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AMD Software Linux

Insight Into AMD's Linux Driver Development 221

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-should-all-wear-hats-while-they-code- dept.
Cowards Anonymous writes "It's no secret that ATI Technologies has had a rough time in the past delivering display drivers that met the expectations of their customers. When ATI started out producing a FireGL and Radeon Linux driver they for some time were greatly behind NVIDIA's feature-rich driver. The early ATI Linux driver had lacked essential functionality such as PCI Express and x86_64 architecture support and was also affected by stability and performance problems — not to mention a great deal of bugs."
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Insight Into AMD's Linux Driver Development More

Insight Into AMD's Linux Driver Development

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  • rough start (Score:4, Informative)

    by phrostie ( 121428 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:13AM (#19383153)
    when i switched from NVidia to ATI, it was a rough start.
    for the longest time i couldn't get the driver to build/install, then one day everything just worked!
    i can't tell you which version it was, but from then on, i've had no problems or complaints.

    an open driver would be nice, but even still, my compliments to them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by IllForgetMyNickSoonA ( 748496 )
      So you had a rough time gettint the driver to even compile, let alone instal or even (gasp!) work. Then, one day, it just started working.

      So far, so good - this is a typical "ATI on Linux" story, but of the happy-ending sort (which are rather rare, from what I saw so far).

      What I do not understand is which way do they deserve your compliments for providing such sub-par software? I'd bring the card right back to the shop I bought it, demand my money back, and buy a nVidia! I haven't had a problem with n

    • Re:rough start (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @02:24PM (#19385807) Homepage

      Everything works? So you can use Firefox at a reasonable speed when logged in as a second user now? You can use Beryl now? Those things sure don't work on the X1300 I bought (a horrible mistake) a couple months ago.

      It's really absurd - if they'd just release the programming info for their hardware the X.org drivers would support this stuff inside a week.

  • Not really surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Endo13 ( 1000782 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:14AM (#19383159)
    It's also no secret that ATI has long had problems with their drivers for Windows too.

    No, this is not a troll. I use ATI cards almost exclusively myself and I prefer them over NVidia, but I do have to admit that Nvidia's drivers as a general rule seem much better designed and simpler to install.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Eukariote ( 881204 )
      Sigh, yet another general statement without supporting evidence. I think your post is a sly bit of astroturfing for NVidia. ATI has had WHQL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing [wikipedia.org] ) certified new driver releases for years now. NVidia has only recently been able to get their new releases WHQL qualified. Sure, there is more to drivers, but it indicates that ATI has had a solid development, testing, and qualification regimen in place for a long time.

      • Re:Not really surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Scoth ( 879800 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:53AM (#19383669)
        Not sure what kind of "supporting evidence" you might want, but I once bought a Radeon once to replace my aging Voodoo3. I forget the exact model number, but at the time it was about $175 or $200. In some games it was *slower* than the Voodoo3. I gave up and reinstalled Windows clean, but still had the same trouble. Took it back, got a GeForce 3 Ti 200 for about the same price, and it worked beautifully out of the box. Fast forward to several years later and I was looking to replace that card, and I got another Radeon. Installed the drivers, slapped in the new card - poof, blue screen on boot in the video drivers. Stuck the GF3 back in, removed it from the DevMan, and manually installed the VGA driver. Rebooted with the ATI, installed the drivers - back to Bluescreen on Boot. So, another clean install of Windows, and still got bluescreens on boot. Took that Radeon back and got a GF 6600GT again for about the same price, slapped it in, and it's worked ever since. I have a hard time believing I had other bad hardware in there to cause the troubles since in both cases the GeForces worked perfectly. Not to mention the GeForces worked much more nicey in Linux than the Radeons ever did. I genuinely gave ATI two tries now, and both times I was hit with troublesome drivers. I doubt I'll be buying another Radeon anytime soon.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
          In addition to that, from conversations with friends who are stuck with ATI cards until they can afford to upgrade, they seem to constantly have issues where Game A requires driver version Y or below, but game B requires driver version X and above, with X > Y.

