AMD Catalyst 8.5 For Linux

[PGHammer]

Agreed (which is why I hate distro-specific tweaks)

What i wish for it is to simply work for the upstream code. If distributions modify, that is for them to deal with, but I as an advanced user cannot use "support redhat/suse" at all, i dont use these distributions, what i can however use, is the knowledge that specific code will work, its then up to ME to make sure that software is actually like that, and not modified, and indeed _I_ will take care of this.

It's distribution-specific tweaks that give Linux users (not to mention developers) heartburn. While Redhat (and Fedora) require one set of changes post-install, SuSE and openSuSE require a different (but fortunately smaller) post-install tweak (it's a known issue since 10.2; 10.3 and the pre-11.0 builds currently being tested still have not fixed it yet). However, it's still different from Fedora/RH, not to mention Debian-based builds and Gentoo (let alone Damn Small or YellowDog).

[bridgman]

What i wish for it is to simply work for the upstream code. If distributions modify, that is for them to deal with, but I as an advanced user cannot use "support redhat/suse" at all, i dont use these distributions, what i can however use, is the knowledge that specific code will work, its then up to ME to make sure that software is actually like that, and not modified, and indeed _I_ will take care of this.

If you want it to simply work with the upstream code, and have distributions take care of the rest, then you really should be using and supporting the open source drivers. That's what they're there for.

The fglrx driver is aimed at major, already released distributions and *not* at the bleeding edge, although I do expect that over time we will be able to fly a bit closer to the upstream and to have the installer/packager deal intelligently with more of the distro-to-distro differences. It's really the same problem in both cases -- how many different distros and versions can the installer understand and deal with ?

The open source drivers *are* intended to work with the upstream, and in fact are part of the upstream. They don't have a fancy installer because their primary purpose is to give the distros something they can easily integrate into their products, since all of the source code and individual changes are available. Going forward, we hope that they will also be used to implement framework enhancements and help the upstream to keep... um... streaming .

[mtippett]

What i wish for it is to simply work for the upstream code. If distributions modify, that is for them to deal with, but I as an advanced user cannot use "support redhat/suse" at all, i dont use these distributions, what i can however use, is the knowledge that specific code will work, its then up to ME to make sure that software is actually like that, and not modified, and indeed _I_ will take care of this.

As mentioned previously our model is to *support* [1] a set of distributions. Until upstream becomes part of those distributions we will try, but will not guarantee that we have reasonably compatibility with emerging technologies upstream. Fortunately the release tempo of Ubuntu keeps their development version (which I use) reasonably close to upstream.

As John mentions elsewhere, the OSS effort is to provide a solution for those who want to travel on the bleeding edge.

[1] Support in this context is that we will proactively apply engineering effort to resolve problems on these systems.

Regards,

Matthew

[Tahmi]

I just tried latest driver on my old box with radeon9600 for fun.. to see
how ati is doing these days.

This is 8.40.4
http://bmx.daemon.sh/maps/linked/ati_old.jpg

And this is catalyst 8.5
http://bmx.daemon.sh/maps/linked/ati_new.jpg

Framerate counter speaks for itself (being bad on 8.40.4 already). Also note a texture glitch in 8.5

I find it amazing when such a big company with millions buiseness can have a highly incompetent developer team. For a long time now i consider ati video
cards broken and not working hardware, for reasons being obvious.

And what is this talk about distros?.. You are pretending to write a linux kernel module, which is only one, check out kernel.org sometimes.

[bridgman]

I don't know the exact numbers, but AFAIK the kernel module is maybe 10-20% of the driver. The rest runs in user mode.

I'm told that we do sometimes find different sets of kernel patches and hence different kernel behaviour between distros, although most of the differences are in the userland portions.

[Firebar]

Hi everyone. Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I've got an issue with these drivers and hopefully someone can solve it for me

I have an HDMI monitor with an ATI 2900Pro on RHEL5. Drivers installed fine and seem to work ok (haven't done an openGL tests), apart from the fact that they are underscaling (15% - so everything is fuzzy and in a window on the monitor). In windows I can use the CCC Display Manager to underscale back to 0% - which puts the display back to native unadulterated 1920x1200. In the Linux CCC it doesn't give me this option, and it appears that 'aticonfig' doesn't either.

Any ideas? Other than going back to 8.4 (which I hear dont have this issue)...

Thanks.