Radeon vs. RadeonHD Fighting Continues

[Kano]

Well radeonhd is relatively easy to compile against older X versions, even Xorg 7.1.1 is possible without any backports - just without any 3d support, but at least there is a picture on the screen I personally could never test that driver because it only supports new hardware, I prefer one driver that supports all - especially when a new X server/mesa is used where 3d support is on for r500 too. When there are 2 possible drivers then you can ask yourself which driver is autoselected when you don't specify one in the xorg.conf - you would have to look into the logfile. And as the radeonhd does not enable all features possible by default it looks more like an experimental driver - for experience users who like to add extra options. I would not delete the radeonhd driver, but for the future it is of course better to focus on the all in one driver - or that ati loader which autoloads the correct one - if the code would be really better than radeon, the radeonhd could be autoloaded for r500+, but I don't think so...

[timofonic]

even better: drop and get rid of ati and radeonhd. develop a fist class gallium3d-driver, test and optimize it and make it an alternative the to proprietary fglrx. but it's keeping a dream

I agree 110% with you!

Gallium3D is the way to go, the actual way is just a waste of time. Please develop the new drivers for Gallium3D instead.

[rvdboom]

Most of the work in radeon these days is making use of kernel modesetting and memory management (GEM) across all the supported ASICs.

That's jolly good news. Is there any expected timeframe for supporting both?

[bridgman]

Depends on what you mean by "support"

A lot of the code is showing up and working in Fedora 10 today. I imagine it will start appearing in the upstream kernel over the next couple of months -- a good chunk is in 2.6.28 already. Consumer oriented distributions will probably start picking it up in the next few months, but it might take a year before it shows up in the enterprise distros (SLED/SLES, RHEL etc..).

I guess the best way to put it is that we are at the very start of the transition, ie we need to be supporting new ASICs with KMS as well as user mode drivers today, but modesetting in the X drivers will still be needed for a couple of years.

[idamlaj]

I agree 110% with you!

Gallium3D is the way to go, the actual way is just a waste of time. Please develop the new drivers for Gallium3D instead.

*sigh* . Please have a look at previous posts before making such comments:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13222

Someone should make a sticky about this.

[bridgman]

Someone should make a sticky about this.

I'll try to update the "what is AtomBIOS and all these different drivers ?" sticky to include Gallium and a quick overview of what each component does.

EDIT - $^#@^%$#&$%!!!!

First update done; I added a bunch more information about Gallium, KMS, GEM, DRI2, RDR etc, tripped over the 10k char limit and lost everything. Bah.

[reavertm]

EDIT - $^#@^%$#&$%!!!!

First update done; I added a bunch more information about Gallium, KMS, GEM, DRI2, RDR etc, tripped over the 10k char limit and lost everything. Bah.

Oh how I hate this feeling...
Now I used to copy to clipboard whole content before sending (mails, big posts, comments etc) - especially to avoid broken http sessions, Javascript or.. character limits... It's my new 'nervous tic' like frequent CTRL+S in editors.

[oblivious_maximus]

EDIT - $^#@^%$#&$%!!!!

First update done; I added a bunch more information about Gallium, KMS, GEM, DRI2, RDR etc, tripped over the 10k char limit and lost everything. Bah.

Oh how I hate this feeling...
Now I used to copy to clipboard whole content before sending (mails, big posts, comments etc) - especially to avoid broken http sessions, Javascript or.. character limits... It's my new 'nervous tic' like frequent CTRL+S in editors.

It's All Text! could save you both much consternation, if you're Firefox users.