AMD Releases Catalyst 9.6 For Linux

[Heiko]

Last year I bought an HD4870 for my new machine. For another machine that functions mainly as a server and plays movies on my tv as well I bought a HD3450. Both machines are running fine using Ubuntu 8.04, and at the moment I'm switching to Ubuntu 9.04 and so far it works fine. I don't have any reason to upgrade to a newer kernel, so I'm quite happy the way AMD drivers turn out. I even program my own OpenGL programs (OpenGL 3.0 that is) and they run fine on my AMD hardware.

I'm still hoping for more improvements of course, but I think my expectations are somewhat more realistic than those of other people around here. Of course I see that if you're a Fedora user things are a bit nasty. I think if AMD starts supporting Fedora officially, the monthly complaints will drop quite a bit.

But be honest... how many Linux users, are upgrading to a newer kernel than the one that is in their distro? I think this is a minority, so supporting Fedora (which does use a newer kernel) officially would help decrease the complaints a lot.

[RealNC]

Another Catalyst update, another hoard of users bitching about AMD.

It gets tiring, really. Yes, everyone agrees that Nvidia's binary blob is better, but people should consider the following (and I believe this has been stressed here on the forums a couple of times already):

Catalyst is _mostly_ developed for the enterprise class of AMD users, which is, I believe, still AMD's main (and more or less only) source of income on Linux. Whether one or even 10,000 users say they'd "pay with their wallets" doesn't matter the least bit, since the Linux market is still very small and I don't think AMD or Nvidia cares a rat's ass, really, whether Linux users buy their cards or not.

Bullsh!t. Lots of Linux users have ATI cards. And we PAID for them. We didn't get them for free. And even if we did, someone else paid for them. AMD doesn't give out hardware for free.

Nonetheless, although they have no monetary incentive (so far as I can tell) to open up their specs, AMD did. Now whatever you do, AMD Linux users have been withdrawn the right to complain... or at least complain justfully. Which makes you, if you do complain, assholes. If you have so much time to do that, go ahead and improve the open source drivers.

Bullsh!t. We have every right to complain since the drivers don't work correctly. We are customers. If AMD starts putting "Not suitable for Linux" stickers on their cards, THEN we won't have a right to complain.

Nvidia doesn't even support Linux, as far as I'm concerned, since binary blobs can't be even considered real support in a FOSS environment.

Bullsh!t. Not everyone is a Freetard. Not all of us care about "FOSS enviroments". Not even the kernel developers care about "FOSS environments". As Linus Torvalds put it: "Go suck on RMS." We care about working products and NVidia delivers those. They SUPPORT Linux because they want to stay market leaders. Their main target on Linux are workstations too, but they still deliver very good drivers suitable for multimedia and gaming desktops.

[Lukyn]

Hey guys, just relax. Whats going on? U are free to choose. Just sell your ATI and buy the nVidia. I know it now. I was so stupid that I buy ATI again with hope that ATI drivers are going better and better. Well, I was wrong. I didn't know that elite of Creative programmers now works for AMD/ATI.... I have feeling that in last changelog is missing, that CCC panel have now nicer colors...

And ppl with a little bit older ATI card, whitch is unsupported at all, can...welll...then can't do anything. They are just a garbage probably or I don't know. Well nVidia still maintain old Riva cards in drivers.... It is sad ATI. However, I can choose, so I see that future can be better, but not with ATI

[teuf31]

You go ahead and do that and be forever locked into a binary driver with a company that will never change policy.

I will instead start using the open source ATI driver when it's ready, help with debugging, and maybe even contribute some code. Until then for 3D I keep a 2.6.27.x kernel around (which is still updated with security patches, btw).

I use the open source ATI drivers since the begining... very good and stable drivers but it still missing the full 3D features and mainly from my side the UVD2 support.

Last year I'd buy a 3200 IGP card because I thought AMD was the best way regarding the openning of the documentation and the best full hardware decoding for HD videos. But one year later, I cannot use my hardware as expected.

I really need UVD2! open or closed source, at this step, I really don't care because my excellent Gigabyte MA78GM is near to finish into the trash.

