Ubuntu Has Another Special ATI Catalyst Driver?

[smitty3268]

Remember that Mesa still doesn't have the licenses to implement several patented OpenGL 3 technologies. So for that reason alone, the binary drivers are going to be superior for people who really need to use advanced features. I'm guessing blu-ray players would require a binary driver as well, although you can't get those on linux anyway.

[indus]

All I want is a roadmap stating when they'll switch into dropping fglrx and supporting the Open Source stack full steam. It is pretty solid in my Kubuntu Lucid test partition, but obviously a lot of speed ups and functionality need to still be coded in!

Are you aware there are some applications/games which will never run properly with the open source drivers? You probably miss the point that there are many applications that have proprietary technologies which will be difficult to implement in open source drivers due to IP issues.For example,quake 4 uses s3tc texture compression,the license to which is owned by s3 technologies.There is a bad hack which will try to run the game with the open drivers,but it doesnt work that well.It only runs with a third party library which according to the radeon devs is buggy.

Luckily,you are not the only customer AMD has ,so hopefully they will always have a driver which supports all features on their hardware and lets users enjoy the very reason these cards were made.

For the reason stated above, both drivers will exist always.But in any case,i dont see the point of having 3d in any of the drivers ,Radeon or proprietary,other than wobbling windows on the desktop what else do linux users do anyway?No cutting edge games,no 3D CAD, no nothing really.No wonder,both drivers suck at 3D.Nvidia is a strange exception to the rule,probably have good 3d support for stuff like Pro/E which runs on Linux workstations with Nvidia cards.

[albatorsk]

Luckily,you are not the only customer AMD has ,so hopefully they will always have a driver which supports all features on their hardware and lets users enjoy the very reason these cards were made.

That sounds great! When do you think that driver will be released?

[mendieta]

Are you aware there are some applications/games which will never run properly with the open source drivers? You probably miss the point that there are many applications that have proprietary technologies which will be difficult to implement in open source drivers due to IP issues.

Yes, I wasn't aware, but bridgman (from AMD) later on clarified that (sad) fact to me. With the ongoing success of open source, though, things are going more and more open in the industry, so I can only hope this will not be the case in the future. Not for basic things like acceleration/encoding technologies.

The rest of your post is just bashing me and/or Linux with unfounded and outdated remarks, so I'll keep this short

[indus]

That sounds great! When do you think that driver will be released?

mmm, in 10 years?

[indus]

Yes, I wasn't aware, but bridgman (from AMD) later on clarified that (sad) fact to me. With the ongoing success of open source, though, things are going more and more open in the industry, so I can only hope this will not be the case in the future. Not for basic things like acceleration/encoding technologies.

The rest of your post is just bashing me and/or Linux with unfounded and outdated remarks, so I'll keep this short

Sorry about that, but i wasnt trying to bash you.But unless someone counters what i said, i stick to my point.