AMD Launches New ATI Linux Driver

Michael Larabel writes "AMD has issued a press release announcing 'significant graphics performance and compatibility enhancements' on Linux. AMD will be delivering new ATI Linux drivers this year that offer ATI Radeon HD 2000 series support, AIGLX support (Beryl and Compiz), and major performance improvements. At Phoronix we have been testing these new drivers internally for the past few weeks and have a number of articles looking at this new driver. The ATI 8.41 Linux driver delivers Linux gaming improvements from the R300/400 series and the R500 series. The inaugural Radeon HD 2900XT series support also can be found in the new ATI Linux driver with 'the best price/performance ratio of any high-end graphics card under Linux.' While this new driver cannot be downloaded yet, in their press release AMD also alludes to accelerating efforts with the open-source community."

Hey AMD, A tip for you.

[Lumpy]

I purchase Nvidia only because the cards actually work under linux, or they used to. Lately there are issues...

If AMD steps up to the plate and gives us good drivers and actually listens and reacts fast to reported problems, they can come out way ahead.

Nvidia driver install used to be painless, now it can be incredibly painful depending on the Distro and Card you have. I still cant get a old Geforce4 card working on my wifes ubuntu PC. I gave up and switched to the intel onboard chipset. Far better support for that video chipset than nvidia is giving us even for the older cards that USED to work great.

It's nice to see DAAMIT finally getting there

[Trelane]

It's only been 3-4 years since I bought an ATI card in the (vain) hopes that they would continue supporting X devs. Sadly, I found poor support and lots of bugs. Unless they pull an Intel and release/fund Free drivers for their graphics chips, for me it's Intel for ease-of-use and NVidia for performance. I've lost faith in them.

Underwhelmed

[Anonymous Coward]

Have ATI even stopped violating the GPL by shipping old code from AGPGart in their binary? This is too little too late, I've already given up on high performance 3D and decided to stick with intel graphics because of the open drivers. What's the betting this 'driver' requires mono? Seriously, last I looked the windows drivers required the .NOT framework for the craplet and settings manager.

I definitely made a brilliant move

[erroneus]

In previous discussions about ATI and their Linux driver support, I had mentioned that I made the bold move to move away from ATI on my laptop to nVidia. (Dell makes these kinds of changes fairly easy) My laptop is an Inspiron 8600 which I had originally ordered to use the ATI Mobility 9600 card. Through eBay, I ordered and later installed the 128MB version of the nVidia card to replace it. (Not terribly expensive either.) I just checked AMD/ATI's web site to see what the current hardware supported under the current driver is. Sure enough, my mobility 9600 is now at the very bottom of the supported hardware list and with the new release, it is certain to fall off entirely.

If it hasn't been stated clearly enough in the past, I'll state it again. Even if you don't care about whether a driver is OSS or proprietary from a technical standpoint, users are advised to understand that proprietary drivers places control over your hardware's obsolescence firmly in the hands of the manufacturer. And these days, with limited hardware selection for things like laptops or very tiny PCs, your options are pretty limited. These proprietary drivers are damaging the viability of Linux on older hardware which has been one of Linux's strongest motivators for adoption.

Moving to nVidia helps because at least with nVidia, they have a legacy hardware program to support and update drivers for older hardware. AMD/ATI does not. Ultimately, though, I should probably settle in and get comfortable with the OSS drivers for my hardware even if the performance is lower... it's a damned shame though.

Re:Hey AMD, A tip for you.

[Zonk (troll)]

What's wrong with the i-tal "nv" driver? Never installed nVidious's closed-source crap, never likely to.

It's 2d only. Ie, no Beryl/Compiz. It also doesn't seem to be very stable. I use that driver on my PowerBook (it runs Ubuntu), but X freezes half of the time I try to play a video*. If I'm at home I have to ssh in from another machine and kill X so I can use the thing again, or if I'm anywhere else I have to reboot (keyboard and mouse are frozen as is everything on the desktop, ctrl-alt-backspace doesn't do anything).

