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

[ua=42]

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?

Ok. The open source drivers work for everything older than the HD 7000 series without a problem and perform at about 80%+ of catalyst in speed.
The HD 7000 and newer drivers have just got caught up in terms of features and are now starting to get performance optimizations. Just recently, they found a major bottleneck in the drivers so its unknown how they currently perform as Micheal hasn't been able to perform benchmarks because of his trip.

Big cravat, not all the distro's have the powersaving and performance updates yet as they were ok for release by legal rather recently. New distro releases next year should have the powersave and video updates though.

[spartonicus]

Jumped ship from the official to this beta release. No issues installing after purging out all the old. Game performance seems a bit better, no input lag which to me was one of my biggest annoyances with the official driver. Maybe AMD is finally heading in the right direction with something?

[Sdar]

The following packages must be installed in order for the AMD Catalyst? Linux graphics driver to install and work optimally:
- gimp-help-en
- gimp-help-common
...

Why the hell Catalyst is depending on GIMP help files?

Game performance seems a bit better, no input lag which to me was one of my biggest annoyances with the official driver. Maybe AMD is finally heading in the right direction with something?

That Gimp help files works miracles.

Anyway it didn't seem to improve stability besides the resize konsole crash and maybe the Opengl Screensaver crash.

[372656] : Resolves crash when resizing Konsole
[388325] : Resolves brightness adjustment issues
[388818] : Resolves kernel module compile failure when CONFIG_UIDGID_STRICT_TYPE_CHECKS is enabled
[388335] : Avoids the new GPL symbol acpi_bus_get_device for new kernel support
[386897] : Resolves system hang on resume from S4 with OpenGL screen saver running

[LN17]

Resolved Issues:
[372656] : Resolves crash when resizing Konsole
[388325] : Resolves brightness adjustment issues
[388818] : Resolves kernel module compile failure when CONFIG_UIDGID_STRICT_TYPE_CHECKS is enabled
[388335] : Avoids the new GPL symbol acpi_bus_get_device for new kernel support
[386897] : Resolves system hang on resume from S4 with OpenGL screen saver running

These ones were fixed in 13.11 version 9.4.

[Sdar]

These ones were fixed in 13.11 version 9.4.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Latest-LINUX-Beta-Driver.aspx

So it seems the release notes of the V9.95 version are just a joke then... cause it only resolves things that are already fixed in 9.4 and add support for SteamOS that is working with the 9.5 already... and the Gimp help files at the bottom...

The following packages must be installed in order for the AMD Catalyst? Linux graphics driver to install and work optimally:

gimp-help-en
gimp-help-common

[d2kx]

Catalyst 14.1 Beta - end of January
Catalyst 14.2 Final/WHQL - end of February

[LN17]

From where do you get end of January/end of February dates ? The slide says Q1 and just 14.1 Beta.

I would be interested what the new distribution support means. (it is so general)

[GreatEmerald]

I would be interested what the new distribution support means. (it is so general)

I'd assume it's kernel and Xorg versions.

[homerhomer]

Randomly kills X11 for me.

This driver does seem to be a little snappier and my brightness quick keys now work. I was just starting to feel good about this new beta driver and then I opened up Google chrome and X11 crashed, LOL.

Looks like there's already a bug posted on this that looks similar - http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=990

I hope it doesn't take two years to fix like the brightness issue.

Come on AMD, you're almost there, prove to me that you give a crap.

[Grogan]

Another regression for me. Both Left4Dead 2 and Serious Sam 3 are back to running like shit with this new Catalyst 3.11 Beta 9.5 driver. (I played both just last night and thought to myself that I was content now) If both of those have been degraded, then probably ALL my games will hurt. I can't even be arsed. Those are games that modern hardware doesn't even slow down for in Windows. (I'm not even that modern... Radeon HD 5870 on a Core i7 3.2 GHz system, and both of those games are trivial)