AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support

[bridgman]

But did you ever see prelaunch AMD OSS drivers?

Ontario and Llano both had prelaunch OSS driver support (although it was problematic on a number of systems until the new DP bridge chips were figured out), and Trinity support has already been pushed.

[Kamikaze]

If they managed to find Ubuntu they can find how to stay on 12.04 or move to Debian. I'm certain the Mint guys will be scouring the net in the coming months to snipe Ubuntu users to move to Mint13.

In some cases they've started using it because a friend recommended it. Also a lot of people don't want to read up on their OS to find out things like 'fglrx is no longer supported on newer X.Org releases' and then have to find what X.Org server release comes with the next upgrade, etc etc. They just see an update available, and click 'Upgrade'. If you're going to position your OS as a desktop suitable OS, you have to be able to deal with the masses that do this. AMD not supporting fglrx for more then a few years won't make this any easier!

Re- Linux Mint and a bit off topic - I recently put a work colleague who had a HP Pavilion dv6 laptop onto Linux Mint 12 less than a month ago (the ubuntu based one, not LMDE), and honestly I've had more problems to deal with then I expected. I had issues with repartitioning the disk in the installer infact it failed entirely at one point and had me worried (It was around the point of shrinking the NTFS I think). Then I had issues once I'd selected to install the fglrx driver (surprise surprise), I think this had something to do with the SNB architecture aswell though (I didn't look into it too much, decided to get rid of fglrx on there as the user did not play any games). I vaguely also remember the user having problems installing Chrome from the .deb on the web, and needing to install the 'xz' package to get around it... I like Mint, and use LMDE on a system at home, but I think it has a way to go in terms of "ease of use" for new users switching from Windows.

[Hirager]

In some cases they've started using it because a friend recommended it. Also a lot of people don't want to read up on their OS to find out things like 'fglrx is no longer supported on newer X.Org releases' and then have to find what X.Org server release comes with the next upgrade, etc etc. They just see an update available, and click 'Upgrade'. If you're going to position your OS as a desktop suitable OS, you have to be able to deal with the masses that do this. AMD not supporting fglrx for more then a few years won't make this any easier!

Re- Linux Mint and a bit off topic - I recently put a work colleague who had a HP Pavilion dv6 laptop onto Linux Mint 12 less than a month ago (the ubuntu based one, not LMDE), and honestly I've had more problems to deal with then I expected. I had issues with repartitioning the disk in the installer infact it failed entirely at one point and had me worried (It was around the point of shrinking the NTFS I think). Then I had issues once I'd selected to install the fglrx driver (surprise surprise), I think this had something to do with the SNB architecture aswell though (I didn't look into it too much, decided to get rid of fglrx on there as the user did not play any games). I vaguely also remember the user having problems installing Chrome from the .deb on the web, and needing to install the 'xz' package to get around it... I like Mint, and use LMDE on a system at home, but I think it has a way to go in terms of "ease of use" for new users switching from Windows.

So much trouble with Ubuntu derivative? Wow. Anaconda installer is much better tool.

[squirrl]

xbox 360

My xbox's r600/r500?? still has support though. Microsoft has been patching it for years.

[Kivada]

In some cases they've started using it because a friend recommended it. Also a lot of people don't want to read up on their OS to find out things like 'fglrx is no longer supported on newer X.Org releases' and then have to find what X.Org server release comes with the next upgrade, etc etc. They just see an update available, and click 'Upgrade'. If you're going to position your OS as a desktop suitable OS, you have to be able to deal with the masses that do this. AMD not supporting fglrx for more then a few years won't make this any easier

So take it up with Canonical to check for the affected GPUs + FGLRX combo and tell the user that they will be unable to use FGLRX with 12.10.

Really though, most people won't notice much of a change by then as the HD2-4 series actually work really well with the Gallium3D driver, so this is mostly a non issue for most users.

[Kano]

@bridgman

I am pretty sure that IVB owners will have got less problems (should be pretty similar compared to SNB). Also they can use video accelleration out of the box, any time estimation when this will be done?

[Sonadow]

All I see is this:

AMD has
- committed money to develop OSS drivers and released partial specifications of some of their chipsets for the community to work on
- committed themselves to develop OSS drivers
- a subpar OSS driver which falls behind the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver

NVIDIA has
- openly commented that they wil never touch OSS drivers

and AMD gets all the hate just because of one bolded point.


To quote one person who made this statement in the forum somewhere in the early pages:

Release the specifications and the community will do the rest

Wake up your bloody idea; AMD is doing just that. And where have the community gone? Most have hauled their sorry butt off to Nouveau and left AMD to handle the OSS driver development themselves with a tiny bunch of X developers. Look at the news postings on the website: all the effort is now on? Nouveau. Nouveau. Nouveau.

This is irrefutable proof that the OSS community whining for 'OSS drivers' are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites who only know how to TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK AND MAKE EMPTY PROMISES. The community 'will do the rest'? What a load of baldfaced LIES. Don't ever make that statement again, because you SURE ARE HELL have no intention to do so.

You want a PROPER working OSS Radeon driver? Write it YOURSELF. If you can't you have 0 right to bitch about the state of the Radeon driver.

AMD should never have opened up their drivers if this is the response they are going to get.

PS: Kudos to the devs who actually continued giving their all in the OSS Radeon driver development even after AMD released the partial specifications.

[fuzz]

I'm rather glad to see this happening. Radeon works great on my Mobility HD3650, where fglrx falls flat (with regards to stability). Hopefully this will lead to more community involvement with the open source radeon driver. Wish I had the knowledge and experience to even help with it myself, too.

[YAFU]

I had used ATI in Linux for 10 years. It has given me a lot of problems. I had already lost their support in my last x1250. Now, I am who drop AMD/ATI support. I'm now a happy user of Nvidia (GT430):

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?26270-ATI-Radeon-HD-5450-On-Linux/page10&

Works great with Nouveau + Gallium3D and with the proprietary drivers.

[Melcar]

Well this sucks a bit. Not really an issue for my laptop (RS480) since there fglrx stopped working a long time ago and the open source driver works alright (can?t game on it anymore, which is a shame). Shame for my desktop?s HD4850 though; that card still plays every new game under Windows and a lot of games under Linux (native, WINE, emulators). Don?t really use XvBA, but it is nice to have. Hell, fglrx even lets me overclock for extra performance. Good power management will also be missed. The open source driver is not that bad with that card and it can only get better.