AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support

[smitty3268]

Will this driver ever leave beta state?

It already has. All you have to do is go to AMD's website and look up the drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...eon_linux.aspx gives you 12.6 (non-beta)

Will there be a version that supports xserver > 1.12? Or newer kernels?

Most likely, although there is no guarantee and it probably won't be timely. It will happen when AMD's corporate partners request it.

[TobiSGD]

It's not like you won't get software updates at all...

If your system is running and you stick with your hardware, you won't need the newest kernel to support your hardware.
Sure, you might miss some features...
...but it's not like you are completely stranded. You still have the choice.

Nope, I don't have the choice. I don't have the choice to run a 3.5 or 3.6 kernel to test the latest btrfs or whatever is new in those kernels.
Because AMD thinks I don't need to.
In the past I have always recommended AMD and I use AMD in two of my machines (CPU and video). With behavior like this they have lost me as a customer for the future.

[Ren H?ek]

Nope, I don't have the choice. I don't have the choice to run a 3.5 or 3.6 kernel to test the latest btrfs or whatever is new in those kernels.[..]

My argument was:

He can stick with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for Catalyst and it's better 3D Performance, playing Nexius etc...
He can test out the newest 12.10 Beta using radeon, testing the newest kernel and it's features...

That's his choice. He can even have them on a dual boot system, if he likes.

...probably his hardware is supported in 12.04 and he won't need the newest kernels to do so.
To have the newest kernel, just to have the newest kernel, without needing/using the new features? This doesn't seem that necessary.

But if he really stumbles upon a needed new feature, he has to make his decision. With some luck, Catalyst maybe even get's updated at that time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not biased.
I'm writing this on a laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700. Support was dropped long ago and I don't have the choice any more. I have to use radeon, even for it's poor 3D performance and power management.

I just wanted to say, that his panic attack and swearing outburst was inappropriate.

[TobiSGD]

My argument was:

He can stick with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for Catalyst and it's better 3D Performance, playing Nexius etc...
He can test out the newest 12.10 Beta using radeon, testing the newest kernel and it's features...

May be possible on desktop systems. Not possible on my laptop with HD3200 that overheats with radeon because poor power management.

[oliver]

May be possible on desktop systems. Not possible on my laptop with HD3200 that overheats with radeon because poor power management.

Have you opened up a bugreport about this issue? r[36]00g development is changing almost daily, bugs are solved frequently and support improving.

I still agree AMD pulled the plug a little too soon, but with the opensource drivers being quite good and improving steadily, for anything but gaming it should be more then adequate.

[TobiSGD]

Have you opened up a bugreport about this issue? r[36]00g development is changing almost daily, bugs are solved frequently and support improving.

Yes.

I still agree AMD pulled the plug a little too soon, but with the opensource drivers being quite good and improving steadily, for anything but gaming it should be more then adequate.

Quite good? You must be kidding. Poor power management (I must re-think if you can call that management, since you have to manage it yourself with choosing a profile), no video decoding, partially only 30% of the performance of Catalyst. If that is quite good I want to see what you would call bad.
radeon for me (and many other laptop owners) is unusable and an unusable driver is definitely not "quite good".

[Mi7ch3a2el]

haha ,awesome!humor...

[froyo]

Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (RV635) - Elitebook 8530p

Today I took the plunge, I tried to drop catalyst for the open source radeon driver (upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10). I did some testing in previous years and month, and radeon never fully convinced me (unstable, power consuming, underperforming). Today's experience completely confirmed my disbelief in the radeon driver: for laptop users it simply does not work. Power consumption is incredibly high, the temperature reaches inacceptable levels. Under the "low" profile both issues get a lot less proplematic, but then random xserver crashing make my live miserable.

The irony is, that I bought this laptop because I wanted to support the AMD open source driver strategy and hoped for quick OS driver support. Now I am stuck without a working OS nor a propietory driver (well, an xserver downgrade works for the moment to get an old catalyst running again).

What did I learn from this exercise: For laptops buy INTEL only. For this usecase you need stability and low power consumption, but less so performance. I am looking forward to my Lenovo X1 Carbon to arrive in the next few hours. I will give the AMD OS strategy another try in about 4 years earliest.

[mitcoes]

Try ?egacy driver from PPA

I am using the AMD legacy driver from PPA and it works fine, from XFCE you must run with sudo the amd center from the console, but is a geat solution for us, no improvements, but still does it job

[froyo]

I am using the AMD legacy driver from PPA and it works fine, from XFCE you must run with sudo the amd center from the console, but is a geat solution for us, no improvements, but still does it job

As mentioned in my message, I am using the very same PPA. I was thinking more about the future, when the cost of downgrading or being stuck with an outdated distribution will be getter higher and higher.