R800 3D mesa driver is shortly before release

[bridgman]

Is that a promise? That leaves about a month and a half left to release it.

Do you have any idea about how long we'll have to wait for Fusion? It's supposed to be coming out around Sept. isn't it?

It's not a promise, but I think we're pretty close.

We aren't going to talk much about specifics of the Fusion parts until the public launch. In the meantime I'll just re-iterate that "getting ready for Fusion" was one of the original objectives for the open source graphics project, that our goal was to be more or less caught up with new product introduction by the time Fusion parts launched, and that Alex already has an Ontario engineering board.

[Nille]

It's supposed to be coming out around Sept. isn't it?

My last Info for the APU is Q2/Q2 2011

[elanthis]

Usually you can just upgrade the kernel, libdrm, xorg and mesa to the latest stable or development versions and have the rest of the distribution work fine with no user visible changes.

Normal users do not do that, should not need to do that, and largely don't have the skill to do that. Even the people that CAN do that usually are going to want to do other things with their time given the choice... like go to the beach, get laid, or enjoy a hobby that doesn't lead to RSI.

Compiling kernels and such is for people like us: developers and tech-oriented testers. Regular users should NEVER be expected to do that kind of bullshit. The second you claim otherwise is the second you have completely and utterly lost touch with reality.

Either the distros need to roll out new releases of the kernel and X automatically to users on older releases (or better yet, stop releasing frozen appliance-style package sets every six months in favor of a 2-3 year base platform release cycle, with six month platform-extension SPs, rolling updates for new hardware support and fixes, and crazy-easy-to-use third-party application repository support) or the drivers need to be distributable as installers that can work on a range of carved-into-stone distribution releases.

</my-typical-off-topic-liunx-blows-for-regular-joes-rant>

[Nille]

The most Distributions ship an Bleeding edge Kernel.
E.g for Ubuntu http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/
And if you want the Latest DDX, libdrm, Mesa etc. there is an PPA https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

So you don't need to compile anything.

[Agdr]

Normal users do not do that, should not need to do that, and largely don't have the skill to do that. Even the people that CAN do that usually are going to want to do other things with their time given the choice... like go to the beach, get laid, or enjoy a hobby that doesn't lead to RSI.

Compiling kernels and such is for people like us: developers and tech-oriented testers. Regular users should NEVER be expected to do that kind of bullshit. The second you claim otherwise is the second you have completely and utterly lost touch with reality.

You don't need to compile anything yourself.

Often, you can find repositories with updated components (e.g. Ubuntu PPAs) and otherwise use the packages from the development branch.

With Ubuntu, I believe you can add PPAs just by clicking on a link in the browser, so it's a matter of doing a search for the PPA or getting a link from some howto/forum, clicking the link, clicking "Upgrade" in the package manager and rebooting.
This isn't really harder than upgrading a driver on Windows.

BTW, consider that even on Windows, if you use a notebook, driver upgrades (used to?) require you to get a third-party modding tool to literally patch the proprietary drivers, as it would otherwise refuse to install. This is not exactly user friendly.

Or alternatively, wait months/years/forever for the notebook manufacturer to release an official update.

[Nille]

My last Info for the APU is Q2/Q2 2011

I mean Q1/Q2

[Qaridarium]

i mean q1/q2

q4 2010 ;-)

[rohcQaH]

apparently "Q4 2010" means the same thing as "coming this month" meant in this thread's first post.

It means that Q is as clueless as ever.

[Nille]

q4 2010 ;-)

I don't think so. If we are optimistic Q1 2011

[Qaridarium]

apparently "Q4 2010" means the same thing as "coming this month" meant in this thread's first post.

It means that Q is as clueless as ever.

sometimes its better to be clueless ;-)

i read it a little different:

smitty3268:"Is that a promise? That leaves about a month and a half left to release it."[...]

Bridgman: "It's not a promise, but I think we're pretty close."


or my favorite version:

smitty3268:"[...]Do you have any idea about how long we'll have to wait for Fusion? It's supposed to be coming out around Sept. isn't it?"

Bridgman: "It's not a promise, but I think we're pretty close."


means 3DEver-Gr800n Radeon driver or fusion notebooks in Q4 2010 ;-)

proofed by 'Bridgman'