          The end result - having to uninstall and reinstall drivers when changing between game A and game B, or simply not playing one of the games. (I don't remember exact driver versions, but one of the games in question was Civ IV about 6 months after it

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jimicus ( 737525 )
          The problem is PC hardware in general terms is such a mash of thngs with varying ability to follow specifications that every once in a while you happen upon a hardware configuration which just does not work.

          Old Example: Creative Labs AWE64 ISA sound card, external serial modem, Windows NT 4. Version 5 of the soundcard drivers - the modem stops working. It still dials, still sounds like it's handshaking but it can't complete the handshake.

          Solution: Upgrade the soundcard drivers. Took me ages to figure t

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

        Sigh, yet another general statement without supporting evidence. I think your post is a sly bit of astroturfing for NVidia.

        No it's not. I can't really say much about the Nvidia drivers because I've never owned an Nvidia card personally. But when I have to install them for someone else, they always just seem to work.

        I've used ATI ever since I finally gave up my Voodoo2. I have just about every version of drivers ATI released since the first Catalyst came out, and quite a few from before. They all worked, for the most part, but the install process does not seem as streamlined as Nvidia's, and I still keep hearing from people who

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
        Or that WHQL isn't worth that much? The latest ATI drivers for DX10 seem to have a fair number of issues at least with this Demo http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2134729 ,00.asp [extremetech.com]
        It could be a software issue but the Nvidia card works fine with it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nschubach ( 922175 )
        WHQL does not guarantee ease of use, installation or compatibility. It just means that it tells Windows what it wants to hear instead of what it might need to hear.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 )

        Sigh, yet another general statement without supporting evidence. I think your post is a sly bit of astroturfing for NVidia. ATI has had WHQL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing [wikipedia.org] ) certified new driver releases for years now.

        Hmmm .... "Windows Hardware Quality Laboratories testing" .... is this like buying a PC which says it's "Vista Ready" only to find out that means "well, not Vista with the new GUI stuff, just running with the old GUI"? It's got no credibililty with a lot of people. (eg. , specif [msdn.com]

      • Re:Not really surprising (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Cal Paterson ( 881180 ) * on Monday June 04, 2007 @04:41PM (#19387737)

        Sigh, yet another general statement without supporting evidence. I think your post is a sly bit of astroturfing for NVidia. ATI has had WHQL certified new driver releases for years now. NVidia has only recently been able to get their new releases WHQL qualified. Sure, there is more to drivers, but it indicates that ATI has had a solid development, testing, and qualification regimen in place for a long time.
        This statement is utterly untrue. WHQL is pretty much just a case of;
        1. Co-operate with MS on driver releases (and institute their "minimum-standard" level of QA)
        2. Pay MS what I'm sure is a large some of money for the privilege
        Lack of WHQL doesn't indicate anything about driver quality apart from that certain companies are co-operating with MS to institute a minimum standard; many, many third parties develop drivers over and above this already. That fact that companies do not do WHQL says less about their hackers' development style than it does about their executives attitudes towards unjustifiable costs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by yourexhalekiss ( 833943 )
      This also not a troll... I just figure that the people that read this thread might find this relevant.

      I had a hellish time installing ATI drivers for my laptop with a Radeon Xpress 200M chipset on Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty.

      I ended up following the instructions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=321766 [ubuntuforums.org] and it worked great.

      The instructions are written for Ubuntu Edgy, but they also work for Feisty if you use a newer driver from ATI's site and adjust the instructions accordingly. The instructions seem ge

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stewwy ( 687854 )
      quote from their latest driver

      This release of Catalyst(TM) introduces the second generation ATI Theater(TM) 650. This product will provide support for the new MCE 2006 requirements such as DRM support. Further, it will include features to support ATI All-In-Wonder products. It will also provide improved TV quality and Broadcast Flag support which enables full US terrestrial DTV support.

      this is written as if its a good thing!

  • So ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BESTouff ( 531293 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:14AM (#19383161)
    When ATI started out producing a FireGL and Radeon Linux driver they for some time were greatly behind NVIDIA's feature-rich driver.

    And they still are.

    • I second that. fglrx in Linux on x86_64 still sucks. And where the hell is Composite? Why is that not working yet? That should have been done a long time ago. They keep releasing new versions (such as 8.37) but they never fix the outstanding issues. Installation is still no fun if you happen to run a non-RPM based distro (you know... Ubuntu or Debian). It sucks that my laptop came with X1400 and I'm stuck with AMD/ATI...

