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Forge
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Re: BIF's Linux Adventures

Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:14 am

fpsduck wrote:
On the hardware side,
The latest Linux driver for Creative X-Fi Sound card is working fine for me.

Sure. Ok. Enjoy it.
But ATI's Radeon Linux support is still far behind Nvidia's.
(No 3D support and no Linux Driver on Catalyst download page yet
but I heard that ATI is just more serious on open source things)

Huh? You blind? Go to ati.com, click "support and drivers" at the top, click "Download Graphics Drivers" at the top left. At the Catalyst driver page (http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html), just scroll down in the OS selection box. There is 'Linux x86' and 'Linux x86-64' there, and that leads to the driver pages.

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linu ... adeon.html

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linu ... adeon.html

Now, if you don't know exactly what you're doing, you really should be getting the fglrx driver from your distro's package manager. I just took offense at your statement 'no Linux driver on Catalyst download page yet'. I and others campaigned for YEARS to get ATI to properly support their hardware under Linux, and they've done a pretty good job.

Back in the R100/R200 days, they had a Linux 3D driver designed specifically for the FireGL cards based off of Radeon, and they very graciously added support for the consumer cards to that driver. It was very bad for anything but a few very specialized uses, so after some time they redesigned and reorganized the Linux support group in a very dramatic fashion. They also hired a noted open source developer to come and head up the team. They then did a LOT of work on that driver for the last few years, and they've been *very* good about kicking out Linux Catalyst updates almost as often as Windows ones, and the quality has come way up. Since the AMD buyout they've been even more supportive and helpful, ATI/AMD has now released open specs for almost every graphics silicon they've ever made, HD4800 series included. There should be a usable and fully open source AMD driver in the next few months for HD4800, and almost everything prior to that has had open source 2D/3D drivers for some time.

I know you were probably just making some offhand comments, but it really rankled me to hear you praise Creative, who has only very recently crapped out a somewhat-usable driver for X-Fi *NOW*, a few years late, and who is VERY unlikely to offer any meaningful support for it, while simultaneously talking down on ATI/AMD who has moved heavens and Earth to make the FOSS crowds happy.
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Re: BIF's Linux Adventures

Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:54 am

fpsduck wrote:
But ATI's Radeon Linux support is still far behind Nvidia's.
(No 3D support and no Linux Driver on Catalyst download page yet
but I heard that ATI is just more serious on open source things)

Hmm... Linux drivers show up just fine on the Catalyst download page for me. Direct links to the appropriate driver pages:
32-bit
64-bit

And yes, ATI is also working with the Open Source community to get better Open Source drivers written for their cards. They have released the hardware specifications for their GPUs; now it is up to the Open Source community to pick up the ball and run with it.

Edit: Ehh... didn't notice Forge's post because it was on a new page.
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BIF
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Re: BIF's Linux Adventures

Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:45 pm

Thank you to both JBI and Forge for the links.

I'll check the Nvidia driver(s) out as soon as I install a Linux distro on my big workstation.
 
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Re: BIF's Linux Adventures

Fri Jan 30, 2009 2:08 am

BIF wrote:
Thank you to both JBI and Forge for the links.

I'll check the Nvidia driver(s) out as soon as I install a Linux distro on my big workstation.

Well, on Gentoo, it's as easy as:
# emerge nvidia-drivers


I think the latest version I've installed was 177, or somewhere thereabouts. Nvidia has always had, in my experience, excellent support for Linux.
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