The xf86-video-ati X.Org Driver Receives Some EOY Updates Ported From AMDGPU

If you are still running a pre-GCN AMD graphics card and unfortunately didn't find a new graphics card under any Christmas tree this year, AMD's Michel Dänzer does have a present for you with some improvements to the xf86-video-ati driver that continues serving as the common X.Org driver for pre-HD7000 series graphics cards.

A batch of 13 patches were posted a few days ago to this aging X.Org driver. These changes are back-porting relevant fixes/updates from the modern xf86-video-amdgpu driver back to xf86-video-ati for benefiting these dated Radeon GPUs... Assuming you are not running Wayland or otherwise using the generic xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver atop the Radeon DRM/KMS driver.

These patches include work around gamma correction, GLAMOR, vblank / page-flipping improvements/fixes including TearFree, using two hardware cursor buffers per CRTC, and other changes leading to a few hundred lines of codes changed. No big features but a lot of maintenance work that will hopefully improve the Radeon Linux desktop experience for some on these older platforms.

The xf86-video-ati DDX driver rarely sees new activity these days considering the age of the GPUs supported, so take these patches as a nice end-of-year treat for 2018. Then again, all of the interesting display driver work happens these days in the kernel DRM/KMS drivers rather than the user-space X.Org display driver bits; the xf86-video-amdgpu driver doesn't even see many commits these days while the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver is where the real magic happens for modern Radeon graphics hardware.