AMD Releases Catalyst 9.6 For Linux

[RealNC]

I know I'm feeding the trolls, but honestly..

Now you're replying with something about binary blobs to something about Free Software. My problem is not Free Software or binary blobs. My problem is drivers that don't work.

NVidia's driver is binary too, but it works.

Btw, isn't it funny that so many people are angry and are replying here with flamage about AMD, and you dismiss them all as trolls? Well so be it. We're all trolls. We have nothing better to do than trolling here. Which is natural since you can't do much with fglrx. NVidia owners have their hands full playing games and watching movies, so there's not much going on in the NVidia section of this forum. Explain a lot, I think.

[Tinuva]

Alright I might not have the latest and greatest ATI card, but I do have a R500 in my laptop, and the open source drivers work wonders on it. I for one are happy with what ATI did by open sourcing their drivers.

What we really need is for the latest cards' 3D to also enter the opensource driver and everyone should be fairly happy.

[val-gaav]

Bullsh!t. We have every right to complain since the drivers don't work correctly. We are customers. If AMD starts putting "Not suitable for Linux" stickers on their cards, THEN we won't have a right to complain.

Do those cards have any stickers besides the ones saying about Windows support ? If no then I fail to see your point. If they were to put a "we do not support Linux sticker" then they should do so for all the rest of OSes like Solaris, Haiku, FreeBSD GNU/Hurd etc. There is so many of those that I think there would simply be no place on the box for them

Not even the kernel developers care about "FOSS environments". As Linus Torvalds put it: "Go suck on RMS." We care about working products and NVidia delivers those.

Well ... get your facts first :

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Kernel_Driver_Statement

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Lf_statement

Personally I would rather AMD stopped development of fglrx for the end user altogether (keep it for the corporate FireGL) and put resources into finishing the open source stack.

Well since AMD/ATI dropped support for my rs690 in the last catalyst release it really helped me ... I no longer face the "Damn maybe I should try fglrx for better performance" issue. Though I was happy with open source drivers for quite a while, yet from time to time (mostly when trying some games) I had this urge to try fglrx.

I think a lot of angry people here would be the same. Once there is 3d support for r600 and up in open source drivers fglrx should just be targeted at all those FireGL cards and the support for normal customer r600 r700 cards should be taken out of those.

[RealNC]

Read. I said "Now you're replying with something about binary blobs to something about Free Software."

Geez, READ.

[val-gaav]

I'm sorry but I just corrected your false statement that:

Not even the kernel developers care about "FOSS environments". As Linus Torvalds put it: "Go suck on RMS." We care about working products and NVidia delivers those.

I don't see me misreading it.As for your reply in the second post (which by the way I didn't read before submiting, as it takes time to write a long post ) it states what you want and it's a fair opinion, yet you are wrong to back it up with false statement about kernel developers.

[RealNC]

I'm sorry but I just corrected your false statement that:

I don't see me misreading it.As for your reply in the second post (which by the way I didn't read before submiting, as it takes time to write a long post ) it states what you want and it's a fair opinion, yet you are wrong to back it up with false statement about kernel developers.

Sure. That's why Linus said:

"Well, you do have to realize that Linux has never been an FSF project, and in fact has never even been a "Free Software" project."

Tell me, what has this to do with binary blobs? Again: READ. Someone wrote that Linux is about having a "FOSS environment". It's not! That's what I replied to.

Why are we even having this discussion?

[mendieta]

I don't see me misreading it.As for your reply in the second post (which by the way I didn't read before submiting, as it takes time to write a long post ) it states what you want and it's a fair opinion, yet you are wrong to back it up with false statement about kernel developers.

Thanks for clarifying that. You saved me the time. Linux is pragmatic while RMS is more philosophical, but both dislike the use of binary-only code.

I the meantime, I posted a pointer to a thread that has been incredibly useful to a ton of people to get fglrx running, I suggest folks having problems take a look at it. The fglrx driver is pretty shaky: one setting off and you get a hard crash. OTOH, once you get it running it does give you good 3D accel (for 2D ONLY you are much better off with the open source drivers, even in newer chipsets)

[blindfrog]

Half-Life 2 Episode 2 works once again great (DX9) with wine-git! Hopefully they'll get proper video acceleration working soon...

[val-gaav]

@RealNC

FOSS stands for both free software and open source. As quoted from wikipedia:

'F/OSS' is an inclusive term generally synonymous with both free software and open source software which describe similar development models, but with differing cultures and philosophies. 'Free software' focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users and 'open source' focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. Many people relate to both aspects and so 'F/OSS' is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either camp.

So mind you while Linux is not a FSF project and Linus prefers to call it open source rather then free software, when you use FOSS in your statements it is just as wiki states a term to be used with both camps.

Linux is pragmatic while RMS is more philosophical, but both dislike the use of binary-only code.

This sums it up well.

[Tares]

My HD4850 doesn't see any changes. Well, that's a good thing too ;-) nothing is broken

Although playing movies with compiz enabled is smooth with no issues, but when I try to rotate the cube its choppy and laggy :/ dunno why, because benchmarks shows 200fps.