AMD Linux Catalyst: Hardware Owners Screwed?

[popper]

You might want to wait for an actual announcement.

I think you will find that the changes are in line with what folks here have been requesting / suggesting.

yeah sure and pigs will fly this year without the aid of an aircraft

"12:04:2011: OVDecode.so Never actually appeared in the Linux lib/x86 dir, did that change all of a sudden today as regards the OpenCL OpenVideo driver for video decode the answer would appear to still be that even a full 18 months+ later they still don't care enough about an OpenCL video decode library to actually write and distribute it for Linux CL use even though AND did supply the headers and the OVDecode.lib for windows use Christmas 2010"

so did you finally write the Linux OVDecode.so code and will you finally be supplying that CL Video Decode library/app with catalyst 12.anything to Linux x86 end users before northern island blows up and southern island isn't worth the Euros people payed into the system.

[diriel]

Next Gen...

I will be watching carefully to see what shakes in the linux world come mid-year 2013 graphics card wise. They said the 8 series would be full pop equiv win/lin... Obviously I have not nailed down my next system builds specs, but you can bet I will be watching very closely to what happens in hardware / drivers etc.

[Kano]

Well a nv gtx 560 would be cheaper (until 660 is out). there are a few variants of the 560 with differnet speeds, just select one that you can afford.

[slojam]

"the Linux driver team seems to be based out of AMD China"


Graphics drivers "made in china" !!?? NO THANK YOU.

[allquixotic]

"the Linux driver team seems to be based out of AMD China"


Graphics drivers "made in china" !!?? NO THANK YOU.

Actually, a lot of drivers (and I mean a lot) are written in China these days. It's nothing new; it's been going on for years. Also, India.

This is perhaps exacerbated on Windows, where most highly specialized chips such as network cards and audio cards have their drivers written in China or Taiwan or India. Realtek, ASUS... China (well, and Taiwan).

On the open source side, it's hard to pin down where the drivers are written, since you have contributors from all throughout most of the industrialized continents (the Americas, Europe and Asia) and from elsewhere. Suffice to say that a large part of the drivers will be written by Red Hat and Intel employees in the U.S., with the balance coming from contributors and companies scattered worldwide with no particular emphasis anywhere -- although I've noticed a large number of European soloist contributors who don't appear to be associated with any company.

Anyway, from a quality perspective, drivers from typically low-grade areas such as India and China are starting to improve. I was surprised by the high level of reliability and working functionality with my Asus Z77 motherboard and the custom software that Asus provides as optional add-ons. Some of the language sounds obviously translated by non-native speakers, but the functionality is there. They seem to be responding to years of customer complaints about their software being buggy, bloated and broken.

[slojam]

>>allquixotic

Quote Originally Posted by slojam View Post
"the Linux driver team seems to be based out of AMD China"


Graphics drivers "made in china" !!?? NO THANK YOU.
Actually, a lot of drivers (and I mean a lot) are written in China these days. It's nothing new; it's been going on for years. Also,India.
<<

I see, but of course i'm meaning proprietary GNU/Linux gfx blobs. I'm pretty sure this is a new development for AMD whom I like. My personal experience with "made in china" anything has been very very very poor, from screw drivers to Apple products to tire chains. Are the Chinese to blame, or is it the American & other first-world designers & engineers who sign off on this crap..? I don't know. Can't beat the price tho. I go to Walmart all the time.

I would have less problem with open source Chinese contributions, because, hey, they are open source and we can examine them. My understanding is that open source culture hasn't really taken root there because you can get (pirated) Windows and any other software you want so easily. Why bother with Linux?

[Morgan00]

Does the driver catalyst will still be updated to newer versions of xorg and for new kernel? I mean for the HD 2000/3000/4000

[Nevertime]

I'll probably stick to ubuntu 12.04 for a year or 2 on my amd equipped laptop... should it survive that long. If I'm lucky opensource drivers will be adequate by then.

Having an up to date distro seems less important when you can add great functionality to gnome-shell just by adding extensions.

[Berseker]

ok, I am an owner of a MB with an integrated ATI 4250 chip,
I see now that catalyst driver will not support my card anymore.

I've actually been using the FOSS driver for a while (always hated when my Arch system was up-to date with X\Kernel, an I had to force to keep old versions only for the catalyst blob),
I am happy with it, I only miss

1) vaapi support
2) some performance in 3d applications (always sucked with open drivers, even in nvidia\nouveau systems)
3) some performance in 2d environment (not bad but sometimes you can feel the system is not so smooth as it should be) (using gnome-shell lately, but I am coming from a 2-years-old compiz-standalone configuration)

I do not experience any particular bug.
does anyone know when, especially point 1) of the above list can finally be checked?

[allquixotic]

Does the driver catalyst will still be updated to newer versions of xorg and for new kernel? I mean for the HD 2000/3000/4000

No.

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