AMD Releases Open-Source Radeon HD 7000 Driver 84
An anonymous reader writes "AMD has publicly released the open-source code to the Radeon HD 7000 series 'Southern Islands' graphics cards for Linux users. This allows users of AMD's latest-generation of Radeon graphics cards to use the open-source Linux driver rather than Catalyst, plus there's also early support for AMD's next-generation Fusion APUs."
Re:DRM in Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AMD needs to focus on OS (Score:4, Informative)
Lagging support such as nVidia Optimus not being supported on Linux platforms.
Re:Llano: 3.3? (Score:5, Informative)
There's still a problem with Llano VGA in Linux 3.3. These bug [launchpad.net] reports [freedesktop.org] seem to indicate that the problem lies with the DP to VGA bridge not working. As a workaround, you can use a HDMI/DVI connection instead of VGA.
Re:They still have a non-free dependency; go /w In (Score:5, Informative)
The ATI 3d acceleration is still dependent on non-free software. Only the 2d works on free systems.
Complete nonsense. I am doing OpenGL development at this very moment using the fully open Radeon driver. Your post has too many inaccuracies to address. If it were possible to retract it, you probably should.
Re:AMD needs to focus on OS (Score:2, Informative)
nVidia's linux support has been solid for, like, a decade. Their blob works so damn well, and has worked well for so damn long, that even if the Magical Code Fairy came and blessed AMD/ATI with perfect *NIX modules, I would be hard-pressed to give up on nVidia. I'm all fidgety, waiting for the nearly-released 600-series cards, and you can totally bet those cards will have first-rate blob support, for us early adopters of the linux persuasion.
Buy a relatively new ATI card, and really, you just hope to Christ that at least the vesa driver works in X, so you can spend the next 10 or 15 hours trying to get the thing semi-functional.
Plug in the nVidia card, run the module installer, and start up X. It is that easy. ATI should supply firey hoops & circus music with each boxed video card, just to make the installation experience more realistic. Giving open source coders more information to work with will help, but if they want something as awesome/trivial as nVidia's experience, they're going to need a whole new way of doing things. Either give the open source community *everything* it needs, or hire competent people to get the job done properly. It's been a 2-bit effort out of AMD for far too long. Honestly, I don't even consider them for Win machines any more, because I know that the card I choose today will eventually pass through a Lin machine, after another upgrade.