AMD Releases Catalyst 13.2 Beta 6 For Linux

[gradinaruvasile]

I wonder what graphic's cards the Steambox is going to utilize.

If rumors are true, it will be the next gen Trinity mobile APU or some variant of it.

[Marentis]

My guess is that you use Ubuntu with a swap partition. Try

sudo swapoff -a

If that helps put a # in front of your swap partition in the /etc/fstab.

I usually only use swap when i want to use suspend 2 disk on a laptop with only Linux on it (then with 512 mb or so more swap than integrated).

Thanks for your help but I'm using Gentoo with no swap at all (16 GB RAM), I gave Ubuntu a shot (as Gentoo usually means that I could've messed up at any point) but it still was like that.
According to some google research it seems that some other people have the same problem, but I couldn't gather enough information to start bug hunting (could be something else in the system, too).

[Kano]

Well i dont think that using Ubuntu is best as it always runs with compiz... Ok, fullscreen they most likely turn composite off.

[Vim_User]

@vimuser
just curious but what distro do you use?

I am using Slackware 64 -current. This is a development version, I help with reporting bugs. This Slackware version comes with kernel 3.7 by default and I don't see why I should install a kernel that was released 9 months before, just because AMD developers are either lazy or incompetent. I also want to play games on that machine, but with the radeon driver this isn't fun, even SuperTuxKart begins to stutter when I activate antialiasing (and I don't buy a HD6870 to not use quality enhancement features).

In their eyes, you're like someone at a restaraunt who is complaining that your coffee is too hot.

Then their point of view is simply wrong, in their eyes I should be a customer that has already spend hundreds of Euros to buy their hardware that is now seriously pissed off by them and won't do that again.

Yes, they should, HOWEVER there is a difference between caring about their customers' needs and bending over to accommodate every single nobody's whim.
That's called "trade-offs".
E.g. throwing in a random patch so basement dwellers can watch their favorite porn in full HD at the expense of workstation users who need stability to do their work on a GPU that cost them 10 grand a pop, is definitely not a way to conduct business.
Though obviously that part might be hard to grasp from a "me, myself and my own little life" point of view...

[sarcasm]Yeah, of course, those workstation users are of course using the latest kernel and the latest driver on their stable workstations and throwing in a patch that it makes it possible to compile the driver on the latest kernel (you know that it is possible to determine the kernel version at runtime?) will seriously affect their ability to work on their machines. [/sarcasm]
Please, come back to reality.

[Marentis]

Well i dont think that using Ubuntu is best as it always runs with compiz... Ok, fullscreen they most likely turn composite off.

I do agree, but as it's the "officially supported" distribution I thought it would be a nice way to outrule some factors.
But - as I said - I'm using Gentoo, starting TF2 on Ubuntu was just a test.

But now that you're mentioning it: while I tried different window managers (Xfwm, Openbox and Kwin) I never attempted to run TF2 in fullscreen mode as I'm not used to that anymore. I will try that one now and report back later, when I had a chance to get a deeper look into it.

[ChrisXY]

I am using Slackware 64 -current. This is a development version, I help with reporting bugs. This Slackware version comes with kernel 3.7 by default and I don't see why I should install a kernel that was released 9 months before, just because AMD developers are either lazy or incompetent.

I think it's their QA that is very slow (it's said that a fix will need at least 3 months to get into a release). And from experience with my radeons it's not very effective but that's beside the point.

Patches are already out there and pretty trivial for 3.7 and 3.8.
https://projects.archlinux.org/svnto.../catalyst-dkms
https://projects.archlinux.org/svnto.../catalyst-dkms

On a proper package management this should take you only about a minute to apply and rebuild. I agree with you that it should be amd's job to make it work. But it's not that your card is unusable in the meantime, you just have to apply a little patch yourself.

And amd could say that it's your own fault for running a bleeding edge distribution. If you have a look at the release notes: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...easeNotes.aspx
You see the following paragraph:

Linux Distributions Supported:
The latest version of the AMD Catalyst Linux software suite is designed to support the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux suite 5.7, 5.8, 6.2 and 6.3
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP4 and 11 SP2
OpenSUSE 11.4 and 12.1
Ubuntu 12.10

You are trying to use it on an "unsupported" system.

[Marentis]

I agree with ChrisXY.
While I'm using Gentoo testing branch (aka bleeding edge) I can't expect that AMD is going to support every single distribution out there. However, I never had a problem to get fglrx up and running as the Gentoo maintainers are great and fast responding, patching the drivers to work with the newest kernel and x-server.

That's the price we pay for not being on a mainstream distribution, it's our sole choice, so we have to live with any disadvantage that may arise from our decision.

[Rigaldo]

@Marentis
I doubt the drivers can be patched for a newer Xorg, but if they can, this is very interesting!

[Marentis]

I could swear that this must be the case as I remember that I had to downgrade my x-server version before to use the AMD drivers. Now I'm using the newest available version and don't have to do that anymore.

So I'm not absolutely sure on that part (it could have other reasons).

[Vim_User]

I agree with ChrisXY.
While I'm using Gentoo testing branch (aka bleeding edge) I can't expect that AMD is going to support every single distribution out there. However, I never had a problem to get fglrx up and running as the Gentoo maintainers are great and fast responding, patching the drivers to work with the newest kernel and x-server.

That's the price we pay for not being on a mainstream distribution, it's our sole choice, so we have to live with any disadvantage that may arise from our decision.

It doesn't matter which distribution I run. The driver would run fine on Slackware 14 (kernel 3.2), so it has no problem with my distribution (by the way, Slackware's development branch is not really bleeding edge, many packages are older).
The point is only one thing that prevents the driver from running, it is the kernel. If AMD needs 3 months to allow a simple patch to be integrated into the installer then something on their side is seriously wrong and we have to tell them that it is.

So I will adhere to my decision: AMD, as long as you are so fucked up I will not spend one cent on your hardware and I will not recommend to buy AMD video hardware to Linux users.
Since my laptop (not meant for hardcore gaming) needs to be replaced anyways I will look for Intel hardware this time and the HD6870 will be replaced with a Nvidia card as soon I have some leftover money.