People incorrectly assume that AMD drivers suck. They don't.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

You funny guy indeed. Good luck in your fighting with fear of links and trollphobia.

[PsynoKhi0]

That could be true. But if I have to choose between a driver that follows specs but doesn't work properly and a driver that uses various hacks but does work and is stable I'd definitly choose the later. Who cares if the driver is "correct" if it crashes the computer?

"Doesn't work properly" is a pretty vague statement though, don't you think? Also that's partly what the quoted text in the first post refers to: that people get the impression the drivers don't work properly, although it's due to sloppy programming in the target application, because nvidia's drivers (to quote another slashdot comment I read a few months ago) "let you get away with murder".
Why should you care about correct drivers? Specifications are there for a reason: to allow any company to bring their goods to the table and let customers sort things out. Clean competition is a Good Thing (tm).

[mtelesha]

You are right AMD has been doing allot for Linux the last few years. Another of my pet peeves!!! RPM is not a bad package management system! Yes 8 years ago there was an issue that was fixed. Heck i hear new Linux people say they won't touch a RPM distro with a ten foot pole because of dependency hell?????? Who keeps saying this FUD?

[Fenrin]

The "proper RADEON" driver was doing 5 fps in QuakeArena back then.

And right now, the "proper RADEON" driver performance makes me not want to purchase any mid-high class AMD card.

In OpenArena with Radeon driver I get 25-30 fps, resolution 1440x900 otherwise default settings; graphiccard: IGP Radeon HD 3200, CPU: AMD Phenom II 545 (2 Core), OS: Fedora 17. This is pretty satisfying for an IGP card and free drivers IMHO.

[droidhacker]

I would, but all of my issues have already been resolved by Applecare. You see, Mac users don't have to "search for the latest news" when we have an issue. We simply call Applecare. It's a completely different ecosystem and philosophy.

Fans running at 100% all the time? Call Applecare.
Superdrive making a motorboat sound? Call Applecare.
Batman AA crashes? Call Applecare.
Keyframe animation borked in Finalcut? Call Applecare
Font have a kerning issue? Call Applecare

I find the majority of Mac-whine-blogs out there are customers that have recently migrated from the PC world, and do not yet have an understanding of how the Apple support model works. This is not to say that their issues don't exist or are invalid, but that that are choosing to whine rather than accept the assistance that they paid for.

F

Ah, so the "apple" way of doing things is the blind leading the blind.
Quite frankly, I'd MUCH rather deal with issues through UNDERSTANDING the cause and solving it with logical analysis, rather than handing remote access over to a retarded teenager on acid working for the ghost of steve jobs.

[boast]

Ah, so the "apple" way of doing things is the blind leading the blind.
Quite frankly, I'd MUCH rather deal with issues through UNDERSTANDING the cause and solving it with logical analysis, rather than handing remote access over to a retarded teenager on acid working for the ghost of steve jobs.

But imagine doing that with everything in life. Your car, your air conditioning, your surgeries, your plumbing, etc... Some people have a curious mind to learn stuff, and others just want stuff fixed.

[crazycheese]

In OpenArena with Radeon driver I get 25-30 fps, resolution 1440x900 otherwise default settings; graphiccard: IGP Radeon HD 3200, CPU: AMD Phenom II 545 (2 Core), OS: Fedora 17. This is pretty satisfying for an IGP card and free drivers IMHO.

Hmm, thanks for info! I have 3200 myself inside 785 chipset, but this IGP is too weak for me currently. Is this the new version of OpenArena or an older one?

[asdx]

Open source drivers rock. Blobs suck. End of story.

[kirù]

I had a radeon 9600 all in wonder... this was about 10 years ago... ATI driver sucked, I still remember that missing GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap .
Now I have a radeon hd 5670 HD... ATI driver sucks:
tearing while using vlc or seeing flash videos (this is a shame, we're in 2012 and we can't see a video on a 2,3 ghz dual core cpu!!!!!)
no bsd support
too much lag with vsync enabled
pains when new kernels come out
...
doesn't it suck enough?

except for performances the open source driver is a lot better

[RussianNeuroMancer]

no bsd support

It probably depend on what people need more for their money: BSD support or hybrid graphics support. nVidia driver have first but doesn't have second. AMD driver doesn't have first but does have second.

too much lag with vsync enabled

Bugreport?

pains when new kernels come out

In distributions where new kernel support is important, fglrx packages is already patched to support new kernel. Even Catalyst 12.4 may be patched to support Linux 3.5.