The Open-Source ATI Driver Is Becoming A Lot Faster

[V!NCENT]

[...] V!ncent being much worse than what got gordboy banned the last time, yet escaping unscathed.

That's maybe because:
1. I'm only being an asshole towards the asshole that is an asshole against everybody here, except himself;
2. Everybody at these forums asked for mr. Gorden Unfreeman to be banned and nobody, except for Gorden ofcourse, asked for my ban, while also threatning the admin that has banning rights.


And about this topic; I think everybody has already thanked the driver devs who read this (and if not massive thanks for your effort) and thus there is little left to talk about, except one single douchebag, so allow us to be entertained.

[elanthis]

Maybe I'm an exception. I use them, I find them lacking, find them slow progressing(as in alarmingly slow), do not understand AMD decisions - but they are open-source.

Yeah. I have higher-end needs out of my GPU. Unfortunately, the proprietary drivers somewhat undermine the point of running a Free OS. Plus they're missing compatibility with newer kernels/X and lack features like KMS which a fair bit of the Free desktop stack is starting to have a hard dependency on.

I'm running the NVIDIA binary driver on my new laptop. It's helluva fast (some OpenGL tests are slightly out-performing Windows on the same machine). It's got a higher level of OpenGL support than the Windows drivers that are compatible with this specific video card. But on the other hand I'm fucked if I want to try Wayland or if I even just want a nice bootup experience on Fedora.

I can deal with less performance or features than the proprietary drivers offer, but that minimum acceptable level is for me still a good deal above the support offered by the FOSS drivers. And sure I was a little irritated when it took almost a year for my first ATI GPU to be supported.

However, given the size of the team and the relative inexperience of many of the FOSS driver developer (as GPU driver developers, not as general developers; they're all great devs) they've done a damn good job. Whatever shortcomings there are in the FOSS stack, it's not due to any fault of the people actually working on them. It's the fault of the all the people _not_ working on them. Which yes, includes me.

[amphigory]

While the Gallium3D driver may not be as fast as the proprietary driver, it is much better behaved in my opinion, particularly with video. I used to have really bad tearing and other artifacts and have none now with R600g.

I've seen more good things happen with Linux graphics drivers over the last year than the ten preceding years I've used Linux. Hopefully VDPAU will be implemented in the not too distant future.

[Qaridarium]

And so? It can be delivered as an external library and I can use it because I live in Europe, where's the problem?

you are just wrong microsoft won on the fat patent stuff in germany on the highest cord.

thats because europe/germany do not have pure software patents but hartware binding software patents.

means you can not patent an algorithm but you can patent stuff like FAT32,S3tc and so one.

be sure you will lose in germany/europe if you think you can use s3tc free like the opensource means to be free.

the only stuff thats helps you is that in europa/germany patentlaw is only for companys and not privat users.

means you can use s3tc if you a privat user.

[yotambien]

Nobody lolled at my hypothesis? I am dissapoint

I didn't laugh, and I have an excellent sense of humour (of course). And it's not the first time somebody complains about something you wrote, by the way.

[V!NCENT]

I didn't laugh, and I have an excellent sense of humour (of course). And it's not the first time somebody complains about something you wrote, by the way.

The were at least three popular (and deadbeat) jokes in there.

Also if you'd pay attention in RL you will find out that people complain about each other time, so it's not a measure I'm going to feel terribly bothered about...

[V!NCENT]

Typo=all the time

Also it's the gazzilionth time somebody complaines about the edit time...

[paines]

I tried to test this on my own Hardware.

I compiled 2.6.38-rc1 and got rid of fglrx. When I modprobe radeon I get a black screen and a few seconds later machine freezes. Now magic keys work, just hardware reset.
Maybe this is beacuase of my card. I am using an hd6870.
Is there any where else described in detail how to try this out ?

Thanks and best regards

[darkbasic]

As far as I know your card should be supported.

[agd5f]

I tried to test this on my own Hardware.

I compiled 2.6.38-rc1 and got rid of fglrx. When I modprobe radeon I get a black screen and a few seconds later machine freezes. Now magic keys work, just hardware reset.
Maybe this is beacuase of my card. I am using an hd6870.
Is there any where else described in detail how to try this out ?

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...add-NI-pci-ids

Also make sure you have the necessary ucode images for your card installed and in your initrd if you are using one.