  • The best way... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by twoboxen ( 1111241 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:16AM (#19383187)
    to build a customer base is to alienate your existing customer base. I bought an R200-based laptop a couple years ago. ATI decided to just not support those cards in their fglrx driver package one day. Why would I buy from a company who won't continue support for their own products for more than a couple years? I will make every effort to never support them again until they get customer/product support in order. NVIDIA, bravo.

    • Re:The best way... (Score:5, Informative)

      by the_humeister ( 922869 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:30AM (#19383373)
      If you're using some sort of Linux/*BSD/etc, you shouldn't have to worry because X.org has had mostly full and useable R100, R200, and recently R300 open source drivers for quite some time now. They're decent. I've been playing Unreal Tournament (and variants) without problems. The only issue is visuals with Doom 3 do to S3 Texture compression being patented. If you're using Windows, well good luck!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ajanp ( 1083247 )
      Yeah, I had a horrible experience with ATI support a couple years ago and decided to make the switch to Nvidia and picked up a 6600GT. I had problems with the Nvidia card almost immediately and initially regretted the decision to switch, until I started looked at the support that was available from a very active Nvidia community. It took maybe 15 minutes to fix the problem, and even though I've moved on to another card since, I still keep one of the support threads http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtop [nvidia.com]

  • what a joke (Score:5, Insightful)

    by radarsat1 ( 786772 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:18AM (#19383213) Homepage

    While ATI/AMD is working steadfast in addressing all of these issues and further enhancing their level of Linux support, many of their customers do not realize all of the work that goes into these drivers.


    Whatever. They don't need to do any work. All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them. People aren't bitching that the drivers don't work, people are bitching because they aren't allowed to improve them.

    There's a whole community out there willing to do all the software work from scratch, but they don't have the resources to create the hardware. The hardware developers somehow see this need to provide the software themselves, instead of taking advantage of the community, but then go and do a shoddy job of it. That's why people are annoyed by the whole thing. It could be so much better, with very little effort from ATI, but they steadfastly refuse to play nice, forcing developers to resort to reverse engineering. Same goes to Nvidia by the way, but at least they seem to be a bit more competent in Linux/X.org driver development.

    This whole argument is just a big excuse. We don't want excuses, we want some damn drivers.

    --- someone who's been buying Nvidia since he realized that ATI doesn't work as well on Linux.

    • People aren't bitching that the drivers don't work, people are bitching because they aren't allowed to improve them.


      Well... I mean, I'm bitching that they don't work.

      This whole argument is just a big excuse. We don't want excuses, we want some damn drivers.


      Yes. Personally, I don't care who writes them, as long as they're functional and not encumbered by something redolent of evil.

    • Re:what a joke (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) * <slashdot.kadin@xoxy . n et> on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:27AM (#19383335) Homepage Journal
      The hardware developers somehow see this need to provide the software themselves, instead of taking advantage of the community, but then go and do a shoddy job of it.

      Bingo.

      When hardware companies try to make software, the result is almost inevitably shit. There are some exceptions, but big hardware companies tend to see software development as a 'cost center,' an afterthought to be minimized as much as possible, rather than a critical and major part of their product.

      Look at scanners if you want. I've used some great film scanners in the past; brilliant hardware engineering, but coupled with the absolutely shit software that came in the box with it, it was practically a doorstop. To get anything else done, you had to get VueScan or Silverfast -- addon software written by people for whom software is their primary focus.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by michrech ( 468134 )
        When hardware companies try to make software, the result is almost inevitably shit. There are some exceptions, but big hardware companies tend to see software development as a 'cost center,' an afterthought to be minimized as much as possible, rather than a critical and major part of their product.

        There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, SO LONG AS THEY OPEN UP THE DAMNED SPECS SO THE COMMUNITY CAN WORK WITH IT PROPERLY. I can only assume I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.

        I'm sure "the communi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swv3752 ( 187722 )
          The whole reason both companies do not wish to open up is that it is the software that mostly differentiates the different card lines. When card A is merely Card B at a different clock speed. And Card C is a slower clock and fewer pipelines, who is going to buy card A when they could use card C and get virtually the same performance at half the cost. The community has already come up with overclocking utils. Think of what they could do with full specs?

          Doubt me? Look at the default Linksys router Firmwa
          • The whole reason both companies do not wish to open up is that it is the software that mostly differentiates the different card lines. When card A is merely Card B at a different clock speed. And Card C is a slower clock and fewer pipelines, who is going to buy card A when they could use card C and get virtually the same performance at half the cost. The community has already come up with overclocking utils. Think of what they could do with full specs?

            That isn't our problem, and it isn't something ATI/nVidi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jimicus ( 737525 )
          There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, SO LONG AS THEY OPEN UP THE DAMNED SPECS SO THE COMMUNITY CAN WORK WITH IT PROPERLY. I can only assume I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.

          You are correct. But nowhere in computing is the idea of technology taking second place to marketing more prevalent than high-end graphics cards. So you wind up with two cards which are virtually identical, but one is artificially crippled in the driver.

          Or, alternatively, they're just so damn embarrassed of all the sc

      • When hardware companies try to make software, the result is almost inevitably shit. There are some exceptions, but big hardware companies tend to see software development as a 'cost center,' an afterthought to be minimized as much as possible, rather than a critical and major part of their product.

        Actually, even when the problem isn't one of a cost-center mentality, the technical staff and technical management in hardware companies often doesn't really understand software development from any of design, lifecycle, or team process viewpoints. I've seen this cultural assumption that software somehow just naturally derives from the existence of the hardware.. that because hardware design can be difficult, that software must be trivial. This blindness in turn costs the company money for two reasons.

        Th

      • Your sig is ironically on-topic. Lotus Notes is a horrible piece of software.
    • They don't need to do any work. All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them.

      and when the non-Geek calls technical support or returns a card under warranty because he doesn't have a fully functional driver - who fields the call and pays the bill?

    • nVidia (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Z34107 ( 925136 )

      All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them

      Yes... if ATI opens up their specs, their people will do all the work for nVidia's people. And vice versa.

      I, for one, can understand why there's some animosity towards releasing the blueprints of your state-of-the-art 5-hojillion-manhours-in-the-making video card to all the tubes on the internets.

      Granted, it's not the same as giving nVidia a briefcase of trade secrets, but you have to be careful when your company's e

  • Nvidia is not the competition (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crush ( 19364 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:18AM (#19383217)

    The article is a long excuse explaining why AMD/ATI are unable to release decent GNU/Linux drivers. That's interesting enough as far as it goes: AMD/ATI and Nvidia both have crap closed, proprietary drivers which don't work well, make kernel updgrading difficult and are unauditable for security. So why bother with them? Further ATI have a history of dragging their ass [livejournal.com] and blocking the release of Free drivers,

    Why bother with this crap? Just get an Intel GMA X3000 integrated motherboard [wikipedia.org] and save time, power, money and hassle due to Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs. (You'll probably also be able to benefit from their free wireless drivers.

    If you're into hardcore gaming then you're probably running a PS3 or an Xbox on the side anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dc29A ( 636871 ) *
      If you're into hardcore gaming then you're probably running a PS3 or an Xbox on the side anyway.

      Let me know when good RTS, MMO and strategy games come to consoles. Until then, I'll stick with my PC!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crush ( 19364 )
        Sure. Run Windows and play those games on it, but that's irrelevant to a discussion of Linux drivers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
        The Fire Emblem series are great strategy [RPG] games. Available on Famicom, Super Famicom, GBA, Gamecube, and Wii.

        Since you already mentioned RTS, I figured you meant something else by "strategy games". Check them out.
    • I don't think you should be looking at ATI or NVidia for the changes in the kernel that break the ABI.

      The kernel is intentionally difficult to upgrade or use for people who want to use binary drivers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crush ( 19364 )

        The kernel will always be a problem for closed-source software that stupidly relies on a stable ABI. The kernel intentionally stays flexible and changes rapidly in order to keep innovating. FL/OSS software has little problem rebuilding against it and staying innovative. That's why ATI and Nvidia will never be able to produce satisfactory drivers for Linux.

