Update On The HD 6000 Series Open-Source Support

[PGHammer]

Wasn't Natty supposed to ship with Linux 2.6.38?

Natty hasn't shipped yet; in fact, the first beta of Natty hasn't come out yet.

2.6.38-rc2 is available from kernel.org now (and is doubtless in the Ubuntu kernel PPA already); I compiled it on openSuSE 11.4 x64 MS5 two days ago! (Two hours and sixteen minutes of compile time on a Celeron DC E1200 - but decidedly worth it.)

Turns out there is little reason to wait, and *especially* if you have an AMD GPU of HD5xxx (if not HD6xxx) vintage; however, in order to take full advantage of that latest kernel, you also need X.org in the 7.6 series and at least 7.9 (if not 7.10) of Mesa.

Here's why:

OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R600 (CEDAR 68F9) 20090101 TCL DRI2
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10

No proprietary anything.

Install itself is three days old.
Kernel is two days old.
X install is barely two hours old.

[PGHammer]

Thanks, good to know 2.6.38 is on the table.
I asked cause this part of the article made me think Canonical already decided to stick with 2.6.37:

Even if Canonical does decide to stick with -37, that's what the kernel PPA is for.

The -38 RCs are also making noise at other distributions (I found out about it on the openSuSE forums, and have -38rc2 installed in my MS5-based setup, and I would think the same is doubtless true elsewhere, especially over in Gentoo/Sabayon-land), primarily because of the increased support for KMS over and above even 2.6.37. However, throw in the kernel improvements with those late-breaking improvements in X and Mesa (most of which just missed the earlier code freezes, especially those in Mesa) makes it all the more important that they be used in tandem.