AMD's New Catalyst Driver Is Available To All Linux Users

[ciuino]

Don't work with Kubuntu 14.04 x64 Kernel 3.13.0-1

This time too gives me error while trying to compile the kernel... i have Kubuntu 14.04 x64 kernel 3.13.0-1, someone managed to solve?

[Kano]

I added the 3.13 patches from the Debian fglrx-driver 13.12 package to the fglrx-driver package from SteamOS, but thats not installable in Ubuntu. Feel free to fetch just the patches from the debian.tar.gz.

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/fglrx.wheezy/fglrx-driver-13.11~betav9.9/

[zoomblab]

I complain about catalyst all the time. However, I find some posts here unrealistic. Kernel 3.13 is not even officially released yet. And no I wouldn't demand AMD to care about my distribution packaging. On the other hand I absolutely expect cross distribution binaries from amd.com and support of officially released kernel, xorg, etc. It would be nice to not have to wait a couple of months after an ubuntu release to get a non-beta driver.

[GreatEmerald]

So, here is a question: I have been out of the Linux game for the past 3 years and when I left AMD looked like they would have working OS drivers in the next one or two years.; why are these closed drivers still neccesary? Are the OS drivers done yet? If so; what's taking so damn long?

The closed drivers still have slightly more performance (thanks to things like game-specific hacks that would not fit a clean codebase of the FOSS drivers) and support for higher versions of OpenGL (since bits of OpenGL support are still missing in Mesa core). And there are some edge cases, like OpenCL working better with the blob, or UVD 1 not being implemented in the FOSS drivers yet (though neither is the UVD in the blob usable). But overall the benefits of using the FOSS drivers outweighs the benefits of using Catalyst, in my opinion.

That's if talking about r600g, for radeonsi (GCN cards) there are more problems due to it still being a new project and things are relying on very experimental things like Glamor and recent LLVM versions. But the progress there is pretty fast and it's already usable, if not quite on par with the closed driver.

[przemoli]

Biggest weakness of AMD is showing itself right now.

AMD is just to small.

They got great tech for consoles? They had not enough $$ for production technology to make it all-round-nice.
They got great idea bout 3D API? They had not enough ETF (Engineering Task Force ;P ) to make it into all supported Catalyst platforms.
They got great sound solution? Actually its nice, and I can not see much drawbacks here. Nice job! (However one could always argue that there is never enought lib support )
They got console deals? PC clones got a bit abandoned (with Linux taking biggest hit in Catalyst, radeon grew nicely).
They got nice OpenCL gpu's? But not enough ETF to make good compilers/middleware.

And now they play catch up with SteamOS.

That may sound like bashing (and it is), but it also signal how much success AMD have recently... Like too much
And there is always good news:

If product sell nicely You have more $ for developing it more.

(And lets not pretend that world without AMD would be better. There is no competition to Nvidia in high-perf GPU market but that one company. And right now they are revolutionazing 3D space, as only they have opportunity and necessity (Nvidia turned support of "old ways" into strenght. Intel do not have that much advanced APU alternative, and they are interested in DX right now.)



Anyway, those that Catalyst use some new binaries? If so, when radeon drivers will be updated?

[Femto]

The driver is not compatible with Ubuntu/saucy... Like the previous version, and like the 3.12... Again... :/ How many time Saucy users have to wait for having our version ? ><

[molecule-eye]

Yeah, I can't install these on Ubuntu 13.10 running kernel 3.12.6. When trying to build the packages I get the error:

Package build failed!
Package build utility output:
cat: /tmp/pkg_build.out: No such file or directory
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.UALTBM

Another leap forward by AMD.

[pingufunkybeat]

So, here is a question: I have been out of the Linux game for the past 3 years and when I left AMD looked like they would have working OS drivers in the next one or two years.; why are these closed drivers still neccesary? Are the OS drivers done yet? If so; what's taking so damn long?

There ARE working FLOSS drivers for all available hardware. For older hardware (r700 and below) they are pretty much feature-complete too. They are stable, support pretty much everything, and on older hardware often perform almost as fast as the closed blob. For r700 and below, there is really no reason to use the blob anymore. Pre-SI hardware (HD5xxx and HD 6xxx) is also well supported, but a few of the advanced features are missing, and OpenCL support is spotty.

With newer hardware, the drivers are OK, but still a bit rough around the edges. The Catalyst team has had a head-start of several years, and they have far more manpower. Also, some advanced functionality (needed for OpenGL 4+) still needs to be added to Mesa, so ALL free drivers are waiting for them (Intel, nouveau and radeon). So there are drivers, but they have not yet reached parity with the closed blob.

The closed-source drivers are just the Windows drivers with some Linux bits added to them. AMD will not discontinue them because, well, they need Windows drivers.

[molecule-eye]

Yeah, I can't install these on Ubuntu 13.10 running kernel 3.12.6. When trying to build the packages I get the error:

Package build failed!
Package build utility output:
cat: /tmp/pkg_build.out: No such file or directory
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.UALTBM

Another leap forward by AMD.

Ok, so I managed to get them to build and install. Performance in Dota 2 is the same--crap. Performance in L4D2 is hard to judge. There's finally no input lag and net_graph 1 shows an fps between 80-120 but the PERCEIVED fps is more like 24. I have to do more testing to see what's up, but I'm not surprised most of the major bugs haven't been squashed.

[madjr]

maybe is better to check straight in steamOS and see if there's an improvement there first, specially with the frame rate of games.

then compare with other distros.