"Ask ATI" dev thread

[bridgman]

If Sid is the development branch of Debian (as I understand it) then as we add support for the last version it will probably be changing to something we don't support with fglrx. Honestly, I really don't expect that running fglrx with the latest Sid is *ever* going to be a Good Thing -- fglrx is still aimed primarily at RHEL, SLES/SLED, Ubuntu and similar distros -- not the development-oriented releases and alphas/betas.

I'm not *promising* black screens but honestly the best thing would be for the developers working in Sid to keep the open source graphics drivers relatively up to date instead.

[bridgman]

Just to be clear, do you mean 8.10 blackscreens *today* with the latest driver or 8.10 blackscreened in the past when it was either pre-release or just released ?

If Sid is Debian 5 then what is Lenny these days ? Maybe I'm the only one who gets confused by this, I don't know

[cb88]

@bridgeman
SID is ALWAYS and forever the unstable disribution it has no version I don't think "experimental" has a name
Lenny is the current testing for 5.0
etch is the current stable 4.x
sarge os the current oldstable 3.1

when Lenny is released it will become the current stable
and etch will be depreciated although probably still supported
before Etch there was Sarge 3.1 and woody 3.0

the naming follows the naming of characters from the movie Toy Story
remember SID was the boy that lived next door and mangled toys in his experiments ie strapping them to rockets and the like

nameing scheme explained in detail here its a good read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Releases

[Kano]

Well I guess that supported distribution discussion is pointless. Basically a Xorg driver does not support distribution X but Xserver Y. All problems that occur with any distribution using the same Xserver - because of the same ABI. Debian 5.0 aka lenny is using Xserver 1.4.2 similar to Ubuntu hardy, Ubuntu intrepid uses Xserver 1.5.2 and Ubuntu jaunty will use 1.6 (current RC). As Debian is frozen, sid currently has the same version as lenny, but experimental has now 1.6 RC. So if ATI would just support Ubuntu they basically would support any distro. Last time Fedora was using Xserver 1.5 RC much before Ubuntu so they ignored it... Just in time for release they created a hotfix driver specific to Ubuntu. I don't think that's good style as you could expect that for Ubuntu jaunty too... ATI has OSS Xorg devs and they can surely tell the fglrx people when a new ABI is stable, thats the point a driver should be tested against it - and not several month later.

[cb88]

Ah... that makes a bit more sence kano thanks I was thinking Sid didn't freeze (instead of experimental) when in reality it is just a buffer too keep testing from becoming too unstable

[bridgman]

be sure he know that... he is an linux guru...

I appreciate that but honestly I had never touched Linux before I took on this project -- I'm really learning as I go. I did work with X in the distant past, but that was more than 20 years ago before X11 was introduced and long before Linus even started working on a kernel.

... his point is diverent.. sid is not stable so he do not support sid. debian 5 isn't releaset so he do not support debian 5. thats the Point. if debian5 comes out in 1 or 2 weeks... he say o yes he try it out and fix the problem.

It's actually more than that... I'm not nitpicking over whether a particular distro is released or not, I'm saying that right now we test and fix on released versions of RHEL / OpenSuSE (currently v11) / Ubuntu (currently 8.10), and any distro which is similar to those in terms of xorg and kernel is likely to work as well. The chances of fglrx working go down pretty dramatically as you move to newer kernel and xorg contents.

Kano; I agree that an xorg driver cares mostly about the xorg version, but I believe most of our issues are with the DRI part of the stack, which does care much more about kernel details than xorg details.

[RealNC]

Are you actually using Linux as your main OS on your computer at all?

[bridgman]

Yes and no; I still need to run XP to get into most of our administrative systems at the office, and I'm typing this on a Vista system at home right now. I have a second system (running Ubuntu 8.10 right now, although it varies) at the office which I use most of the time, and I bought a second machine to run Linux at home which just arrived and will be unpacked over the weekend.

I was dual-booting Linux at home and trying various ways to get a reliable modem connection to my ISP, but so far I can only get a reliable connection with the Windows modem drivers. I purchased a network-attached 56K modem but that wasn't able to cope with the noisy phone lines out here in the sticks, which is why I purchased a second PC -- hopefully I can use the Windows modem driver to get a reliable ISP connection then use the Windows box as a router so the Linux system can get connectivity.

I know you guys all have DSL or satellite but neither of those is an option for me unless I cut down a LOT of trees to get line-of-site to the satellite.

Given that my official role here is managing the open source project, however, I am running an open source driver (currently radeonhd although it varies) most of the time, not fglrx.

[storma]

**silence is heard as all eyes turn to bridgman**

EDIT: bugger, in to late..

[RealNC]

And the real question is: How would you compare the user experience of Vista+ATI vs Linux+ATI