Why is ATI ignoring?

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  • Spitfire
    Junior Member
    • Dec 2007
    • 32

    Why is ATI ignoring?

    Hello everybody!

    I've chosen to write here, as I hope also ATI is reading the Phoronix Forums from time to time. I'm using Kubuntu 8.10 64 bit with ATI Catalyst 9.1 x86_64 Driver (updated today). I think the ATI drivers are really great compared to the state they were when I bought my first ATI graphic card. This was when ATI announced their new open source strategy. Since that time I was not able to play any game in wine. There was a issue regarding the blank/black screen after CTRL+ALT+BACKSP / Logging off, which was told to be fixed, but affected me until Q4 2008. I reported this issue to ATI by mail, but I didn't even get a default response like "Thanks for contacting, we will write you as soon bla bla bla...". Okay, this is fixed now, never mind.

    But the other issue is still a pain in the ass, and I don't feel like ATi is interested in fixing this. Why can't I still play any game in Wine? (Serious Sam 2 works pretty "stable", but I got one freeze already after 3 hours of game play, so I still say no game is working) I tried loads of games, and the one I try every time a new driver is released is Counter Strike 1.6 through Steam. This _always_ worked for me using NVIDIA cards, and never did using ATI cards.

    Look here: http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1163
    And here: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12929
    Looking at "known issues" here https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206...t_91_linux.pdf ATI doesn't even accept this as a problem. Don't they talk to wine developers? They are seriously willing to help wherever they can!

    The bug from winehq is opened since mid 2008 and is still not fixed nor addressed by ATI as it seems. I tested Sacred 1, Sacred 2, EVE Online, Counter Strike 1.6, Counter Strike Source, Serious Sam 2, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 1 and none of them worked (All of them work on NVIDIA)! The workaround posted in the bug report is only delaying the freeze as it seems, after 10-20 minutes CS still freezes.

    Lots of wining here, I know, but I reported both of the issues to ATI and never got reply. So what am I supposed to do? Sit and wait? This is my last call for attention before I switch back to NVIDIA (and that affects also all my "customers" which buy only computers suggested by me) I'm okay if ATI says, they accept this issue and try to fix it, but it needs more time. So put it into the "known issues" section and I'm fine. But total ignorance is not fair, is it? Ati could open a official Bugzilla, where people can get replies from ATI internals. People are willing to help, report and test.

    Sorry again for wining, I hope you can understand what I want to tell. I'm glad for your comment/replies. What can I do to help?

    Daniel
  • Melcar
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2007
    • 1515

    #2
    I remember reading something about Wine compatibility with fglrx and how it generally sucked because of a certain opengl implementation in the driver.
    As for me personally, I couldn't care less about Wine. As long as native Linux and cross platform games work fine all is good.

    Comment

    • RealNC
      Senior Member
      • Jul 2008
      • 4247

      #3
      Maybe AMD/ATI simply lacks people who have experience in Linux driver development. Maybe it's time to hire more people for this.

      Comment

      • Spitfire
        Junior Member
        • Dec 2007
        • 32

        #4
        ACK, but I _do_ care for WINE as long as there are games that don't run native or do not have any native alternative. At the moment there is simply no game that could replace Counter Strike. There are tons of Quake style games, but only two to three CS-like games, and they simply suck. I don't like the "wine-way" but what do you want to do if Blizzard/Ubisoft/EA etc. don't want to support?

        If I understand right, you mean OpenGL implementation in fglrx is done badly/wrong. Shouldn't that be fixed no matter what application for?

        And what about ATI not giving a F**K about people reporting issues, no matter what the issue is? I never had such issues with NVIDIA, so I don't know how they handle customer complaints. Is this general behaviour for ATI/NVIDIA? Maybe I just have a wrong understanding in business and customer support...

        Don't get me wrong, I don't "hate" Ati nor Nvidia, I really like the change and the improvement from ATI/AMD side. It's great to see the improvement and the support for new technologies as well as the open source engagement. It's simply the lack of personal support and feedback that pisses me off.

        Comment

        • bridgman
          AMD Linux
          • Oct 2007
          • 13186

          #5
          My understanding is that Wine was, to some extent, designed around the NVidia driver's internals (not deliberately, but as a natural consequence of using NVidia hardware for the development work) and that Wine needs some non-trivial changes to work well on other drivers. I don't think this is a question of "fixing a bug in fglrx".

          I don't believe any vendor is giving personal support for Linux, other than for commercial workstation customers. We all have people monitoring forums, and there is a bug tracker which our developers look at when trying to reproduce issues in house. I doubt that "giving a fsck" is the issue, just that you may be expecting a level of personal support which no vendor actually provides.
          Last edited by bridgman; 01 February 2009, 06:47 PM.
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          • rohcQaH
            Senior Member
            • Nov 2008
            • 819

            #6
            bridgman is right (as usual ). I frequent the wine mailing lists, and the main DX contributors use nVidia hardware. A few times, they even went out of their way to work around bugs in the nVidia drivers. No such luck for ATI cards though..

            So it really isn't just a matter of "AMD not supporting wine", but of "Wine not supporting AMD" as well.

            That being said, pointing fingers doesn't change the fact that ATI users have trouble wining some recent games. But neither does creating angry threads.

            There has been talk between some Wine guys and some AMD guys over the matter, but nothing concrete has emerged. At this point, both Wine and AMD's drivers are too advanced and it's not just an issue of fixing a simple bug here or there, getting it to work properly would need major investments on both sides. Is that going to happen? I don't know.

            Comment

            • Kano
              Kanotix Developer
              • Aug 2007
              • 7924

              #7
              @bridgeman



              I would say NV devs take care of Linux users - they can not talk about everything but they look at the issues.

              Comment

              • RealNC
                Senior Member
                • Jul 2008
                • 4247

                #8
                Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                We all have people monitoring forums, and there is a bug tracker which our developers look at when trying to reproduce issues in house.
                How can you not reproduce some of the obvious issues? Like the slow as hell window resizing in Compiz/KDE4? If the devs are using Linux, they must be observing this bug. No one even needs to report this bug. It's an obvious bug that happens everywhere. Yet they don't fix it. It's been there forever. But still no fix.

                Comment

                • Kano
                  Kanotix Developer
                  • Aug 2007
                  • 7924

                  #9
                  Maybe talk to a wine dev who knows more on the opengl 3 support status of current drivers. I certainly do not develop wine, but i have heard not that good things about fglrx + opengl 3. only very basic support compared to nvidia.

                  Comment

                  • bridgman
                    AMD Linux
                    • Oct 2007
                    • 13186

                    #10
                    Originally posted by Qaridarium
                    he.. bridgeman do not realy use linux he use it like a win98 without 3D funktionalyti...
                    he do not play games in 3D he do not use programs like Blender to make movies or games...

                    yes i belive he is a nice guy but he do not use "linux" as a desktop enduser

                    his writing style and dev style is bash like he can use lynx shell browser to browse phoronix and he programms in emacs in the "console"/shell....

                    a real geek i think...
                    Actually I'm running Vista right now. Don't tell anyone.

                    The real issue here is that I normally run the open source drivers on my Linux boxes, not fglrx. That's not a protest or anything, it's just that the Linux part of my job is primarily on the open source side.
                    Last edited by bridgman; 01 February 2009, 07:31 PM.
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