The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux

[Vakilik]

I can understand your point of view, but i'd like to say some things:
first, some time ago i would have spend several hours or days to compile, install, configure the old ati driver. it was so buggy and with very low performance that many times i was induced to drop down linux and get back to windows. some other drivers of my notebook still make me think this way. now i have to say, that after a year that i'm using on a regular basis linux, at least the drivers don't give me problems when upgrading, they don't give me great problems when using them and they don't crash as they used to do some time ago. and on this point i don't think that someone could say something.

They may not give you problems depending on what you do on your desktop, but almost everyone with a ATI brand card experiences lots of problems with the fglrx drivers. Heres to name a few, Video playback problems such as flickering, Fedora Core 7 bug which makes the fglrx driver unusable in that distribution at the moment, and its not Fedora Core's fault. Also, some people still can't even get the drivers to install for them. Oh wait, why am I saying all of this, just take a look around the forum, plenty of problems with the driver to go around.

the second thing is that amd, in my opinion has chosen to focus on a very important aspect: the full rebuilding of the video driver from scratch. it has released the new windows and linux catalyst driver and in this one i can say that there aren't so many bugs as they where in the old version. or if they are, they are well hidden. this full rebuild will took quite some time and it will only support basic features. and i fully agree with amd on this point of view: why would you add aiglx support in a driver that hasn't still the power to support it?! it would be useless to use beryl or compiz (which i prefer because it has a more delineated progress) at 10fps and with the risk to break xwindow. it is a very stupid thing to do!! and why using somthing like beryl or compiz, in the first place?! isn't linux a terminal based os?!

Alright dude, first off, they aren't fully rebuilding the driver from scratch, they're only doing the opengl portion of the driver. And as far as the new 8.37 driver, it did fix the xorg 1.3 issue, and added the new graphic setting features to Cataylst Control Center, which isn't a bad driver release, but, there are bigger issues than these, such as the video playback issue, Fedora Core 7 problems, and the dreaded performance problem. And it is pretty dreaded, take a look at the benchmarks on Phoronix, that says it all, I think its worse though to experience it than look at benchmark results haha.

And when was Linux a terminal OS? You really must not know what Linux is, Linux is what you want it to be. You want it to be a terminal OS? You can make it be that. You want it to be a kickass desktop, you can do that too. Linux isn't a terminal OS, Linux is about choices. AIGLX is a important feature, maybe not as important as the whole opengl performance problem, but its damn close, Beryl and Compiz are quickly gaining ground and becoming ever more useful everyday. Beryl and Compiz basically increase usability on the desktop, yeah, they're optional and not necessary, but they are cool to have, if you've got the hardware to run it, which doesn't take much, its awesome. There was a Phoronix article very recently about that too.

you're all right: the support isn't the one we want, the performance isn't the one we want, but i think that this time amd has taken the right path in developing the driver. maybe we'll have to wait some time for a very new feature but meanwhile we'll have a driver that is always bugfixed almost in real-time, that is easy to install in almost any distro, that is a unique version for all the platforms and that is almost developed for the newest kernel version. I think that nvidia has not this advantage. i use the nvidia drivers on a desktop and i always get mad when i have to wait some hours to build the driver

Yeah, we're gonna have to wait some more alright, if this is the same ATI we've seen for the past few years, we're never going to see anything, however, if they are indeed going to engage Linux, there will be changes. But as everyone here has said, don't hold your breath. And nVidia has a complete advantage over ATI in linux, they've got great drivers that perform very well and have all the support for the goodies. Pretty much all the problems ATI has in linux, nVidia does not. And what distro were you trying to build the nvidia drivers in? It takes like two seconds to do them, if you're doing them in Ubuntu, just load up a terminal and type apt-get install nvidia-glx or search for it in synaptic and install it. Or if you're going to compile, make sure you have the kernel headers and gcc, shut down x, then run the installer. Then you're ready to go.

[disturbedsaint]

Well, basically it's quiet simple:

I am an AMD fanboy, so preferrably I would have a desktop running and AMD/ATI chipset + AMD CPU (+ ATI GPU if no integrated graphics used).
Especially since the AMD/ATI Chipsets use less power than the Nvidia ones.

Preferrably I would be running compiz on AIGLX.

Well, since I'm not spening my cash to enjoy a +-50% decrease in performance compared to Windows and not even being able to run AIGLX I am now running my AMD CPU on an Nvidia chipset mainboard + Nvidia GPU. Bummer for AMD/ATI.

Add tot that that the new ATI GPU (R600) consumes more power than the 8800-series and there's another reason to use Nvidia a.t.m.

