AMD Releases Catalyst 13.2 Beta 6 For Linux

[przemoli]

The drivers are so great that they do not even fix the issues mentioned in the changelog. I mean everybody can read:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/rn_ln_cat13-2_beta.aspx

"[369298 ]: Resolves a Serious Sam 3 launching and corruption issue with Ubuntu 12.04/12.10 and AMD Radeon? HD 7000, 6000 Series GPU"

First of all it also affects HD 5000 and there nothing was fixed - i dont have got HD 6000/7000, but i doubt it was fixed there - did anybody try? Second that driver requires that you do:

rm -rvf ~/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Serious\ Sam\ 3/Temp/ShaderCache/

In order to be able to start Serious Sam 3 at all...

You claim you can read, and you still complain about bugs in 5000 when new release claim only fixes for 6000/7000 ? Nice job!

[ChemicalBrother]

You claim you can read, and you still complain about bugs in 5000 when new release claim only fixes for 6000/7000 ? Nice job!

You claim you're so much better than him, but you don't see, that the bug wasn't fixed for 6000/7000 cards? Nice job!

Btw. I have a 6670 and the bug still exists.

[Gps4l]

Which is actually great.
I didn't realized AMD provides frequent (public) beta drivers lately.

We most likely have Valve to thank for this.

Judging from the steam for Linux forums, AMD is loosing Linux customers fast.

Which makes me sad, but I totally understand why.

I estimate it took AMD to support my 5750 on linux over a year after the card was released.

Building my pc all amd, because they support opensource, I think you can understand my disappointment.

It even almost drove me away from linux.

The good news started for me with openSUSE 12.2, I installed that about 6 months ago.
The opensource driver had 3D, and the catalyst was at least working right.
With 13.1, I noticed an big improvement on TeamFortress 2.

[kwahoo]

You claim you're so much better than him, but you don't see, that the bug wasn't fixed for 6000/7000 cards? Nice job!

Btw. I have a 6670 and the bug still exists.

True. (I have 6670 too)

[ChrisXY]

Wanted to see if they fixed multiscreen issues with amd enduro. It segfaults X.

[   181.497] (EE) Backtrace:
[   181.497] (EE) 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x36) [0x58a0c6]
[   181.497] (EE) 1: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x18df19) [0x58df19]
[   181.497] (EE) 2: /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x7f17aa3a3000+0xf1e0) [0x7f17aa3b21e0]
[   181.497] (EE) 3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so (xclIn32+0x0) [0x7f17a74179c0]
[   181.497] (EE) 4: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so (xilReadReg32_R600+0xe) [0x7f17a75c446e]
[   181.498] (EE) 5: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so (xdl_xs113_atiddxPxScreenInit+0xa4) [0x7f17a758a714]
[   181.498] (EE) 6: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so (xdl_xs113_atiddxScreenInit+0xdb9) [0x7f17a7567ae9]
[   181.498] (EE) 7: /usr/bin/X (AddScreen+0x85) [0x438055]
[   181.498] (EE) 8: /usr/bin/X (InitOutput+0x3f3) [0x479993]
[   181.498] (EE) 9: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x266e6) [0x4266e6]
[   181.498] (EE) 10: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7f17a922fa15]
[   181.498] (EE) 11: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x26c0d) [0x426c0d]
[   181.498] (EE) 
[   181.498] (EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x70180

I wonder on how many machines they test fglrx/catalyst before they put it on the website. Sure, it's a beta, but there is nothing to test here. Considering all the bugs the releases are the betas and the ones labeled beta are alphas.

[Rigaldo]

Pff .. Still get a black screen like with the previous beta... It weird, I've never met this before. When Xorg start it flickers the screen and it goes off for a moment and then on again. That's what happens now, except it stays off.. :|
I tried "startx" from recovery mode and got something along the lines of this "no screens found"(more than that, but I don't remember it all now). Had to revert to 13.1 obviously...

[moony]

I've installed -beta6 on Ubuntu 12.10, x86_64. With previous versions of catalyst, bigpicture was broken and caused immediate segfaults. That's fixed for me with -beta6. Also sam3 runs smooth for me (had to clear the shader cache once).

[mibo]

I've installed -beta6 on Ubuntu 12.10, x86_64. With previous versions of catalyst, bigpicture was broken and caused immediate segfaults. That's fixed for me with -beta6. Also sam3 runs smooth for me (had to clear the shader cache once).

What graphics card do you use? Is the texture flickering of shadow areas gone?

I stopped playing SS3 because with my 5850 and Catalyst 13.1 the flickering was so annoying.

[Vim_User]

You do realize this is an unpolished BETA driver?

And this affects the supported kernel versions in which way? Do you think when it is released it magically will support newer kernels?

In any case, wait until your distro pics it up.

Nope. My distro does not have this driver in its repository. And will never get. I don't see why they even should. It is the job of AMD's driver developers to deliver a driver that works at least oin the current stable kernel, they get paid for this. It is not the job of some random distro maintainer to do this.

Complaining just to complain and wanting and nVidia card isn't helping anyone.

I am not complaining just to complain. I am complaining to make people aware of how shitty AMD's "great Linux support" is in reality and let AMD people (that frequent this forum) know that I am not willing to ignore that. Of the three computers I am currently using two are AMD only, AMD chipset, AMD CPU, AMD video solution.
With their pathetic driver policy they have actively drove me away from supporting them in the future and I want them to know that.

Yes, AMD hasn't got the 'perfect' always working awesome installer

Usually the installer works fine, if you don't use the "build a package for my distro" feature.

and usually is behind in kernel releases

You must be kidding. Again, they are officially supporting no kernel higher that 3.5 with their drivers. only that 3.5 (and its successor 3.6) are already EOL, so that the latest supported kernel is 3.4, released in May 2012. So they are 9 months behind, while Nvidia had already support for 3.8 before it was even released.

But also, package maintainers pick up this slack and do the hard work for you.

No, they are not doing the hard work for me. They are doing the hard work for the AMD developers, that actually get paid for that, but either are too lazy or incompetent. I prefer that the software I use, drivers inclusive, is as close to upstream as possible. If upstream decides that the distro maintainers should do the work that actually is upstream's work (therefore multiplying the work) this means to me that upstream is not willing to properly support Linux and its customers. Simple, they don't support me, so why should i give them my money?

Personally, I say take your nVidia card and shove it into some "We don't care about libre-software" nVidia hole.

Nope, I will take the Nvidia card and shove it in the "I care to use all parts of the hardware I paid hard earned money for on my distro of choice"-hole.
If you want you can use your libre drivers that never will support all parts of the hardware you bought and give you sub-par performance. Or use their proprietary drivers that limits you to older software, unless some other people do AMD's work.

As a gentoo (and occasional Ubuntu) user, I have used the binary blobs since my 9500Pro and haven't had huge issues.

Of course, if you don't care about having drivers that have to be patched to actually support your system instead of drivers that just work as they should you won't have problems.

I have said that several times and I will repeat that here once more: AMD, you are already short on money. This will not get better if you piss of your existing customers, so don't do that. For me, with their current driver policy, AMD is dead. They won't get my money anymore. if they at some time in the future decide to change that policy I possibly will re-evaluate this decision, but I doubt they will.

[moony]

What graphics card do you use? Is the texture flickering of shadow areas gone?

I stopped playing SS3 because with my 5850 and Catalyst 13.1 the flickering was so annoying.

It's an AMD Radeon HD 7850M (ASRock VisionX).

I'm not aware of any flickering; what settings do you use, then I can try the same?