Does radeon(hd) + R700 + compiz work yet?

[bash]

I am contemplating switching to the open-source drivers. I own an Radeon 4850 and now that EXA/Xv for R600/R700 is merged to master it sounds pretty interesting.

Before I go and try to see if I manage to get that thing compiled I wanted to ask if Compiz works yet with the oss drivers? The X.Org wiki pages on the one hand list 3d status "wip" yet in the program page Compiz is set as "platinum" for R700. So anyone get first hand experience how well the (most) recent (svn) versions work with compiz.

Oh and I don't care about any other 3d use. I play my occasional round of Nexuiz but that can wait. Compiz though I don't want to miss as some features like the expose-style window view or the ability to quickly drag windows to different workspaces just stuck with me.

[bridgman]

You need OpenGL to run Compiz, so that's not available yet. On the other hand, a number of *other* compositors can run well with the EXA/XRender acceleration which is available today.

[bash]

Thanks for the fast reply. Guess I'll be waiting then till there is some basic OpenGL to work with. Do you happen to have a vague guestimate when we might see basic working 3D? Really excited about this development, so just curious when thing might be in place. Of course I have nothing against "We'll have working DirectX 11 on Linux by Q3!!!1111111" either :D

Oh and I just wanted to say I really appreciate someone in-the-know and even from directly AMD idling around here and answering all the lil queries users have. Great service!

[mdias]

...
Of course I have nothing against "We'll have working DirectX 11 on Linux by Q3!!!1111111" either :D
...

Now THAT would make me target linux primarily as a developer.
And I bet my boss would be very happy with the cost reductions :D

[bridgman]

Remember how I said that we do not discuss unreleased products or features ?

Well, just for you, just this one time, I'll make an exception...

We have no plans to release DX11 support for Linux, either in Q3 or later. And you say we never tell you anything :D

[SolidSteel144]

What's the difference between the radeon and the radeonhd drivers? What's the ati drivers.

[bridgman]

There used to be three drivers in the "ati" folder (xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati) -- radeon, r128 and mach64. There was also a wrapper driver, called "ati", which dynamically loaded one of those three drivers after figuring out what kind of GPU you had.

A year or two ago the "r128" and "mach64" drivers were moved out of the -ati folder, leaving just radeon and the -ati wrapper. If you have a radeon family card you can either pick "radeon" (which runs radeon directly), pick "ati" (which runs radeon as well), or pick "radeonhd" which will run the radeonhd driver (xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd).

[SolidSteel144]

In the end there are two different drivers? Radeon and radeonhd? Which one would be better to use?

[korpenkraxar]

remember how i said that we do not discuss unreleased products or features ?

Well, just for you, just this one time, i'll make an exception...

We have no plans to release dx11 support for linux, either in q3 or later. And you say we never tell you anything :d

roflmao!!!

[susikala]

In the end there are two different drivers? Radeon and radeonhd? Which one would be better to use?

Have a look at http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

If you use a r6xx/r7xx chip, I believe the drivers are more or less on feature parity with each other.

[bugmenot]

A year or two ago the "r128" and "mach64" drivers were moved out of the -ati folder, leaving just radeon and the -ati wrapper.
What if I have a r128 or mach64 based card? Does X select the correct driver automatically? I've heard mach64 isn't going to be included in standard builds at all because of security reasons, but these should be fixed by now. Whats the current status?

[agd5f]

What if I have a r128 or mach64 based card? Does X select the correct driver automatically? I've heard mach64 isn't going to be included in standard builds at all because of security reasons, but these should be fixed by now. Whats the current status?

If you specify "ati" it will load mach64, r128 or radeon depending on the chip. X will also select the correct driver for these chips if you don't specify a driver. The mach64 drm wasn't upstream for a while because it wasn't secure initially, but it was fixed a while ago and I believe Dave recently upstreamed it. The ddxes are as safe as any x driver and are still included in distros.

[bugmenot]

The mach64 drm wasn't upstream for a while because it wasn't secure initially, but it was fixed a while ago and I believe Dave recently upstreamed it.
Great, nice to hear that. Thanks for the answer :)

If DRI/DRM really works out of the box now, it would be cool to update this page:
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIMach64