10.5 is out. come and get it.

[WildcatWhiz]

Any idea how to enable kwin desktop effects with 10.5?
Do I have to change anything in my xorg.conf?
I'm running XServer 1.6

How did you install the ATI driver? On a clean install of Kubuntu, all you should have to do is install the fglrx driver from the "Hardware Drivers" application. That worked for me at least.

[MiUNX]

bridgman,

What bothers me about the company:
1) Too little resources dedicated to the betterment of the Linux ATI drivers (and everything that flows from that). E.g. we might be waiting another year or two for something simple to be fixed or added to the drivers.
2) ATI is primarily concerned and focussed on companies rather than desktop users like myself. E.g. things get fixed or added that desktop users are not even interested in. Looking at the driver "changelog" causes depression each month. Can you honestly tell me that when you look at the changelog from a desktop users POV it will not make you sigh?

What bothers me about the drivers:
1) The desktop experience is below standard. I don't know if you've tried the open-source drivers or the nvidia drivers, but if you try, you'll get what I mean.
2) The driver advances at turtle speed (not ninja turtles, the real ones -> also on land, not in the water )

If it's about saving cost, do you think it would bother a windows user that he will not get a new driver a few months? Practically all windows users use the pathetic drivers that came with their PC/laptop when it was installed. They never ever go check for new drivers, they couldn't care less. Compare this to a Linux user who will tell you exactly at what version a certain driver or program is currently (of the stuff he uses). How about ATI put 80% of their employees on helping the ATI linux drivers for a month or two, when the drivers [I bet the Linux and win drivers are practically the same anyway, at least that is what NVIDIA claims about their drivers] work similarly to the NVIDIA drivers, then go back to the 3% resource you probably dedicate now and we can live with slow development, since its at a good position anyway.

I found the open source drivers to provide a desktop experience that I like on my ATI 4570. Everything reacts visually fast, I don't corrupt stuff now and then. What I don't like about the open source drivers:
1) My laptop becomes hot and the vent goes crazy. I guess it has to do with power control. Honestly it makes me scared for my laptop.
2) While I am not a gamer, I don't like it that if I do want to game, it doesn't work, or not good enough.

I buy a new laptop every six months really, and it has always been an ATI one. Six months ago I replaced my desktop GFX with NVIDIA, and now I don't plan to buy a laptop with ATI anymore either.

[MiUNX]

Any idea how to enable kwin desktop effects with 10.5?
Do I have to change anything in my xorg.conf?
I'm running XServer 1.6

One of the problems of the ATI drivers on many systems has always been that it causes the effects to disable upon each reboot. If you had previously enabled it and it simply does not work right now, just press ALT+SHIFT+F12 to resume effects (composition). If pressing once doesn't make it work, press it again. If that doesn't work go to system settings > Desktop and enable composition.

[WildcatWhiz]

One of the problems of the ATI drivers on many systems has always been that it causes the effects to disable upon each reboot. If you had previously enabled it and it simply does not work right now, just press ALT+SHIFT+F12 to resume effects (composition). If pressing once doesn't make it work, press it again. If that doesn't work go to system settings > Desktop and enable composition.

Or just check the box that says "Disable compatibility check" (or something along those lines) on the Advanced tab of the Desktop Effects settings window.

[bridgman]

The desktop experience is below standard. I don't know if you've tried the open-source drivers or the nvidia drivers, but if you try, you'll get what I mean.

I guess the first thing I should point out is that I manage our open source graphics efforts so I'm more familiar with the open source drivers than with fglrx.

Alex, Matthew Garrett and others have done a lot of work on open source driver power management in the last few months. It might be worth trying the latest kernel and X driver code (maybe on a spare partition at first) to see if that addresses your power/heat concerns with the open drivers.

On the fglrx side, you've probably noticed that the changelog only includes fixes and enhancements which were Linux-specific, ie changes to the common code which affect Linux users do not appear. We don't have a good solution right now for picking out changes relevent to Linux users other than manual change-by-change effort, and right now we think it's better to spend that effort improving the driver than improving the change logs.

I don't know if you are running a KMS-based system right now with the open source drivers, but if you are you should see an improvement in the games you can run. Not sure if you are talking about native games or Windows games via Wine, but if the latter you should pick up the very latest Wine code as well since that makes a big difference when running on ATI hardware.

[Qaridarium]

bridgman,

What bothers me about the company:
1) Too little resources dedicated to the betterment of the Linux ATI drivers (and everything that flows from that). E.g. we might be waiting another year or two for something simple to be fixed or added to the drivers.
2) ATI is primarily concerned and focussed on companies rather than desktop users like myself. E.g. things get fixed or added that desktop users are not even interested in. Looking at the driver "changelog" causes depression each month. Can you honestly tell me that when you look at the changelog from a desktop users POV it will not make you sigh?

What bothers me about the drivers:
1) The desktop experience is below standard. I don't know if you've tried the open-source drivers or the nvidia drivers, but if you try, you'll get what I mean.
2) The driver advances at turtle speed (not ninja turtles, the real ones -> also on land, not in the water )

If it's about saving cost, do you think it would bother a windows user that he will not get a new driver a few months? Practically all windows users use the pathetic drivers that came with their PC/laptop when it was installed. They never ever go check for new drivers, they couldn't care less. Compare this to a Linux user who will tell you exactly at what version a certain driver or program is currently (of the stuff he uses). How about ATI put 80% of their employees on helping the ATI linux drivers for a month or two, when the drivers [I bet the Linux and win drivers are practically the same anyway, at least that is what NVIDIA claims about their drivers] work similarly to the NVIDIA drivers, then go back to the 3% resource you probably dedicate now and we can live with slow development, since its at a good position anyway.

I found the open source drivers to provide a desktop experience that I like on my ATI 4570. Everything reacts visually fast, I don't corrupt stuff now and then. What I don't like about the open source drivers:
1) My laptop becomes hot and the vent goes crazy. I guess it has to do with power control. Honestly it makes me scared for my laptop.
2) While I am not a gamer, I don't like it that if I do want to game, it doesn't work, or not good enough.

I buy a new laptop every six months really, and it has always been an ATI one. Six months ago I replaced my desktop GFX with NVIDIA, and now I don't plan to buy a laptop with ATI anymore either.

the catalyst 10-6 fix most of the 3D-desktop and 2D-desktop bugs ;-)

catalyst 10-5 is XAA acceleration and 10-6 is EXA like direct2D acceleration!

[TheWretched]

Yeah, I had to start fresh for another reason, went ahead and tried all combinations of 10.3,10.4,10.5 with wine 1.1.38,1.1.44,1.2rc2 on ubuntu64 and kanotix64.

This time around it resolved the crazy 2D surfaces issue (must have been from the ATI .run package I ran before - and subsequently uninstalled; must have left remnants).

But it still hangs x every time when loading the game environment during the character loading process. Frustrating; had to go slocate windows just to get eve running. Here's hoping for 10.6!!! I have not messed with all the different wine registry workarounds or catalyst 3D settings on this go around though.

This is with hd5870 eye6 btw, in case others have some gleaning knowledge to bestow upon me.

You use Ubuntu 10.4, I believe? You can try what I did... (64bit too)

Install it freshly from ISO, use X-Swat repository below:
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates

And use the fix from above!

Maybe it helps!

[bwat47]

bridgman,

What bothers me about the company:
1) Too little resources dedicated to the betterment of the Linux ATI drivers (and everything that flows from that). E.g. we might be waiting another year or two for something simple to be fixed or added to the drivers.
2) ATI is primarily concerned and focussed on companies rather than desktop users like myself. E.g. things get fixed or added that desktop users are not even interested in. Looking at the driver "changelog" causes depression each month. Can you honestly tell me that when you look at the changelog from a desktop users POV it will not make you sigh?

What bothers me about the drivers:
1) The desktop experience is below standard. I don't know if you've tried the open-source drivers or the nvidia drivers, but if you try, you'll get what I mean.
2) The driver advances at turtle speed (not ninja turtles, the real ones -> also on land, not in the water )

If it's about saving cost, do you think it would bother a windows user that he will not get a new driver a few months? Practically all windows users use the pathetic drivers that came with their PC/laptop when it was installed. They never ever go check for new drivers, they couldn't care less. Compare this to a Linux user who will tell you exactly at what version a certain driver or program is currently (of the stuff he uses). How about ATI put 80% of their employees on helping the ATI linux drivers for a month or two, when the drivers [I bet the Linux and win drivers are practically the same anyway, at least that is what NVIDIA claims about their drivers] work similarly to the NVIDIA drivers, then go back to the 3% resource you probably dedicate now and we can live with slow development, since its at a good position anyway.

I found the open source drivers to provide a desktop experience that I like on my ATI 4570. Everything reacts visually fast, I don't corrupt stuff now and then. What I don't like about the open source drivers:
1) My laptop becomes hot and the vent goes crazy. I guess it has to do with power control. Honestly it makes me scared for my laptop.
2) While I am not a gamer, I don't like it that if I do want to game, it doesn't work, or not good enough.

I buy a new laptop every six months really, and it has always been an ATI one. Six months ago I replaced my desktop GFX with NVIDIA, and now I don't plan to buy a laptop with ATI anymore either.

QFT. For years fglrx has been horrible for basic desktop usage. Basic things like compositing and video playback are still abysmal, its unusable for me and its pathetic how little its improved. The OSS drivers are rapidly surpassing it for basic desktop usage for me, once they have decent power management (my laptop does get hot fast like yours) I'll never even consider using the crap that is fglrx ever again.

[v8envy]

QFT. For years fglrx has been horrible for basic desktop usage. Basic things like compositing and video playback are still abysmal, its unusable for me and its pathetic how little its improved. The OSS drivers are rapidly surpassing it for basic desktop usage for me, once they have decent power management (my laptop does get hot fast like yours) I'll never even consider using the crap that is fglrx ever again.

Now wait just a minute, this is completely unfair. While I'll be the first in line to recommend using only NV hardware with the binary blob for the user concerned with desktop functionality what you're saying is completely and utterly WRONG.

Fglrx has come miles and leagues and worlds since even 2006. Today a pretty good portion of functionality available on windows is available on Linux. Starting with video acceleration, continuing with power management and ending with actually functioning with wine. Stability? fglrx used to lock the machine 100% reproducible on X logout, compositing was a complete crapshoot and certainly didn't work together with OpenGL.

It may still be inferior from a performance, functionality and stability standpoint compared to the competition but it's certainly nearing the "usable" level. Which is far more than you could have said for it in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

[mirv]

fglrx drivers still carry the bad reputation from a few years ago. Some people have blinders on and refuse to see anything different.
Oh well.