Shuttleworth On ATI's New Drivers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Shuttleworth On ATI's New Drivers

Mark Shuttleworth, the self-made millionaire and leader of the Ubuntu project, has been very vocal about the adoption of free software and that "the free software approach is a better device driver development model." But what does Mark think about AMD's announcements this week with the 8.41 display driver and the just-announced program where AMD will be handing out specifications under NDA and helping out the open-source community? Mark Shuttleworth has provided Phoronix some of his initial thoughts on ATI/AMD's new Linux push.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=10980

[sabriah]

According to the Linux distro timeline http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/LinuxDistroTimeline.png one can say that there are three major lineages of distros: Debian/Ubuntu, Slackware/Suse, and RedHat.

Apparently, AMD/ATI have announced that only Suse and RedHat will be officially supported by the new Linux Rx00 drivers.

Does anyone know what are the main differences between the distros and how easy it would be to implement support for any other distro? (I thought the Linux Standards Project has taken care of that. Or, should one interpret AMD/ATI's "support" as in technical/helpdesk support? Ubuntu is, after all, backed by a Dell contract since some time
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[glisse]

According to the Linux distro timeline http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/LinuxDistroTimeline.png one can say that there are three major lineages of distros: Debian/Ubuntu, Slackware/Suse, and RedHat.

Apparently, AMD/ATI have announced that only Suse and RedHat will be officially supported by the new Linux Rx00 drivers.

Does anyone know what are the main differences between the distros and how easy it would be to implement support for any other distro? (I thought the Linux Standards Project has taken care of that. Or, should one interpret AMD/ATI's "support" as in technical/helpdesk support? Ubuntu is, after all, backed by a Dell contract since some time
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They announced that AMD is collaborating with coders from Redhat & Suse, not that this driver will only be available on this distribution. The driver will be available on all distributions who package it and i am sure ubuntu will. This simply stress that canonical has no one on the payroll to work on xorg/driver development so AMD don't speak to them, they speak to company who have people working on this.

[rbmorse]

Since 8.41 is the first release of a new driver code base, would it not have been a good idea for ATI to identify 8.41 (and probably 8.42 with it's first swipe at AIGLX) as "beta" releases?

To me, ATI could avoid a lot of the emotionalism that will surface when the inevitable bugs surface with a "beta" label.

[Michael]

Since 8.41 is the first release of a new driver code base, would it not have been a good idea for ATI to identify 8.41 (and probably 8.42 with it's first swipe at AIGLX) as "beta" releases?

To me, ATI could avoid a lot of the emotionalism that will surface when the inevitable bugs surface with a "beta" label.

There are a couple bugs that still may be present, but overall it's very stable, etc. I have been using 8.41 since July.

[d2kx]

If AMD should name it a Beta release because of some bugs, what are 8.40 and under called?

[Kano]

Did you ever get a fully working driver from ATI? You can only sort em by bigger and less significant errors so far. This driver can be big step in the right direction but I would not promote ATI now as the best choice for a Linux user. Basically you not forsee future developments and to be on the bright side better look a bit at the past...

[d2kx]

Did you ever get a fully working driver from ATI? You can only sort em by bigger and less significant errors so far. This driver can be big step in the right direction but I would not promote ATI now as the best choice for a Linux user. Basically you not forsee future developments and to be on the bright side better look a bit at the past...

If you're answering to my post, read it again. I said that fglrx ever had some bugs.

About looking in the past... that should be done with every software or driver, but this time, it is a complete new codebase, so you really can't say how the future will look like with an AMD card. You can only guess.

[rbmorse]

If AMD should name it a Beta release because of some bugs, what are 8.40 and under called?

Is not 8.41 to be a new code base? I would call 8.40 and prior "old."

[Kano]

How about that guess, that ATI will not fix the Modeline issue within this year?

[d2kx]

Is not 8.41 to be a new code base? I would call 8.40 and prior "old."

Yes. I meant that you could call 8.40 and prior "alpha" if you compare to 8.41, I guess.

How about that guess, that ATI will not fix the Modeline issue within this year?

Maybe Michael knows something about that. 8.41s focus was the new OpenGL driver, but as you already know, from now on AMD will release real updates every month and implement new features in the coming months. With real updates I mean real updates, what we have seen from 8.20-8.40 is not what I call updates.