AMD Catalyst 12.6 For Linux Disappoints

Following the changing of the Catalyst release schedule and dropping old hardware support, Catalyst 12.6 for Linux has been officially released. However, it's already disappointing some Linux binary driver users.

A Catalyst 12.6 Linux beta was publicly released at the beginning of the month but now has been succeeded by a stable release for Linux and Windows.

In this forum thread are complaints building up already about this driver. Issues seem to be the driver being advertised as supporting the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 (R600/R700) series when that isn't the case. For users running supported hardware, some of them are getting the notorious unsupported watermark logo (at least it's something new to complain about in the foruns rather than the long list of other outstanding issues).

As usual, AMD isn't publicly release any Linux driver release notes. In fact, the limited information they put out on this driver is what still advertises it as working on R600 and R700 GPUs. Anyhow, the Phoronix overview of Catalyst 12.6 notes:

- Application profile support.

- The R600/R700 support is dropped but there will be a legacy driver update with X.Org Server 1.12 support. Don't be surprised if you see this in July.

- Linux 3.4 kernel support.

- Various bug-fixes.

- There's no work in this driver on the XvBA video issues.

That's about it, the Catalyst 12.6 / fglrx 8.98 release stream for Linux is mostly bug-fixes and other minor work but nothing too jaw-dropping.

Find the Linux x86/x86_64 download link here.