October 01, 2008 -- Earlier this year Fedora 9 was the first distribution providing kernel-based mode-setting (or KMS for short). At the time there was only a kernel mode-setting driver for Intel hardware and it ended up being disabled by default. We had provided a preview of kernel-based mode-setting that showed how the system display looked when it came to the flicker-free boot experience, fast and clean VT switching, and the technical advantages this method provides over the graphics mode-setting within an X.Org DDX driver. With months having passed since our first article and Red Hat engineers working aggressively on KMS improvements for Fedora 10, we are providing another look at this technology and some of the recent advancements.

September 19, 2008 -- Last month we saw the release of the NVIDIA 177.67 Linux driver along with the 177.67 beta driver, and a 177.70 driver. In the fourth NVIDIA Linux driver release in under a month's time, the 177.76 display driver has been released. This too looks like another beta driver with more fixes in store for those with GeForce or Quadro hardware owners.

September 18, 2008 -- Last month with the Catalyst 8.8 Linux driver we finally experienced CrossFire support on Linux as well as OverDrive support. This was one of the most significant driver releases of the year, but it's now time to move on as Catalyst 8.9 has just been released. This new driver update does bring a few exciting changes: the long-awaited WINE fixes, what appears to be RandR 1.2 with accelerated rotation support, and a horde of bug-fixes.

September 16, 2008 -- When the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 were introduced earlier this year, it was wonderful. These latest high-end graphics cards from ATI had same-day Linux support through their Catalyst driver and the open-source ATI drivers had "just worked" with the RV770 series. The mode-setting support with the xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd drivers just required adding in the PCI IDs for these new PCI Express graphics cards and then the rest of the magic was provided by AtomBIOS. However, with the introduction of the Radeon HD 4600 series, not everything is working instantly with the open-source drivers.

August 29, 2008 -- With Mesa 7.1 having been released this week and the open-source R600/770 3D support just around the corner, we've taken this opportunity to see how the open-source Mesa 3D stack compares to AMD's monthly-refined Catalyst Linux Suite with the fglrx driver performs for the Radeon X1000 (R500) series. In this article are Mesa 7.1 and Catalyst 8.8 benchmarks for the Radeon X1300PRO and X1800XL graphics cards.

August 21, 2008 -- Tuesday the NVIDIA 177.67 Display Driver was released and then yesterday the ATI Catalyst 8.8 Driver came out with OverDrive and CrossFire support. Today though we are back with another NVIDIA Linux driver release. Due to fallout from the 177.67 driver, NVIDIA has replaced it just two days later with the 177.68 Beta.

August 20, 2008 -- When it comes to ATI hardware, one of the features we have been after for the longest time on Linux has been any overclocking support. Windows users have ATI's OverDrive at their disposal along with an arsenal of third-party utilities such as ATI Tool. NVIDIA also has various utilities for overclocking their graphics cards on Windows, but they also provide support for overclocking on Linux. Today though with the release of the Catalyst 8.8 Linux driver there is finally ATI OverDrive 5 support on Linux.

August 20, 2008 -- AMD had delivered same-day Linux support when launching the Radeon HD 4800 series this summer. This was a first for AMD when launching a major product revision that there was same-day support considering for the R500 and R600 (and earlier) generations it had taken months for any level of support on Linux. This was great to see and the Radeon HD 4850/4870 performance was terrific thanks to their new OpenGL driver introduced last September. Today AMD has announced another Catalyst driver release for Linux and this is arguably the most significant driver update since last October's release when AIGLX support was added. Catalyst 8.8 delivers CrossFire support on Linux, OverDrive overclocking support, adaptive anti-aliasing support, and other improvements.

August 19, 2008 -- It has been a few weeks since NVIDIA last pushed out a Linux display driver update, but this morning already they have pushed out a new update. The just-released NVIDIA 177.67 display driver doesn't introduce OpenGL 3.0 support or any other major features, but it does look to resolve a number of bugs, provide improvements to the Render extension, add official support to the GeForce GTX 260/280 graphics cards, and a number of other improvements.

August 13, 2008 -- For months we have been telling you that AMD has been preparing to release their R600 series documentation as well as opening up the source-code to two of their internal software projects used for testing new graphics processor designs prior to the availability of the actual hardware. Advanced Micro Devices has yet to release their 3D programming documentation covering the R600 series (or the brand-new RV770) nor the source-code to their two internal projects (TCore and KGrids), but following several postings in our forums over the past couple of weeks and many emails inquiring about the status, today we have a brief update to share.