AMD Catalyst 11.7 Driver For Linux Brings...

As has been pointed out in the forums, the AMD Catalyst 11.7 Linux driver for Radeon and FirePro graphics hardware has been released this morning. What new features does this proprietary driver bring?

Well, it does bring support for the Linux 2.6.39/3.0 kernels. The Linux 2.6.39 kernel is at least being reported to work with Catalyst 11.7 driver after in previous releases needing to apply a patch for the kernel. The Linux 3.0 kernel should also work with this driver, fortunately, making it possible to use under Ubuntu 11.10 (Canonical isn't upgrading to xorg-server 1.11, so the core requirements should now be met) and other recent distributions.

Besides the kernel support, what else is there? Well, as usual, the Linux change-log for the Catalyst release is missing. Fortunately, I do know some of the other changes delivered in the July Catalyst Linux update.

The only proper new "feature" is support for PowerXpress GPU switching when using an AMD IGP and an AMD discrete graphics card. This is just dealing with switching between integrated and discrete graphics when both of them are being controlled by the Catalyst / fglrx driver. This unfortunately is no good if you're hoping to switch between Catalyst and the open-source Radeon KMS driver or with discrete/integrated graphics from other vendors.

There is a fairly nice number of bug-fixes in Catalyst 11.7. Among the fixes are for CrossOver, output lag, corruption when applying RandR 1.3 transformations, various PowerXpress system fixes, and mouse pointer positioning problems on rotated screens.

That though about wraps up the Catalyst 11.7 Linux release (the fglrx 8.87 release stream). It's nice to see the Linux 2.6.39/3.0 support finally and the proper PowerXpress support will be welcoming to some consumers. The x86/x86_64 Linux driver can be fetched in this forum link.