Dissecting The ATI/AMD Linux Driver

As the fglrx driver has gained a variety of features over the past two years, the fglrx driver itself has grown in size accordingly. As you can see from the above graph, the number of strings contained in the present fglrx binary blob is substantially greater than a year and a half ago. While the 8.39.4 driver didn't present many end-user features, this release contained 693 new strings, which was the biggest increase in recent times. The x680 fglrx_drv.o module is the 32-bit binary blob for X.Org 6.8.x.

With there being differences between X.Org 6.8.x and 7.x especially in the Radeon X1000 series, there is of course a different number of strings in the respective binary blob. From the 8.29.6 to 8.35.5 driver the number of strings had more than doubled. Introduced in the 8.29.6 driver were Radeon X1000 "R600" TV output support, ATI Events Daemon, dynamic display support, and many aticonfig changes. Introduced in the 8.35.5 driver was the AMD Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition. Aside from the jump in the number of strings between 8.28.8 and 8.29.6, the next biggest increase (like the x680 driver) was between versions 8.38.6 and 8.39.4. The x710 fglrx_drv.so module is the 32-bit binary blob for the X.Org 7.x series.