AMD Releases Catalyst 9.6 For Linux

[super.rad]

You guys should know better by now... the first driver to support 2.6.29 or 2.6.30 will be 9.10, because thats when Ubuntu 9.10 gets released. So it will probably be a beta driver for Ubuntu. Don't expect these things earlier...

Won't be much use then as Ubuntu 9.10 will use the 2.6.31 kernel

[Louise]

Every month the little dogs start yapping. It's hilarious really.

Yes

I think Michael is writing the articles for this very enjoyment

[energyman]

Who said that and when did they say that? I never heard AMD making any promisses about future driver releases. And did you really expect that they'd support a new kernel? You guys should know better by now... the first driver to support 2.6.29 or 2.6.30 will be 9.10, because thats when Ubuntu 9.10 gets released. So it will probably be a beta driver for Ubuntu. Don't expect these things earlier...

I'm getting a bit sick of all those people whining each month. AMD did lots of work to improve the situation over the last few years and in my opinion they definately succeeded. I agree the driver is not that good as nvidia's one, but it certainly does its work in most cases. Besides that, they opened up every possible document to write open source drivers. You guys really should applaud AMD for that, really... this is a huge step and most people posting here don't seem to appreciate that.

well, I switched from Nvidia to AMD/ATI last year - because of their new open source driver politics. That is a lot applauding, in my opinion. I put my money on them.

I am in for new card in ca 3 month. Maybe 5. I am not sure if I buy the new cpu or new card first.

I will see where I put my money. AMD still has the advantage of the opensource initiative. But not supporting a kernel that is 3 month old is weak.Very weak. And before you answer, think about this:
with 2.6.30 out 2.6.28 won't get any fixes anymore. So you can either use the crappy 2.6.27 or 2.6.29, patch the driver and have dmesg spammed.

Btw, this:
[ 8540.955717] [fglrx:firegl_find_any_map] *ERROR* Invalid map handle!<3>[fglrx:drm_vm_close] *ERROR* map not found -> inconsistent kernel data!!! vma_start:0x7fedd842c000,handle:0xfdff0000

is that a real problem?

and 2.6.30 with all its improvements is completly out of question. Well, I did not expect .30 support. But support for .29 was more than due.

The opensource drivers are out of question for me. Thanks to no real power managment the fan is spinning at high speed all the time. Which means my usually quiet box becomes VERY LOUD.

Oh, and it uses a lot more power. Yeah, thanks.

[Kano]

The diff between 9-5 to 9-6 is so small that i did not even have to update pci-ids, because it does not support more cards. One of the most useless updates as it did not fix any issue for me.

[kensai]

I own nvidia and ati, so yes the grass is always greener on the other side, on the nvidia side, that is the best side to be.

As to the one that said no company has done as much as amd/ati for Linux, I just have to laugh. Intel has done way more things, way way way more. USB 3.0 is the most significant right now, they are constantly coding for the kernel and without them the kernel wouldn't have a whole lot of features even AMD users enjoy. AMD just gives some documentation that keeps their open source drivers a trash.

If it weren't for like <1% of the people applauding AMDs bad effort at doing something good, they would have realized they needed to change and do things right, so people can enjoy their hardware.

[ethana2]

Will my friend's twin 4850 crossfire rig work with the next Ubuntu?

[he_the_great]

not only is everyone complaining that AMD doesn't support the latest kernel, but not even Ubuntu is supporting it. 9.10 is when they will support it even though they release alphas before that. Of course Debian is still on 2.6.26 and don't know what Fedora 11 is on.

[E.Dulen]

and don't know what Fedora 11 is on.

2.6.29 :-/

[energyman]

I own nvidia and ati, so yes the grass is always greener on the other side, on the nvidia side, that is the best side to be.

As to the one that said no company has done as much as amd/ati for Linux, I just have to laugh. Intel has done way more things, way way way more. USB 3.0 is the most significant right now, they are constantly coding for the kernel and without them the kernel wouldn't have a whole lot of features even AMD users enjoy. AMD just gives some documentation that keeps their open source drivers a trash.

If it weren't for like <1% of the people applauding AMDs bad effort at doing something good, they would have realized they needed to change and do things right, so people can enjoy their hardware.

and intel shafted us more than once. So pleeeaase. AMD even worked together with linux kernel devs when creating AMD64. Intel didn't ask anyone for input when they crapped out Itanic.

[super.rad]

not only is everyone complaining that AMD doesn't support the latest kernel, but not even Ubuntu is supporting it. 9.10 is when they will support it even though they release alphas before that. Of course Debian is still on 2.6.26 and don't know what Fedora 11 is on.

Ubuntu karmic is currently using 2.6.30 although it will soon be moving to 2.6.31-rc1