Arch Linux Revolts Against ATI Catalyst Driver

[grantek]

Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings", Arch is "Linux for computers and people who aren't afraid of them". Having said that, I use Ubuntu because I'm a long-time Debian/dpkg fan and I haven't had a reason to install a new OS on my computer since I first loaded up Ubuntu

[susikala]

So, if Mark Shuttleworth sneezes, Phoronix does an article on Ubuntu. For Arch to get an article, they need to do something controversial like treating Catalyst like a second-class citizen?

Last I checked, Ubuntu had over 2000 hits per days on Distrowatch. Arch Linux is apparently barely at 600, that's the difference for you.

[alec]

At current stage, I don't care much about 3d performance. So the moment radeonhd has working powerplay, I'm switching.

Arch64+fglrx, compositing SLOW

[jeffro-tull]

So, if Mark Shuttleworth sneezes, Phoronix does an article on Ubuntu. For Arch to get an article, they need to do something controversial like treating Catalyst like a second-class citizen?

Anyways, I can't say that I blame them. I haven't used Catalyst in over a year (wait, no. I haven't use Catalyst period. I haven't used the fglrx kernel module in over a year), but I remember quite vividly jumping through hoops and/or waiting a couple months and/or downgrading distributions to get it to work. If the situation hasn't changed (regardless of whatever work they've been doing), then I can't blame the Arch dev's for not wanting to deal with it.

[Redeeman]

spectacular would be a fglrx binary driver that works as expected

Who knows.. you might find someone that bets on such things.. i'd say you should get about the same odds as that bet about elvis falling down on the empire state building..

[Kano]

spectacular would be a fglrx binary driver that works as expected

[remm]

you're the one who's making ME laugh

Apparently, you are happy using a proprietary binary driver that never actually worked that well for me. So that does not work for me, I want a good free driver.

Besides, there's a limit to the level of arrogance I can tolerate from people, if you see what I mean ...

[kensai]

What Arch is doing is not that spectacular, see Fedora, etc. refusing to let the driver settle in their repositories. The driver was always available by 3rd-party-repositories or other sources, now Arch created the same situation.

Of course is spectacular, Fedora has always rejected closed source applications. We have never done so, a lot pf us use closer source applications when they are better than the open source implementation. I do not use Windows, because it is not better than Linux, but I do use nvidia driver and ati driver because they are better than the open source version. Still in the case of ATI, they are a pain to deal with, and haven't been working on non-multilib distributions since 8.12 that is two releases behind of what is currently used. So this is not a matter of politics, about we taking a stance against closed source like fedora, is taking a stance aginst closed source applications that does not want to play fair with Linux.

[iVistux]

Not that spectacular

What Arch is doing is not that spectacular, see Fedora, etc. refusing to let the driver settle in their repositories. The driver was always available by 3rd-party-repositories or other sources, now Arch created the same situation.

Unfortunately the proprietary driver is not good for everybody, but its stand is still better then years ago, he's made for people buying Linux-Notebooks from Dell or users using a FireGL/Pro. Fedora/Arch/Gentoo are often too bleeding edge for this driver.

[kensai]

I do care about this drivers...

Well, the news were well laid out by phoronix, is true I started ranting about the quality of this drivers. Since I can, because I own an nvidia and an ati card. In both machines I use Linux, and have never had trouble with nvidia, on the contrary with ati, even if the driver has become better, it is still too buggy. But, the things that were omitted were when I said, I do cared about the drivers:
Feb 25

PS: I do use this drivers, so I do care about them, but this is a choice that had to be made.

Feb 26

My reason for it to go to community is so a TU can dedicate attention to it, Andreas does not want to waste time on fixing this drivers as theyare of no particular interest to him.

OK, I'm in a bit of a puzzle right now. As I have just installed the 9.2 catalyst in arch64 and tested them all running fine.

Here, the symlinking problem was the only thing still bugging me.

After thinking it all over, I don't want Arch users to feel
uncomfortable or affected by our decisions on this, I am all in for lets make things work so the user benefit at the end. So I am up for
reconsideration of this.

Mar 1

Yeah, I tried to find a solution of how to work this out and keep catalyst at least in community, but it seems, ATI/AMD just aren't doing a thing to improve the situation. Yet, this package is so important for some users of Arch Linux that a TU should be the one in charge of them.

You see, I have tried, but in the end there is nothing I could do, but to start all over again and thing, this should be removed from the official repositories.

- Cheers

Eduardo "kensai" Romero