Open-Source R500 Driver Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix News: Open-Source R500 Driver Released

The very first (and very rudimentary) open-source Xorg driver for the ATI Radeon X1000 "R500" series has been released! However, before downloading it, this driver only contains code to initialize and set video modes on the Radeon X1300 to X1600 graphics cards. RandR 1.2 support for the R500 driver is being worked on and may surface shortly. Their current road-map is for getting the Radeon X1600 to X1900 series initialize using this driver, add the RandR 1...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NTgzMw

[yoshi314]

yay! going to test right away, when i'm back from work

[orra]

You have to add your card's PCI ID to the driver to get it working. I managed.

Yay!

I first tried to get it working at my monitor's widescreen resolution; it didn't work, but man it was funky. Then I looked at the code to see if I could extend it to set the resolution to 1280x800, but it's all magic numbers to me. Note that they've called some of the registers "mystery". Ah, the pain of reverse engineering.

I think the 2D may be slower than VESA, but I love it because it's free. What's interesting is it's GPLed (version 2 only): it can only be good that ATI can't come and add their code to fglrx. Man, that'd be cheeky.

Well done to Jerome Glisse, Daniel Stone and co.

[Michael]

There'll be a new article on this driver at Phoronix in the next day or two.

[Svartalf]

Originally Posted by orra

I think the 2D may be slower than VESA, but I love it because it's free.

Consider that this is a first cut, intended mainly for people to do more RE work and find the gaps in coverage and help plug 'em. It's not meant to be used in a production system.

What's interesting is it's GPLed (version 2 only): it can only be good that ATI can't come and add their code to fglrx. Man, that'd be cheeky.

Happens all the time in the IT world- it's why Stallman and Moglen formulated the license the way they did. Now, if they want to join in on the fun, share with us, and generally help out, bring it on.

Well done to Jerome Glisse, Daniel Stone and co.

Indeed!