        That's exactly why it makes most sense to go with fully open hardware supported by FL/OSS drivers unless you want to either stick with old kernel vers

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by the_humeister ( 922869 )
      Or you could use an R100, R200, or R300 based ATI card. They're not hard to find, relatively inexpensive, and still powerful enough for a casual gamer (at least R300s are, possibly R200). Oh, forgot to mention that they have mostly full open source drivers [freedesktop.org] written already.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crush ( 19364 )
        Yes, that's another good option. Similarly the nouveau [freedesktop.org] project for reverse-engineering Nvidia's closed, proprietary, probably-infringing-patents hardware is coming along nicely. But ... if buying new hardware then the chance for the market to reward an OPEN piece of hardware and simultaneously save on power is too good an opportunity to miss. Intel are really doing the right thing right now and it would be good to see the market confirm their strategy.
      • Those drivers actually have firmware in them--lots of binary blobs. Not exactly the "preferred form for editing the work"; the R300s are not supported, only the R200 cards are according to your link. Someone not update that page in a while?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by psavo ( 162634 )

        You know, people should just quit with this R100-R300 fucktarded bullshit.

        ATI lost all the goodwill generated by R200 opened specs when they withdrew those opened specs. They even try and slow any progress done with R500 support (look in David Airlie livejournal blog). If they don't give full HW specs, then just fucking screw them. Don't buy, don't recommend, just forget they exist. Open-sourced thing, although it has working (albeit much slower that fglrx) 3D, does not have tv-out support.

        And on top of t

    • Intel has not release docs (Score:5, Informative)

      by dmoore ( 2449 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @12:03PM (#19383813)
      > Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs.

      Actually, Intel has not released docs for their GMA X3000. Their current stance is that the driver is the documentation. That's fine and good, except the driver is still very incomplete (missing OpenGL features, no XvMC, no tv-out, etc.). See here:

      http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-Ma y/024582.html [freedesktop.org]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by crush ( 19364 )
        That's interesting. Thanks for the link. Is there some productive way to pressure Intel and help them make the final step?
    • Well, if all you want is onboard, 2-d graphics support, then pretty much anything on the market will work just fine with Linux, so that's not a strong technical/practical reason to buy Intel. OTOH, if you want 3-d video for gaming, then Intel isn't an option. Of course, you might want to buy an Intel mobo just because you want to support OSS-friendly hardware on moral/political grounds.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by niko9 ( 315647 )
      Why bother with this crap? Just get an Intel GMA X3000 integrated motherboard and save time, power, money and hassle due to Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs. (You'll probably also be able to benefit from their free wireless drivers.

      I agree. I just wish that little Intel GMA X3000 chip was available on a separate PCI-Express card. My Athlon socket 939 motherboard suites me just fine for my computing needs. Would be a shame to have to buy a new motherboard, CPU, ram (DDR2 vs
  • Now, I don't pay much attention to video cards, but when I saw "FireGL" I thought "why would you need to optimize OpenGL graphics for Firefox?".

  • ATI and Fedora 7 / X.Org 1.3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by harrypelles ( 872287 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:20AM (#19383245)
    I made the same mistake as many [phoronix.net] Fedora users - jumping (to Fedora 7) before looking. I'm not poking at Fedora here, on the contrary, I am a loyal Fedora user. It's ATI I'm upset with. ATI released a new fglrx driver (version 8.37) since Fedora 7's tests and final release that also does not work with X.Org 1.3. We're all sitting around waiting for the 8.38 which ATI claims will be compatible. And don't even get me started on ATI's absent AIGLX support for Linux. My next card will nVidia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pembo13 ( 770295 )
      Yah well, Nvidia is the lesser of the two evils... learned that before I left Windows. Talk with your dollars, it's the only language these companies understand.

    • And don't even get me started on ATI's absent AIGLX support for Linux.

      OK, you talked me out of it.

  • Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BESTouff ( 531293 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:27AM (#19383325)
    Basically, TFA says that "ATI has a release cycle". They even have an unofficial bugzilla and an unofficial wiki. Oh, and they'll drop R200 support too. And all that's supposed to make better drivers for Linux one day. I really wish they'd go the Intel way: hire some top-notch developers, give them specs and make them do Free drivers.
  • I've had three nvidia videocards (one that is onboard) and one ati.

