AMD
AMD Linux Graphics Support
Submitted by aravind on Thu, 06/19/2008 - 08:46
AMD has been making constant progress for the past 6 months by providing support for their graphics cards in Linux. There has been six driver releases, their driver numbering system has now changed (to reflect the year and month thereby releasing an update each month), the installer has gone through some much needed changes and best of all they have releases register specifications to lot more GPUs. A few days ago they announced the latest driver, AMD Catalyst 8.6 Linux Driver, for general availability. Yesterday it was reported that AMD ships Linux drivers on CD with just announced Radeon HD 4800 "RV770" series graphics cards along with same-day Linux support for these cards. This is indeed a great development since most hardware manufacturers provide no initial Linux driver support for bleeding edge hardware. Our friends in Phoronix also report that AMD is very close to reaching feature parity between the Windows and Linux drivers. Kudos to AMD for providing better Linux driver support.
AMD 8.42.3 and Linux 2.6.23: Misery continues
Submitted by aravind on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 19:03
My problem with AMD proprietary graphics driver continues in Fedora 8. Fedora 8 ships with a 2.6.23.1-42 kernel and now has the latest kernel release as 2.6.23.1-49. Unfortunately AMD's 8.42.3 driver which supports AIGLX does not support 2.6.23.xx kernel. But there have been reports in the Phoronix Forums about some patches which are available which would make AMD 8.42.3 driver to work with 2.6.23.1-49 kernel.
AMD 8.42.3 released today
Submitted by aravind on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 19:46
AMD's 8.42 display driver to support AIGLX
Submitted by aravind on Thu, 10/04/2007 - 10:15
AMD 8.41.7 Display Driver
Submitted by aravind on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 08:17
Phoronix.com reported the release of AMD's 8.41.7 display driver for Linux. As of right now, I haven't seen the official release on the AMD page.
Flurry of activity from AMD/ATI
Submitted by aravind on Mon, 09/10/2007 - 07:26
ATI (now part of AMD) has frustrated the linux community with closed-source blobs for their drivers. Dell and others have been asking AMD/ATI to come up with open-source drives. Until recently there have been no sign of compliance. Of course open-source drivers means opening their hardware which might lead to revealing some of their and their suppliers hardware specifications without a NDA.
