how much you care.

Exactly. If you put the development methodology of your driver above the functionality you need then clearly you shouldn't buy an nVidia card.

Put another way: If you the hardware you buy and use to be secret, and the software needed to use the rest of your computer to also be a secret, then you should buy an nVidia.

And don't get me wrong -- this is a valid position.

But I think that it's also legitimate to expect documentation for something you've purchased. ATi gives this documentation, and it has led to open drivers. I appreciate that. You don't. That's fine. But I don't see why you don't understand that some of us do.

Releasing documentation is BIG. It is important. Providing basic driver code for the open source community is big. It is important. ATi is doing this, and this is FAR more important than 20 fucking FPS in a game running through Wine.

It's OK if you feel differently, though.

[Jimbo]

And better in 3D across a wide range of use cases as well. Wine support for fglrx seems to be improving though thankfully. Also, what's with the issues people are having with KDE4 compositing and fglrx?

Sorry, can you post some numbers, or benchmark page on that? I am looking at todays phoronix unigine benchmark and i like the numbers of ati.

I am using kde4.4 with compositing, an you know what? it works

[pingufunkybeat]

I should add that the reason I call it a strawman in this context is that when the discussion relates to what functionality one can expect from fglrx vs nVidia blob, and then it becomes clear that nVidia blob is vastly superior, most ATI fanbois then try to steer the argument into one of open vs closed source drivers.

nVidia's blob is better than ATi's blob.

I don't think that anyone is seriously debating this.

But we should at least be honest and not spread total bullshit. When people intentionally lie because of fanboyism, that doesn't help anybody.

ATi's blob does powersaving just fine. It does 3D just fine (VERY performant!). It is not very good at Xv and 2D in general, and not as stable as nVidia's blob. But many people are running it just fine. It's a matter of being a nuissance sometimes, not a matter of not having friggin powersaving -- what a pile of FUD that one was!

[Jimbo]

Given the first post is inquiring about high performance graphics I would've thought blobs were a prerequisite here.

You can highlight the title of the post?

[mugginz]

This is a question you might want to ask on the lkml, or mozilla mailing lists, or anywhere else where Free Software is being developed.

Many of us used Mozilla even when Internet Explorer rendered webpages better.

With so many strawmen I'm glad there are not matches around here.

Fair enough.

This doesn't make a discussion about open source drivers "a strawman".

Yes it does. The question is can he use ATI hardware for his use case and when it's shown that ATI might not be the best solution you're trying to now make it an argument about open vs closed source development strategies.

ZFS is more powerful than ext4, yet many people choose to run ext4 for several important reasons:

- it works out of the box
- it works well enough without fiddling
- it is free and can thus be integrated into the linux kernel (like XFS, JFS and others, BTW)

If you want max performance, then Solaris + ZFS is clearly the way to go, but this doesn't mean that choosing an open solution is stupid, or fundamentalist. The open drivers work out of the box, and are integrated with the rest of the operating system (kernel modesetting, X+Mesa stack)

An Oracle SQL solution is superior to MySQL for many tasks, yet people are still right to use MySQL because performance is not everything.

See above.

You can also really care about open source software and use MS Office on Windows. It's all about how much you care.

It's also about whether or not there's a viable open source solution to answer that real world problem you're trying to solve.

Put another way: If you the hardware you buy and use to be secret, and the software needed to use the rest of your computer to also be a secret, then you should buy an nVidia.

And don't get me wrong -- this is a valid position.

Yes, I believe it is.

But I think that it's also legitimate to expect documentation for something you've purchased. ATi gives this documentation, and it has led to open drivers. I appreciate that. You don't. That's fine. But I don't see why you don't understand that some of us do.

Releasing documentation is BIG. It is important. Providing basic driver code for the open source community is big. It is important. ATi is doing this, and this is FAR more important than 20 fucking FPS in a game running through Wine.

It's OK if you feel differently, though.

Releasing documentation might be important but so is trouble free hardware enablement.