Why people need another ati linux driver

[swingler]

I can't see why people need another ati linux driver while current one is good enough. I use amd 690G (ati 1250) and

1. disable the HPET (high precision event timer) in BIOS (for soyo MB, bios must be updated by winflash)
2. update the CentOS asap after installation, the newest kernel can tolerate HPET enabled
3. use latest alsa sound driver and use kmixer/alsa mixer to increase the volumn
4. install the legacy software support in CentOS 5 and install ati driver for RHEL 4.

Everything works fine

I think Solaris needs 690G/ati driver.

Why to reinvent the wheel?

[Michael]

What exactly are you referring to? The fglrx driver is closed source and currently has a host of other problems, which is why the community is working on the open-source Radeon and Avivo drivers. The rest of the AMD 690G system should work with the open-source drivers in nearly all of the latest desktop Linux distributions.


ATI currently doesn't offer a display driver for Solaris.

[yoshi314]

I can't see why people need another ati linux driver while current one is good enough. I use amd 690G (ati 1250)

think beyond your own horizon.

fglrx pretty much sucks - some people cannot even get it to work. and there is no bsd support.

the driver is slow, doesn't always work properly and sometimes is unstable. not mentioning the breakage that appears between releases. it also locks you to certain x.org/kernel setup which i've grown to hate recently - i had to wait for new x.org/kernel support for a couple of months a few times.

[swingler]

I didn't find any fglrx problem under my 3600+/c690G box. It is officially supported on RHEL4 but CentOS5 with legacy support packages installed works just fine.

I also find that specifying resolution manually in xorg conf is not supported in fglrx, but it automatically set to a quite good resolution. Nothing else bad so far.

3rd party driver is not generally a good idea since HW vendors would try their best to provide drivers. Unless for alsa's case for snd drivers, compared to reporting problems to amd/ati, writing a new driver seems to be some overly confident work.

[lenrek]

Tell that to those who having problem here:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4235

Search for old threads about "Driver Released", to read more... If you like...

[damentz]

You don't understand swingler. FGLRX runs less than half as fast as its Windows counter part and it has absolutely no AIGLX support.

Please try running Doom 3 at 1280x1024 with a radeon x1900, you will find you can't get 60fps all the time, which is unacceptable and ridiculously embarrassing for ATI.

You think fglrx is fine because you have not seen how much better it could be if any of the ATI devs would quit shitting around and actually use Linux.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by damentz

You don't understand swingler. FGLRX runs less than half as fast as its Windows counter part and it has absolutely no AIGLX support.

That's all with the current driver as has been stated there is new a new OpenGL driver coming out later this year.

[yoshi314]

Please try running Doom 3 at 1280x1024 with a radeon x1900

try running doom3 at lowest possible details on x1300 :]

that's really ugly.

I didn't find any fglrx problem under my 3600+/c690G box.

like i said, look at others' problems. don't say "it works for me, so it works for everybody" - that's a lie.

[lenrek]

Originally Posted by yoshi314

...
like i said, look at others' problems. don't say "it works for me, so it works for everybody" - that's a lie.

Nah... That is not a lie, is just not aware about the real world situation.

[damentz]

I'm guessing that no new features will arrive until the new OpenGL code is in the linux driver?