ATI and Linux compatibility

[mugginz]

Check the Ubuntu forums. Search '5770'. Tons of posts about problems. Not being able to boot because of blank or black screens. Needing runarounds, workarounds or scripts to just use your computer. This is a distro that ATI claims support. I guess 9.10 works with 1.7 but Ubuntu has gone to the next stable release, Lucid, 10.04, and X.org has moved on, too? But, hordes of problems/issues. I guess the workarounds are working for some (booting to safe or low graphics mode and installing the fglrx driver but still...).

Yeh, I was hoping for solid support in 10.04 with 10.4 but it seems not to be the case. I've postponed the gfx card for another two months or so in the hope of things improving and have instead bought an SSD. When the next fglrx lands if support isn't solid by then that'll mean nVidia for sure.

[monraaf]

Given the level of support for Evergreen and FOSS drivers, I assumed he was talking about fglrx.

Ubuntu does not ship with fglrx installed. The default driver is the oss driver. Unfortunately for Evergreen cards that driver not very useful at the moment. On top of that Ubuntu ships with UMS for Evergreen which is known to be broken, so people get a black screen before they even get a chance to install fglrx.

They should have just sticked to VESA for Evergreen. This is just making Ubuntu and/or ATI look bad.

[mugginz]

Ubuntu does not ship with fglrx installed. The default driver is the oss driver. Unfortunately for Evergreen cards that driver not very useful at the moment. On top of that Ubuntu ships with UMS for Evergreen which is known to be broken, so people get a black screen before they even get a chance to install fglrx.

They should have just sticked to VESA for Evergreen. This is just making Ubuntu and/or ATI look bad.

Yeh but in Ubuntu fglrx is just a few clicks away (and a few crashes as well)

It would seem that if you use Linux then don't buy an Evergreen card yet and if you already have one then use Windows.

[monraaf]

Yeh but in Ubuntu fglrx is just a few clicks away (and a few crashes as well)

It's very hard to click when all you've got is a black screen

[mugginz]

It's very hard to click when all you've got is a black screen

Not if it works until you install fglrx

[seebs]

- If you want to use wine a lot (I will never understand this type of linux user, please boot up windows and really enjoy your games) your card should be nvidia, because wine has better support for it.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to acquire a Windows license and learn enough about Windows security to maintain a secure Windows system.

WINE could be slow and crashy running WoW, but it offered me a better experience than I had running Windows a few years back, and I am not about to go back to Windows.

So there really is a reason to do this, even though it may seem odd.

[pingufunkybeat]

The FOSS driver and power management doesn't work according to what I read. I'm not sure about drm and I don't know if that's something everyone uses or just 'beta' (experimental) in which you can expect bugs again.

So what are you reading?

If you don't know for sure, why are you spreading FUD?

FOSS drivers have dynamic powersaving with the vanilla 2.6.34 kernels today, and 2.6.35 will bring even better powersaving in a couple of months.

The drm-radeon-testing branch is indeed an experimental branch of the kernel, but parts of it get merged into the mainstream Linus kernel regularly.

Both the binary nVidia driver and the binary ATi driver are better at powersaving at the moment than the radeon FOSS driver, but at least try to stick to the facts, please.

[Jimbo]

Unfortunately for Evergreen cards that driver not very useful at the moment. On top of that Ubuntu ships with UMS for Evergreen which is known to be broken, so people get a black screen before they even get a chance to install fglrx.

Ubuntu fault then, what I am really interested is to know if once you installed correctly fglrx 10.4 ati evergreen system is running fine and stable?? I would love to have an evergreen to test my self.

I guess a lot of plp are blaming ati without having one, or without trying for them selfs. They read other people that blame too and they got infected, then an anti-ati plague is formed in phoronix phorums . Ati 4000 series, as I said, are working pretty well. And of course ati has powersave, who spread the rumor that ati doesn't have?


aticonfig --od-getclocks

Default Adapter - ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series
Core (MHz) Memory (MHz)
Current Clocks : 110 250
Current Peak : 600 400
Configurable Peak Range : [300-800] [400-700]
GPU load : 0%

[Jimbo]

nah! the answer is easy, in the windows 7 article Michael configured (an FirePro V8800, which is their first workstation graphics card derived from an ATI Evergreen graphics processor) and run all type of test. So I guess that ati evergreen is working fine once you install fglrx driver!!

[mugginz]

Ubuntu fault then, what I am really interested is to know if once you installed correctly fglrx 10.4 ati evergreen system is running fine and stable?? I would love to have an evergreen to test my self.

As would I but I'm not going to buy one myself given the amount of reported problems with them at the moment. While nVidia is not perfect there doesn't seem to be the same level of basic failure as there is with fglrx.

I guess a lot of plp are blaming ati without having one, or without trying for them selfs. They read other people that blame too and they got infected, then an anti-ati plague is formed in phoronix phorums .

People rightly are basing their purchasing decisions on the successes and failures of others. Of course you want to know what you're getting yourself into before you buy, not after.

Ati 4000 series, as I said, are working pretty well. And of course ati has powersave, who spread the rumor that ati doesn't have?

Yes but that's not a 5000 series card. To get power management there you either need to upgrade your kernel (not something everyones comfortable with) or run fglrx (again, not something everyones comfortable with )

aticonfig --od-getclocks

Default Adapter - ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series
Core (MHz) Memory (MHz)
Current Clocks : 110 250
Current Peak : 600 400
Configurable Peak Range : [300-800] [400-700]
GPU load : 0%