xf86-video-ati 6.13.0 X.Org Driver Released

It's been over a year since the last major release of the ATI X.Org driver, xf86-video-ati 6.12.0, but today the xf86-video-ati 6.13.0 driver has finally replaced this open-source ATI graphics driver.

This updated X.Org driver that's worked on primarily by Red Hat, AMD, and the open-source community brings many new features to the table. The new features as of the ATI X.Org 6.13 series include support for kernel mode-setting on all ATI GPUs from the R100 series up through the latest Evergreen "R800" series, support for X-Video attributes like brightness / contrast / hue with TexturedVideo, basic power management support for user-space mode-setting (such as with the ForceLowPowerMode xorg.conf option), initial user-space mode-setting support for ATI Evergreen (Radeon HD 5000 series) hardware, DisplayPort support, Zaphod mode bug-fixes, and lots of other bug-fixes. The ATI Radeon HD 5000 series currently goes without any form of acceleration support, but it should come soon.

The xf86-video-ati 6.13.0 driver took so long to come out since first the developers waited for the ATI Radeon KMS support to leave the staging area of the mainline Linux kernel. This release though should please some users. Development snapshots of the xf86-video-ati 6.13 driver have been available for some months now and can be found used within Ubuntu 10.04 and Fedora 13, among others.

The xf86-video-ati 6.13.0 release announcement can be read on the X.Org mailing list.