... Yes I know, allways the same answer : "Stop crying and write yourself your own driver!". But what about the UVD2 documentation ?

About closed source driver, I can understand that the driver cannot deliver all the features in the same time as the windows driver
.... but one long, very long year later ??????????

[BlackStar]

I like the smell of trolls in the morning. Always the same people bitching about the same things every chance they get. Does this forum have a 'block user' function?

Back on topic: does anyone know if 9.6 supports EXT_geometry_shader? There were rumours that this was added in the beta, but I never got a chance to test.

[susikala]

x3 Bullsh!t

Why don't you go use Windows with that approach, then? You get everything you paid for and I hear it works well.

[Heiko]

I like the smell of trolls in the morning. Always the same people bitching about the same things every chance they get. Does this forum have a 'block user' function?

Back on topic: does anyone know if 9.6 supports EXT_geometry_shader? There were rumours that this was added in the beta, but I never got a chance to test.

From what I heard they only increased the maximum number of geometry shader uniforms from 0 to 512 in driver 9.6, which could be seen as a sign that geometry shader support is in the works... But no actual support at the moment.

[krazy]

I know I'm feeding the trolls, but honestly..

Bullsh!t. Not everyone is a Freetard. Not all of us care about "FOSS enviroments". Not even the kernel developers care about "FOSS environments". As Linus Torvalds put it: "Go suck on RMS."

Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules,
it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I
want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a
cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules.

Why? Because I'm a prick, and I want people to suffer? No.

Because I _know_ that I will eventually make changes that break modules.
And I want people to expect them, and I never EVER want to see an email
in my mailbox that says "Damn you, Linus, I used this binary module for
over two years, and it worked perfectly across 150 kernel releases, and
Linux-5.6.71 broke it, and you had better fix your kernel".

See?

I refuse to be at the mercy of any binary-only module. And that's why I
refuse to care about them - not because of any really technical reasons,
not because I'm a callous bastard, but because I refuse to tie my hands
behind my back and hear somebody say "Bend Over, Boy, Because You Have
It Coming To You".

I allow binary-only modules, but I want people to know that they are
_only_ ever expected to work on the one version of the kernel that they
were compiled for. Anything else is just a very nice unexpected bonus if
it happens to work.

And THAT, my friend, is why when somebody complains about AFS, I tell
them to go screw themselves, and not come complaining to me but complain
to the AFS buys and girls. And why I'm not very interested in changing
that.

Linus

[energyman]

I like the smell of trolls in the morning. Always the same people bitching about the same things every chance they get. Does this forum have a 'block user' function?

Back on topic: does anyone know if 9.6 supports EXT_geometry_shader? There were rumours that this was added in the beta, but I never got a chance to test.

wrong. I defended AMD in the last couple of month. But no 2.6.29 support really pisses me off. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say that? That kernel is out for thre(!) freaking month! 2.6.28 is unsupported, 2.6.27 a pile of crap.

And I have a good reason, why I want the latest kernels - I have problems with mtrr - but before I can even think about reporting on lkml I must be able to reproduce all the problems with the latest stable kernel - oh look, I can't.

[susikala]

wrong. I defended AMD in the last couple of month. But no 2.6.29 support really pisses me off. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say that? That kernel is out for thre(!) freaking month! 2.6.28 is unsupported, 2.6.27 a pile of crap.

And I have a good reason, why I want the latest kernels - I have problems with mtrr - but before I can even think about reporting on lkml I must be able to reproduce all the problems with the latest stable kernel - oh look, I can't.

There's nothing to defend here or go against. AMD has made the right move to finally support Linux, and some people are just acting like jackasses. This just shows people love complaining, and would do it any way -- they complained before AMD opened up the specs, and they complain now why 3D isn't yet working perfectly in the FOSS drivers, and they complained when AMD deprecated < r500 support, and so on and so forth. The same people who complain are the people who use Linux with a Windows mindset (i.e. "just work", no consideration for other aspects). They should just... hmph, use Windows and be happy with that?