The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux

[robegue]

The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux

It seems that the article talking about ati/amd linux drivers is very unfair: he says "ok, nvidia has been ahead for long time but now ati is going to get it!"
I personally think that every user needs good drivers, and that you can not leave the people with a buggy version (8.28 for the Mobility Radeon 9000) of the drivers only to proceed faster in the competition. That's not fair. I don't care to have monthly updated drivers if they continue to have bugs and instabilities (distorted overlay on tv, buggy xgl, no aiglx, etc...).
Nvidia demonstrates to care about linux user providing support for newer and for older card (legacy drivers) too. Few releases but good.
I will never buy any ati card in the future.

[mrtom852]

I'd hate to work for the driver development team if they have to get permission (and it to take weeks) just to talk about my team's development methodologies/cycle.
Why all the hype over the last month(s)?

[sundown]

Oh come on, Phoronix went down just as I was starting to read the article.

[Michael]

Oh come on, Phoronix went down just as I was starting to read the article.

Our admin/host decided to throw in the towel... Phoronix will be back up shortly.

[niniendowarrior]

I... can't... read... the... article...

Wouldn't it be nice if it was posted on a forum thread? I just want to read it... bad.

[Michael]

I... can't... read... the... article...

Wouldn't it be nice if it was posted on a forum thread? I just want to read it... bad.

Should be back up soon... didn't expect to have the server problems today that we had.

[brokencrystal]

Gotcha

"However, as was mentioned earlier, the ATI/AMD driver still has a number of issues that need to be (and will be) addressed when it comes to the driver's performance, AIGLX support, and a number of other different "gotchas"."

AIGLX support? I was hoping this would be discussed further in the article... Are they working on this? If so, when can we expect it? Do they care about this very important feature? This is why I still use NVIDIA in my desktops. My two Dell notebooks came with ATI, yet I cannot run Beryl on either of them without using XGL! Hopefully this is taken care of before I buy my next two notebooks in November because otherwise, my next notebook will be loaded with Intel or NVIDIA.

Sorry ATI/AMD... It's nothing personal and it's not your hardware... I just need my AIGLX.

[Michael]

"However, as was mentioned earlier, the ATI/AMD driver still has a number of issues that need to be (and will be) addressed when it comes to the driver's performance, AIGLX support, and a number of other different "gotchas"."

AIGLX support? I was hoping this would be discussed further in the article... Are they working on this? If so, when can we expect it? Do they care about this very important feature? This is why I still use NVIDIA in my desktops. My two Dell notebooks came with ATI, yet I cannot run Beryl on either of them without using XGL! Hopefully this is taken care of before I buy my next two notebooks in November because otherwise, my next notebook will be loaded with Intel or NVIDIA.

Sorry ATI/AMD... It's nothing personal and it's not your hardware... I just need my AIGLX.

Unofficially, it should be here by the end of the year.

[brokencrystal]

Unofficially

Unofficially, it should be here by the end of the year.

Unofficially, SWEET!

[niniendowarrior]

It's an interesting article to say the least. How AMD manages to say something without saying anything...

The development cycle is definitely a good read as it's interesting to see how they manage to pull out driver releases every month. It's also a bit funny because there's always too little to say for every driver release. How many times have we seen maintenance releases? Funny in a strange way that these maintenance releases managed to ruin my Linux box.

I do think that perhaps AMD need to pull out a two month release cycle instead and have more time to work on that particular driver for say, improving speed of their drivers. Knowing how ATi build drivers does not change the fact that their drivers still aren't good. My demands are simple. Performance, performance, performance.

I feel AMD seems almost apologetic about the whole ordeal. Like: "We know they aren't good but please understand why..."

In all honesty, I still don't like their drivers and I don't know when I will be happy with them. The document surely details on simple sense what they do, but I don't feel like giving them a pass. Knowing they are pouring more effort in the drivers is a good thing, but I wonder where the effort is going. Is it going to making sure there's a driver every month? I think they can make a better impact on a per driver release if it spends a tad bit more time on development.

Just my two cents.