* It doesn't matter whether I'm using VLC, Xine, Mplayer, or Totem. I happens very often, which is why I'll usually just boot it into OS X if I want to play a dvd or avi.

Also, in reply to Lumpy (gp), why is it so hard to go to "System->Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager"? I've done that with a few GeForce4 (integrated) cards and it's as easy as typing your password and clicking a button.

If you're not running 7.04, then just do "System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager" and do a search for "nvidia-glx". Install that and it should work (you might have to change /etc/X11/xorg.conf to "nvidia" rather than "nv", I don't remember if that's automatic or not).

Ubuntu is by far the easiest distro to install 3d graphics drivers on since they provide the packages. No compiling and it will always work across reboots since the driver gets updated when the kernel does.

And?

[n0dna]

Even a blind pig will find an acorn occasionally.

Lets suppose that this driver does all it says, and more. That'd be one in a row for ATI. They have even had drivers that will sometimes work under Windows. Not very often, and not by any stretch routinely.

Why would I put my money behind a product that I can be fairly certain will never have another driver that will ever work?

3D is important; Do what Linus does: buy Intel

[Kludge]

98% of all Linux machines are used for tasks where 3D graphic performance doesn't matter.

Wrong. Many Linux machines are now desktops. 2/3 of the Linux machines in my home are desktops. I don't use fancy 3D desktops, but I do use everyday apps like Google Earth and the occasional kids' games that are much faster and smoother with hardware rather than software OpenGL.

However I have solved this problem by only buying Intel graphics hardware. They work from the moment Fedora first boots up.

Re:Is the driver open-source?

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. I got a laptop with an Intel GMA. Not a powerful video chip, but it has enough power to do all that 3D desktop stuff. And there was no fuss getting drivers. No extra stuff to download. No configuration to do. Everything just worked. For all my new computers (for the foreseeable future, until other graphics cards manufacturers release good open source drivers), they will all be using Intel GMA, because these video chips are good enough for my uses, and the drivers are extremely solid. If I want to play video games, I'll use my console (Wii).

Re:Are they open?

[Constantine XVI]

AFAIK, Intel graphics chips only come on motherboards with Intel chipsets, which only handle Intel processors.

See a pattern here?

Re:Is the driver open-source?

[KDR_11k]

There are not that many graphic-intensive games for Linux.

Nonsense, while the list isn't as big as Windows's there's still a fair number of graphics intensive games on Linux (though admittedly there may not be any ones that are so current that they absolutely need the latest hardware). Even just playing Doom 3 or UT2004 needs a 3d capable driver.

Re:I definitely made a brilliant move

[nametaken]

I think the big problem is not that people don't understand the pitfalls of proprietary drivers. I think it's more that people buy hardware first, and opt to install an alt OS down the line. Aside from myself, I don't know anyone who was careful to purchase a computer that would be well supported by anything other than Windows.

The net result is that a LOT of people end up with ATI video cards, not wanting to buy replacements, and aggravated that driver support sucks. It's a crappy situation all the way around. :(

Re:Are they open?

[TheRaven64]

They're useless to me unless the source is available, preferably under the GPL.

Out of interest, why GPL? The rest of DRI (and x.org) is MIT licensed, including the Intel drivers. The only parts that are GPL'd are the kernel modules (which do a small amount of validation and pass instructions to the hardware). Keeping the majority of the drivers MIT licensed makes it much easier for people to add support for other operating systems, such as FreeBSD and Solaris (both of which are supported by nVidias blobs, although only FreeBSD has good support for Intel chips since no one has ported DRI to Solaris yet).

Re:Hey AMD, A tip for you.

[(H)elix1]

Have you tried a current Intel graphics card lately? I've been struggling with a Intel 945GM graphics card in a laptop. Yes, drivers in source code form exist at http://www.intellinuxgraphics.com/ [intellinuxgraphics.com] but I'll be damned if I can get everything to work with the directions provided using Centos/RHEL. Using the 915Resolution hack got it running at 1280x800, but for all the googling and failed attempts, 'supported' is a very strong word. Yes, I'm not a guru when it comes to the Linux configuration stuff. An RPM, yum, apt-get, emerge or deb for the 'major' distros is what I'd call supported. Source code is good, but I had to figure out what GIT was and how to install it before I could even start with trying to get native resolution. Way more work than it has to be compared to some of the other graphics cards/chipsets.

Re:Is the driver open-source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a particular reason you need the driver to be open-source? Are you planning on re-writing it? I've been hearing the open-source arguement for years but never understood it. Unless you are a driver developer yourself or plan on going through the code line by line, what does it matter? Why should a commericial company release their intellectual property for free when there are hundreds of people creating these products for a living. This is completely different than FOSS. What if you started giving away what you did for a living? /rant off

Re:3D is important; Do what Linus does: buy Intel

[CastrTroy]

Yes they are. But once you bring driver quality and stability into the equation, then Intel wins hands down. I'd rather have a slower video card that actually works, than a fast one that doesn't. Also, unless you are playing games, you won't notice the speed difference. Even if you're running a 3D desktop.

Whoa! Spiteful much?

[TheGreatOrangePeel]

What the hell is up with all the scathing remarks?! Let's remember that the ATI acquisition by AMD is new and let's be impressed, considering past support, that progress is being made in the Linux ATI drivers arena AT ALL! I really do believe that AMD is going to do the right thing by Linux. They're two underdogs that stand a lot to gain from each other and it would only stand to hurt any gains to be had by such a relationship by continuing what ATI was doing before the buyout. The fact of the matter is, ATI has undoubtedly undergone a mass re-organization and is, doubtlessly, also operating under a new philosophy. Anyone who knows someone who had their division bought out knows this to be true. Let's just sit back and see what happens before we start (effectively) blaming AMD for ATI's past mistakes and poorly written code.

AMD to open up graphics specs

[xer.xes]

It was announced today at the Linux summit they will open up specifications for all graphics cards, and release a 'reference'/minimal open-source driver for all cards.

More here: http://lwn.net/Articles/248227 [lwn.net]

Money where your mouth is

[MrNemesis]

Since the beginning of the year? Hell, I've been hearing murmuring for years on "support for XYZ will be coming soon!" - and yet today the disparity between the ATI/nVidia feature set and stability under Linux are still huge. How long since nVidia got support for AIGLX? ATI only just adds it now?

You'll also note that, GeForce 8x00 series notwithstanding (which are marginally slower under Linux), nVidia maintain a very small performance delta between the Linux and windows version of their drivers. ATI's performance delta can sometimes be as much as 50% (top-of-my-head BTW, Phoronix had another full-of-crappy-graphs article about it a while back).

I'm hoping AMD can pull some weight and at least get better support for laptop chipsets and IGP's in their otherwise pretty nice chipsets. Until then, I have to stick to Intel or nVidia for graphics, and since I only need the one gaming box, I'm getting through alot of Intel motherboards. Guess what CPU goes in an Intel motherboard, AMD? Despite me wanting to use X2's for their lower idle power envelope, I find it hard to justify.

Sigh.

Re:Are they open?

[Bert64]

But seriously, how many PPC workstations get sold nowadays?
Especially ones with slots able to take new videocards...
It's such a small niche that it's probably not worth it for AMD to pursue.

Re:AMD to open up graphics specs

[chill]

All graphics cards from the R500 going forward, specifically.

Still, THIS should be an article on Slashdot with the new drivers being a footnote -- not the other way around.

Re:3D is important; Do what Linus does: buy Intel

[Afrosheen]

"I'd rather have a slower video card that actually works, than a fast one that doesn't"

That's why nearly all Linux gamers and more than 60% of Windows gamers buy Nvidia cards. They've had better drivers for ages. Not open source, which disturbs some of the hardcore, but great drivers nonetheless.

Re:AMD to open up graphics specs

[lotho brandybuck]

That's huge. I hope this is true. I hope it's done fast.
Available, truly open sourced drivers are going to be a big factor in any hardware purchase I make.
I'm just one, but I think I'm one of many. Even if you're not "paranoid" (concerned) it's obsolecense protection.

Re:Are they open?

