The New Driver Is Out! Meet Oktoberfest!

[Thetargos]

I don't care if something like this happens because they haven't enough manpower or if they are simply incompetent. I'm not interested in excuses, I want results. Meaning a driver that lets me use the features of the hardware I bought.


It's not "not surprising", it's simply unacceptable.

For the longest time (past three years, actually) I have been advocating that ATi and Linux don't mix well together. Hopefully AMD will prove us all who assumed this wrong, and start correcting the path. I can't expect miracles, but by the numbers at least one miracle has happened.

[Michael]

FYI. Working on an image quality comparison between NVIDIA and ATI in ET: Quake Wars.

[Stormking]

I'd much more understand if a linux newbie complained about hardware support, but for you veterans it's really surprising.

The poor quality of ATI's drivers was a shock for me. When I started using Linux (switching from Amiga), ATI graphics hardware was working fine under Linux. Than I had a NVidia card for some years and it was also working just fine.

So when I went buying a laptop, knowing that there was a linux driver for newer ATI chipsets was enough information for me. There was no reason to assume that it would be any different than it had always been: Working just fine. If I only had known the truth ...

[Michael]

AMD's Open-Source Strategy Explained

AMD's Open-Source Strategy Explained

Rumors and speculations have been flying around for months about ATI/AMD opening up the source-code to their Linux display driver or providing their GPU specifications to community developers. This for the most part had started after Henri Richard's statement at the Red Hat Summit earlier this year. Well, those rumors can finally be put to rest. AMD will be providing NDA specifications, an open-source library, and there is a new open-source graphics driver as a result. AMD will continue producing a closed-source proprietary driver; however, they are opening the source-code to a critical library with accompanying GPU specifications for X.Org developers. To get the ball rolling, AMD is also funding the development of a new open-source R500/600 driver.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=10979

[Alistair]

AMD's Open-Source Strategy Explained



http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=10979

Very Cool Beans -
I sincerely did not expect to have AMD/ATI drop their entire code tree on the world and call it Open Source -- (not even in my wildest) -- What I see here is that ATI is NDA'ing specific technology base information to the development community, and providing an api libary (effectively) that will allow FOSS code to issue consistent function calls to provide driver/application functionality for the display.

What I gather this will provide is that the kernel will now be able to carry a baseline working driver for R5xx R6xx chips in tree and allow that driver to follow normal kernel development process - with the eventual end result (Hopefully) being a baseline 'it just works outta da box' R500/R600 driver in kernel - if you want the bells and whistles ( perhaps as we've seen requests for XV on TV-out, or hypermemory, or extended video modes or enhanced FSAA etc etc) you go get the fglrx driver -- but at least you can build your system with a working in kernel driver first....


Now Michael, Last question,.... where's my copy of the new driver hiding???

Truely the only bit I'm missing at this point is .. when is official date/time of driver release?? I've seen 'early next week' which may work if its monday as I'll still be on vacation -- but if its tuesday I'm not gonna be happy -- my first day back after a week off is usually a 21 hour day....

[Michael]

8.41.8 will be released probably Monday or Tuesday of next week.

The baseline open-source driver will be out on September 10 (unless it changes).

[Alistair]

8.41.8 will be released probably Monday or Tuesday of next week.

The baseline open-source driver will be out on September 10 (unless it changes).

*sigh* no preview copy for me to test agp on for ya eh???

I'm impressed that they will be dropping the OpenSource driver on the 10th -- thats pretty quick -- any chance of laying your hands on that and parking it up against the fglrx stats you've accumlated for 8.41?
And how soon before its in kernel?

[Michael]

I'm impressed that they will be dropping the OpenSource driver on the 10th -- thats pretty quick -- any chance of laying your hands on that and parking it up against the fglrx stats you've accumlated for 8.41?
And how soon before its in kernel?

Expect a day full of articles on the 10th about the driver. It still needs a lot of work and a while before it's in the kernel.

[hubick]

I think it's great that ATI is enabling the creation of Free/Open drivers! This certainly means they will get my business over NVidia.

The real question now is, will they get my business over Intel? With such heavy involvement in X.org, paying employees to create Free drivers and improve global infrastructure, I think Intel is still the best long term choice for Linux users.

I would like to see reviews of the latest hardware among totally Free/Open drivers. I want to know:
- Which is the most stable and functional for the desktop.
- Who is the first to support new functionality and X extensions needed by the changing desktop (I only upgrade with my distro == every 6 months min - who is going to get features in before the distro cut-off).
- Who has the best out-of-the-box (in-the-kernel) experience. I just want to install it and forget it (and have it work).
- Is the performance adequate for plain desktop usage?
- What about if I add any effects?
- Lastly, how about gaming usage?

[Raven3x7]

BTW September 10th is the barcelona launch day aswell