KWin May Drop Support For Catalyst, Vintage GPUs

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I've got some older hardware, but I'm OK with this.

KDE is a heavier desktop, is designed for newer computers, and as such should keep a certain focus. If I want to run the older hardware, I'll run XFCE, LXDE, or E17. Which I'd likely do anyways.

On my main computer, I'll stick with KDE.

Some things are just going to have to change, and linux/OSS technologies are no different. Do you think you're going to run your Pentium II for the next 20 years?

EDIT: Oh, and about Catalyst, I've never had much luck with it anyways, no matter when/where I've tried it. I'd like to know what Bridgman and the boys are planning on doing to bring the OSS driver up to speed on this, if that's even necessary.

[smitty3268]

Are you trolling?

It was a little tongue-in-cheek. You could also upgrade to Gnome 2 or Unity. Not Gnome Shell, because fglrx doesn't support that either.

[smitty3268]

How about a better idea. Inform AMD of the plans then rip out OGL1 when they have the driver ready.

Isn't that what this blog post is doing? As far as getting AMD to support it, well, I'm not sure there's any sign AMD cares about working in KWin. Let's hope they do.

I can imagine these proposals may also distrupt Wine and hardware gfx?

How in the world would this affect Wine? It wouldn't. Just like you could run Wine and other 3D apps with older KDE/Gnome releases before 3D desktops came about, this affects nothing except the window manager.

[Ex-Cyber]

How about a better idea. Inform AMD of the plans then rip out OGL1 when they have the driver ready.

Here's an idea: this is the notification, and AMD can avert disaster by making sure that "when they have the driver ready" is before the next major Kwin release.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

How about a better idea. Inform AMD of the plans then rip out OGL1 when they have the driver ready.

Isn't this the notification?

[e8hffff]

IHow in the world would this affect Wine? It wouldn't. Just like you could run Wine and other 3D apps with older KDE/Gnome releases before 3D desktops came about, this affects nothing except the window manager.

I put '?' at the end of ther sentence.

KDE still needs to interact with gfx like mode changes.

[e8hffff]

Isn't this the notification?

How will AMD see this thread or post article, if they happen to not visit here. Someone needs to act as boss and instruct/request AMD on objectives.

[hal2k1]

not really i do the same! KDE works well with the radeon driver.

I can confirm this.

$ lspci -nn
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series] [1002:68e0]

$ lshw -short
/0/1                     processor      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU       M 460  @ 2.53GHz
/0/100/1/0               display        Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series]

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CEDAR
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.0-rc2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

$ uname -a
Linux enceladus 3.2.0-17-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 17 21:35:49 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ modinfo radeon
filename:       /lib/modules/3.2.0-17-generic/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/radeon.ko
license:        GPL and additional rights
description:    ATI Radeon
author:         Gareth Hughes, Keith Whitwell, others.
depends:        drm,drm_kms_helper,ttm,i2c-algo-bit
intree:         Y
vermagic:       3.2.0-17-generic SMP mod_unload modversions

Works like an absolute charm with KDE. Every possible bling effect in kwin one could possibly want. Extremely snappy and responsive.

[hal2k1]

Well, that's an obnoxious pain in the ass. My Laptop has the videocard thats in it and thats it, I'd hate to lose my nice desktop effects and the functionality they bring while they think that AMD cares enough to upgrade anything. Like AMD cares about the KDE desktop users... I'm pretty sure that they don't give a spit.

Huh?

KDE users (such as me) with a laptop with AMD/ATI graphics hardware can run the open source Radeon driver.

After all, it works like an absolute charm with KDE and kwin.

[e8hffff]

Works like an absolute charm with KDE. Every possible bling effect in kwin one could possibly want. Extremely snappy and responsive.

The Radeon driver is also extremely slow when compared to fglrx in Wine games.

Why buy an expensive GFX card if the driver will only going to do 3d mode for KWin at acceptable levels.