[fimbulvetr]

Are you aware of the concepts of capitalism? I don't mean to be condescending, but serious. Do you understand there are significant costs on the programming side for an entirely different architecture? Do you understand AMD needs to make money to survive as a company? Do you understand that only a fraction of their customers are running Linux, and of that a trivial fraction are running PPC?

It's about time!

[WhiteWolf666]

Awesome!

Even though its not "out" yet, there are plenty of benchmarks available. It'll be out soon.

What does this "prove" for me? That AMD's commitment to make ATI a first-class contender on the Linux front was for real. I'm guessing that Windows users will also see improvements in OpenGL performance, and we'll see better adoption of OpenGL on all three major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux).

I'm happy as hell about this. About time us Linux users got to take advantage of GPU price wars!

I'm still an NVIDIA fan, because they've been good to me for all these years (on Linux), but I'm at least willing to look at ATI these days; particularly because the ATI peripheral GPU software is much better (better control panel, better install program). I wonder if the driver quality is good (not just performance, but does it always compile correctly, does it always fix broken installs (the way NVIDIA's does?)).

This is a good day for Linux.

Re:Is the driver open-source?

[BrainInAJar]

What about people like me that use Solaris? or any othe esoteric operating system other than the big-3 ?

or if there's strange bugs that you think are the drivers fault, and you happen to know enough C to fix them right now instead of whenever the snail-slow vendor gets around to it?

as for your comment about giving away what you do for a living... AMD doesn't write drivers for money, they make hardware. Intel manages to make hardware and open-source a good majority of their drivers, so that's just a stupid argument.

Re:Put up or shut up...

[Prof.Phreak]

Amen. Same for AMD in general. Come on... actually release -SOMETHING-!

Re:Are they open?

[mrchaotica]

The same applies to Sparc, ARM, Power-and-siblings, and a half-dozen others that I can't be bothered to name. Not all of these are out of mainstream production...

I hate to break it to you, but you're using a very non-standard definition of "mainstream."

Re:AMD to open up graphics specs

[Kjella]

That's excellent news, but I'm always weary of paper releases. When the specs are available for download, and someone with more driver writing skills than me has said "yep, this is a good and complete documentation that we can actually use" then it's time for celebration. Then maybe next time I'll cosider an ATI card, it's been a long time since last time.

Re:Is the driver open-source?

[Cajun Hell]

And that's a shame, because people probably really ought to [theinquirer.net] keep their hats on. [kerneltrap.org]

Re:Are they open?

[howlingmadhowie]

if they documented the interface, they wouldn't have to support it. someone else would do the work.

Re:Is the driver open-source?

[nuzak]

> Is there a particular reason you need the driver to be open-source?

So it works when the kernel changes their *&^!%@! ABI yet again in the latest patchlevel. To port it to other OS's. So smarter people than me can look at it and find bugs or interoperability problems with it and send vendor updates to it.

I can understand their reasoning -- video cards are more or less big FPU arrays these days, and the actual 3d graphics is all software, so they might not want to expose their secrets. The other problem is that the competition would use it to find potential patent infringement. It's a Nash equilibrium: the first one to open-source loses. If I were to put the number generously at 50,000 extra customers due to OSS, that simply wouldn't cover the potential loss. But the fact is, there aren't any solid numbers as to what the market effect would be, and uncertainty is in a lot of ways worse than outright losing -- at least you can write off the latter on your balance sheet early.

ATI Mobility FireGL 9000

[exi1ed0ne]

Is there a particular reason you need the driver to be open-source?

I have a perfectly good 3 year old laptop with a video card that ATI decided to drop support for. The last proprietary driver that it IS supported on (8.28.8) will not install on Feisty. My options are exactly:

1. Deal with it
2. Go back to windows (shudder) or Dapper
3. Drop a bunch of $$ on a new laptop (can't replace just the card now can I?)

Exactly none of those options is appealing, so I won't be buying ATI again until they open up.

Re:3D is important; Do what Linus does: buy Intel

[miro f]

try

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx

or if you have a new card

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new

always worked for me