    I've always had, and still have problems with them when I use the proprietary drivers under linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Slackware, both packed and from the nvidia site). A few months back I just gave up and stopped blaming it on the videocards and drivers since I seemed to be the only person whose screen froze up upon switching to terminal mode and back.

    The onboard videocard gives the same problems and I have exactly zero problems when using the sl

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by lp_bugman ( 623152 )
      I had huge problems with all my AGP nvidia cards. The video use freeze. After a couple of minutes using X in my AMD Athlon 64 with a VIA chipset. The problem was VIA implementation of AGP. There is a setting in the closed source drivers to disable the NV AGP implementation.

      Section "Device"
        Driver "nvidia"
        Option "NvAGP" "0"
      EndSection

      Hope it works for you :).
    • I have a ThinkPad T42p with a FireGL T2 in it. With the slow open source drivers, everything's fine. With the closed ATI drivers, textures don't load properly, and eventually the machine locks up. ATI's drivers suck. Their OS X drivers suck too, the OpenGL rendering of antialiased lines and polygons is utterly broken on my Mac with ATI card. I'm planning to buy a new Mac soon, and I'm currently planning on getting a MacBook rather than a MacBook Pro specifically to avoid the ATI hardware in the Pro. I'd r
    • I've noticed this with some Nvidia cards and it has always been solved by disabling the framebuffer mode for text console. This kills the high-res console, but at least makes it stable.
  • While I would love to help out in 3D graphics, but am in no way capable, I am also curious - how many competent 3D graphics hardware developers are there, really, outside of AMD, nVidia and a few other companies? What do they expect? A handful, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of developers? Is it really that 'easy' so that they would benefit from from the Argus eye?

    --
  • WTC does this have to do with AMD?

    -Rick

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by bouchecl ( 1001775 )

      WTC does this have to do with AMD?
      ATI is now part of the big AMD family. Where have you been in the last few months?
  • I have to say I'm not finding anything insightful in the linked article. It's just a long winded way of saying, "The drivers aren't very good, but AMD/ATI is working hard on it." which we most of us likely already knew. It would have been good to see some insights on what AMD did to improve the driver development process, what impact the open source [slashdot.org] announcement made, etc.

  • Translation: ATI fails to release OSS drivers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:50AM (#19383633) Homepage Journal
    Wow, a lot of text to paper over the obvious problem: ATI is still failing to release OSS drivers for Linux. The paper describes all the ways that ATI tries to avoid releasing the drivers, and how they all fail to solve the problem. ATI has testing processes, etc., sure - but later on, when X.org and the Linux kernel change, there's no way for me to update the driver - so I have to hope that they will EVENTUALLY do so (leaving me vulnerable to any security problems) OR throw away the ATI card.

    Dell has solved this problem by including the Intel stuff instead for their Linux offering. It's time for ATI to release their drivers as OSS.

  • I think I speak here for a fairly wide swath of GNU/Linux developers and distributors: While the quality of the driver and it's release is of some importance, the license of that driver is the deal breaker. Give us a poor driver with a free (as in freedom) license and the community will make it great. Give us an excellent driver with a proprietary license and only a minority of users will use it. Why? Many distros (I'll use Fedora as an example) will not package proprietary drivers. Ubuntu, which I be

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mrtom852 ( 754157 )
      That article took ages to get approval from the management at ATi (~two months) - if they're that paranoid about releasing information on their release cycle then I don't think we stand a chance of getting any open source/specs from them.
      • Like McDonald's board of directors meeting over poor sales in India, clueless to the ethical views of that market. Sales VP: "They don't like our beef" Marketing VP: "So we'll give them better beef, fresher!" Technical VP: "We could slaughter the cow on site if it helps" Sales VP: "That could be a great slogan, 'fresh from the cow'" [cue standard nods of agreement and voicing of support from around the table]
  • The article basically says "thanks for these power point slides, AMD/ATI, I'll kiss your F**** asses in my article" Seriously, that article sucked.
    Also, when they say that customers don't realize how much work goes into drivers, is that an excuse? I don't care how much work goes into drivers, I know it's hard to do. It's hard to develop the cards to begin with, and to engineer them. The entire process is hard and full of work. The bottom line is that if you can't produce working drivers for a product
  • "The early ATI Linux driver had lacked essential functionality ... not to mention a great deal of bugs."

