AMD Linux Catalyst: Hardware Owners Screwed?

[sabriah]

Although AMD works with Microsoft to provide OpenCL support in Windows 8, Neal Robinson, senior director of Consumer Developer Support at AMD told The INQUIRER that the firm has "more work to do in the Linux environment".

Robinson said, "The Linux environment is much more complex because you've got so many different distributions, so trying to get a single development environment is a bit more challenging than on [Microsoft] Windows where you have a little bit more uniformity. We are currently talking to some of our Linux partners to make sure that OpenCL performance especially with our drivers is fully enabled on those platforms. Then they will be able to take advantage of all of this open source work, whether it is Windows or Linux."

From

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...OpenCL+support

[bulletxt]

I just love AMD. They never get things right for Linux. I just love them.

[bug77]

Hm, witha monthly release, at least we knew for every X release, AMD would let distros use a beta driver. This was being followed up by a proper release the next month. I wonder how this is going to work now.

[Rallos Zek]

For me AMD is dead on Linux now. New hardware will be Intel/Nvidia only in the future. If they don't want to support my 2 and a half years old laptop anymore I don't even consider to support them. Damn it that I just bought a new AMD graphics card a few months ago, if I would have known this shit at that time I definitely had bought Nvidia.
For me is the case "AMD on Linux" closed and will not be reopened.

nVidia might be option for me in the future but I am still sore from bumpgate. And Intel will never be option they are worst than Microsoft when comes to being evil.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...st126beta.aspx
By the way, isn't that mean beta builds with new kernel and xserver support will be available earlier for testing?
Isn't that people asking for? Then why same people complain right now?

[DanL]

Yawn.. another thread with more people whining and crying about dropping support for old hardware that didn't learn from the last time AMD did it.

As for the move away from monthly releases, I like it as long as the quality of driver releases goes up and new hardware is still supported quickly.

Well, they do not work with my HD4850. Buying nvidia next time.

They're not supposed to work with your 4850. RTFA. Also, given that the file is in zip format, it's probably a Windows driver.

[F i L]

I switched to Linux ~8 months ago now. Love Linux, hate my AMD+ATi (Radeon HD 4870) setup. Everything runs great on Windows, but on Linux Catalyst is complete crap and xf86 is much worse (but I support it's development). My OpenGL program runs tree times slower on my Linux boot that it does on Windows. I tried the OpenGL test on a dual-booted nVidia rig with OLDER hardware than my ATi setup, and it runs faster on Linux than it does on Windows (In both OpenGL and DirectX)... seems nVidia can make their drivers work just fine on Linux and *older* hardware. In fact, the older nVidia card out-performs my much faster ATi card on Linux.

I'm all for phasing out old hardware, but my ATi card is not that old, and there are some seriously outstanding issues on Linux. I might upgrade the card, but now I don't feel like giving ATi my money.

One thing's for sure, I'll never buy AMD again, not if they're going to make crap for Linux, and then drop support all together after only ~3 years.

[entropy]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...st126beta.aspx
By the way, isn't that mean beta builds with new kernel and xserver support will be available earlier for testing?
Isn't that people asking for? Then why same people complain right now?

I think the disappointment is mostly due to deprecating r600 and r700 GPUs.
Other than that, I welcome a change of the release cycle.
But we have yet to see what that actually means.

p.s. The new support page http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EBB
does not even feature the option to specify GPUs prior to 5000 HD. This should be a clear hint that
we won't see any new Catalyst for r600/r700 (this includes a potential legacy driver with bug fixes).
These chipsets are dropped by now.

[energyman]

maybe Michael should stop posting huge articles based on some hearsay from other OS websites.

People are speculating that there might be some changes for WINDOWS drivers.

And he makes some big headline for linux users.... if that is not questionable I don't know what else is.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

I think the disappointment is mostly due to deprecating r600 and r700 GPUs.

Isn't end target for every hardware vendor who support Linux - provide FOSS drivers instead of proprietary? Isn't AMD do that right now?