I don't mind to wait a little, but I waited way too long for AIGLX support (and better performance) till I bought my mainboard+GPU 4 months ago and it's still not there.

[niniendowarrior]

Excerpt:

I've nothing but respect for them with what little in the way of support and resources that ATI's management has given him over the years on the task set before him.

However...

It doesn't get their employer ANY slack whatsoever.

Why on earth should we be "thankful" for something that is precisely HALF as fast as the Windows side of things, which is known to be suboptimal in the OpenGL space in the FIRST place?

We shouldn't, really.

What you see here is a large number of VERY dissatisfied customers venting on the subject of the sources of that very dissatisfaction.

There's a lot of truth in Svartalf's response and I quoted what I felt were my thoughts on this. Well said, Svartalf.

[Licaon]

@Michael: nice article, but it does not provide anything new, except more apologies for the current state of the ATI drivers.

i did this too when i owned an ATI card (9600Pro not the fastest of the bunch, but a great card), i thought that any new release is a step closer to a better driver, i kept telling myself that the next release will bring me that 40% performance boost or those AIGLX needed features, and felt sorry when new releases fixed only some minor bugs, while the big Xvideo/tv-out/VT-switching issues were not fixed.

i've waited two and a half years for a driver that was at least on par with the Windows one, and in the end, when i did an upgrade i voted with my wallet, i bought a nVidia card.

regarding the comparison between the way ATi and nVidia develop their drivers, imho nVidia has the upper hand, in the end the many distro build scripts and the *new* control panel, the Wiki, don't compare to a driver that just works, with the proper performance; both drivers have their share of problems, if like me alot of users choose the *green* problems over the *red* ones, no amount of slides will help.

PS: ok, maybe open-sourcing the driver and providing docs will help, but thats because i believe the community cares, also thats not mentioned in any slide just on some blogs.

[yoshi314]

14:59 < egore> init on x1300 is already working?
14:59 < glisse_> yup
14:59 < egore> wow, great!
14:59 < glisse_> that doesn't requested too much time
15:00 < glisse_> many reboot and fglrx dumps
15:00 < egore> I guess the cleanup will take a lot of time ...

ohh, thank god
at last some GOOD opensource r500 driver news :]

http://dri.egore911.de/index.php?page=dri-devel-2007-06-01.log

btw. i recommend reading some of that list. might expose certain lies in the ati linux development model article

[Regenwald]

hi everybody,
i'm know this forum for several months and i have always just read it. but today, i've decided to register myself. i followed the other thread from the beginning (the truth about...). i really hoped that michael wrote something about opening the driver but unfortunately he said nearly nothing about it. he said something like this serveral times in an other subforum here and i really believed him. so michael, you wrote in the article that another article is going to follow this one. can you please give specific information? when will this article arrive? will he arrive?
are they opening the driver? here in germany, there were several articles about the red hat keynote in which richard promise that there will be a satisfying "solution" for the open source community. amd is just checking some judical things and that more information will follow.
do you know something about this? i don't think that this will take so much time for amd! i just can't (and don't want) believe that this is a lie.

bye

[Michael]

hi everybody,
i'm know this forum for several months and i have always just read it. but today, i've decided to register myself. i followed the other thread from the beginning (the truth about...). i really hoped that michael wrote something about opening the driver but unfortunately he said nearly nothing about it. he said something like this serveral times in an other subforum here and i really believed him. so michael, you wrote in the article that another article is going to follow this one. can you please give specific information? when will this article arrive? will he arrive?
are they opening the driver? here in germany, there were several articles about the red hat keynote in which richard promise that there will be a satisfying "solution" for the open source community. amd is just checking some judical things and that more information will follow.
do you know something about this? i don't think that this will take so much time for amd! i just can't (and don't want) believe that this is a lie.

bye

AMD is actively working on improving their drivers and showing their seriousness to Linux users. I feel confident by the end of this year things will get extremely interesting and you will see.

There is no time frame other than when AMD authorizes more information for release by Phoronix, or at the very latest on the day when the drivers are released / AMD issues a press release.

[Regenwald]

ah ok, first of all, thank you for your answer.
when i read such articles, i'm very glad that i sold my ati-card and bought a new nvidia. but good drivers are essential for games etc. without such drivers, there will be never good games or professional software such as autocad and so on f?r linux. and that's what makes me sad/mad.

[Michael]

For those of you that don't know, Phoronix does also accept editorial articles for publishing, if you are very vocal about AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel drivers.

[Svartalf]

btw. i recommend reading some of that list. might expose certain lies in the ati linux development model article

Heh... It's not surprising, really. The PR spin would be that they DID, in fact, hand out adequate information. The reality, however, would be at least a little different from that, knowing what I know about things...