    I'd have thought lacking a great many bugs would be a good thing. (Yes, I know what was meant, but it's monday morning, I'm at work and I feel like pulling the legs off the English language.)

  • It seems, most of the critics of the closed-source drivers happily shut up, when they get drivers for their platform.

    Manufacturers have learned this long ago — they release binary drivers for Linux/i386, and the criticism all but disappears. NVidia has gone farther [nvidia.com] than most by releasing Linux/amd64 and even FreeBSD/i386 binaries.

    But FreeBSD/amd64 is not there... Nor are Open|NetBSD... Nor Linux/ppc.

    I know, each additional platform costs plenty. But it is the source, I'm asking, not binaries. If

    • NVidia may have released FreeBSD/i386 drivers, but has anyone actually got the damned things to work?

      What the hell use are drivers that don't actually work?

      I dont give a stuff if the drivers are binary closed source, if they work. However, in my experience, nether ATI nor NVidia can write drivers to save their lives. Hell the ATI ones can't even manage text mode properly on FreeBSD/UltraSparc. The NVidia ones wont even load on FreeBSD/I386 with xorg 7.2.

      I get better performance from a five year old 4MB S3

  • From TFA:

    This schedule does also explain why new kernel and X.Org support isn't generally added the same month as its release. If a new kernel at the start of the month breaks fglrx support, that month's driver is already far into the validation and beta stages, which prevents engineers from appending support to the branched driver.

    This is why you should follow the new kernels and X.Org while in the development stage. Follow the CVS (or GIT or SVN).

    It's true, that kernel may take longer to get out the do

  • nVidia blob isn't crap. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gukin ( 14148 ) on Monday June 04, 2007 @01:05PM (#19384673)
    I know that lots of folks are vexed that nVidia won't open their 3D driver, saying "If nVidia stops supporting Linux you're all doomed." Well just who do you think supports the open source nv.c driver? How about the nVidia SATA driver? Yes, it's nVidia, so even though the 3D stuff is closed source, they're still supporting OSS.

    Next about the "Crap" drivers from nVidia, I've ordered a bunch of new Linux PCs, each will have a low-end nVidia video card added when it arrives? Why? Well I need dual headed support and that can be spotty with other video card vendors. I also need to run them in 8-bit color (don't ask, I just need to.) and my experience with the glorious wonderful OSS Intel video drivers is a nasty little box that follows the cursor around on the screen. I don't have ANY issues with nVidia's "Crap" drivers, everything looks great and works great.

    I applaud ANY vendor who makes efforts at supporting OSS but I buy stuff from vendors who support Linux. Every system I own is either an nForce mobo with an nVidia video card or is simply sporting an nVidia card. When asked about what to buy, I recommend nVidia products. They have the best quality 3D support and performance of ANY vendor (which isn't much), they make it possible for me to play games under Linux that I'd otherwise have to play under Windows and that is worth a lot to me.

  • stability and performance problems not to mention a great deal of bugs.

    You mean stability and performance problems are features?

  • Unfortunately, my (otherwise excellent) T60p thinkpad is crippled by having a FireGL 5200 ATI graphics card.
    The fglrx driver works well enough mostly (although no AIGLX at all), but about once a week, doing something like scrolling a page will crash the machine. I've gone back to the VESA driver - at least it doesn't crash.

    Unfortunately, the vesa driver doesn't support any 2D acceleration, such as copy-rectangle. This means that scrolling large pages is CPU-limited (on a very fast core-duo machine!).
  • I had 2 identical systems a while back. old P4 1.8gz with asus mother boards I got from a dealer friend who couldn't moev them. They were unopened cpu's and new, just not cuttign edge. We needed 2 comps one for me one for my brother. At the time I had been Nvidia exclusive since about the first GeForce. I was advised that for that generation the ATI 9600 was the best bang for the buck. While my brother already had my hand me down GeForce MX. My system was crashing consistantly at least twice a day and the e

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