ATi Drivers for Linux that Work? 132
James F. Hitchens asks: "I used to run Red-Hat Enterprise vs.3, just recently I switched to fedora core 3. The reason for my change was because I could not get my ATi Radeon 9600 All in Wonder to work. I hoped that Fedora was a little more advanced in the area of 3D acceleration (so I could play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tux-racer). Yet again it was not to be, ne worke pas. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make this work? The drivers that ATi supplies on their website are, in short, crap."
Buy an nvidia card (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:5, Insightful)
With the willingness of the Xorg team to finally address some of the issues people have been bitching about all these years, ATI has an opportunity to be the leader in Linux graphics drivers again. We need to point this out to ATI very loudly, and invitingly. These ATI are teh suxxors stories don't help one bit.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:5, Insightful)
As for Nvidia drivers not being free, well ATI drivers for cards later than 9200 (IIRC), that have any 3D support, are not free either. And they will never be, because there is intellectual property in them that doesn't belong to ATI (says ATI). So, this guy will use a non-free driver no matter what.
If he would want both 3D and the AllInWonder features - he will have to alternate between different drivers (ie he will have to restart X). That's ATI's support for you.
I have recently been shopping for a video card - and I was very tempted by a 9600AiW; but when I got a hang of the problems - it turned out that the MSI5900XT was a much better buy, since I run Linux exclusively.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
I was referring to the headline. Pardon me, it said they are crap, not suxxors.
ATI drivers for cards later than 9200 (IIRC), that have any 3D support, are not free either. And they will never be
See the R300 driver effort [sourceforge.net] here.
If he would want both 3D and the AllInWonder features - he will have to alternate between different drivers
Or he'd buy an older card. Thats what ATI doesn't see, the many of us who just don't upgrade because the driver won'
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
No, you don't. You have no ability to help develop the code and that is what is needed right now. I don't see how bashing the hard work of volunteers helps anything. Those who can't, bitch about it on Slashdot I guess.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
When did I say that? I was responding to someone else's comment:
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
By the time the driver does become ready, will there be a UT 2004 community anymore, or will the publisher have forced an upgrade to UT 2005 like EA and friends do for annual sport sim titles' online play?
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
And you concluded: "Or he'd buy an older card. Thats what ATI doesn't see, the many of us who just don't upgrade because the driver won't work."
So you said the same thing yourself.
What I don't like is the attitude that we should tread easy, lest we offend someone with a too big ego. We are the customers; ATI should tread easy lest they offend us!
As for open drivers, ATI boast with their support for open source drivers for their older hardware. Tha
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:3, Informative)
I'm talking about the free driver. The story is talking about the ATI binary driver.
Even with this older hardware using OSS drivers, I couldn't come up with how I should be able to have 3D-acceleration (Utah-GLX) and video capture (Gatos)
Well thats probably because Utah-GLX isn't what you want. DRI [sourceforge.net] is, and its included with Xorg. And you can use Gatos and DRI at the same time.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
And you claim that there is something about this situation that works? That there is something about this situation worth perpetuating by not offending those who work on the binary drivers telling them the truth?
Or do you mean that it is the binary drivers for recent ATI cards that work? Those drivers which lets an
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Apparently so, because the complaint here is:
I can play Tuxracer and UT2004 just fine.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
Remember that my problem is that you are afraid we'll miff someone at ATI with a big ego, and because of that you chastise people who complain about real problems. (The latest ATI performing poorly compared to an old Nvidia, having to restart X switching between features etc.)
I don't know what model you have, but the poster is not satisfied with that of his 9600AiW. Have you complete
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Because you're being stupid about it. From the fool who submitted this that is switching distro's only to expect the same drivers to operate differently, to those that are posting messages in this thread that don't even reflect reality.
The binary drivers are a non-issue. It would be more productive to talk about all the great things that are happining with the free driver, and hopefully convince ATI to get back into funding its dev
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
No you haven't. I don't know how anyone sees the benefits of free/open software in GNU/Linux, and then supports companies that don't give out hardware documentation, and don't do anything to help free software developers.
You know what you're getting when you go buy the latest and greatest hardware. Don't buy it if it's not adequately supported. I don't.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=133148&ci
Or feel free to hunt me down on Rage3D, and contact me on one of the IM systems referred to my account there.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:1)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
One problem (Score:2)
For example, the reason UT2K3 only worked with NVidia cards for quite a while (until the binary ATI drivers were released) was because to achieve acceptable quality/performance, UT2K3's developers HAD to use S3 Texture Compression, which is patented and the patent licenses ATi and NV have don't allow them to include S3TC support in open-source drivers. That's j
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8555&cid=66
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3338&cid=1
That was a couple of years ago. Get an nvidia or don't bother.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
What a horrible example. A Rage128 driver was developed with funding from ATI for XFree86 v4, and that driver was later extended to support Radeon cards. Thats exactly the kind of thing they should get back to doing, and something that nVidia never has been interested in. Its why we have a decent free ATI driver now, and none for nvidia.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
A decent free ATI driver?? Have you ever used it? Rage128 3d support took forever to get. By the time it was complete people had moved on to the next generation of cards.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
So no, by that guy's reasoning, Windows XP has a long way to go before it is ready for the desktop.
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
Windows would be just as useless if you had to
Re:Buy an nvidia card (Score:2)
I used to have an NVidia card but I had to give it up precisely because the drivers were proprietary. When your video driver will not let you upgrade your operating system or X11 server, there is something seriously wrong. Under FreeBSD I had precisely this problem. While I do appreciate their support of
New drivers sometime this month (Score:2, Interesting)
In a couple of recent interviews, however, they said the next drivers, due for release sometime this month, are going to be tagged Catalyst aswell, whatever that means. But I'm expecting somewhat bigger improvements compared to the last couple of drivers we've had, and that's pretty much the last of my hopes.
Re:New drivers sometime this month (Score:1)
Re:New drivers sometime this month (Score:4, Insightful)
sh
and I get remotely decent performance from their driver and opengl implementation. Shame really, ATI hardware is good, they just seem to hire muppets to write the software for them
Anandtech recently did (another) article on this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anandtech recently did (another) article on thi (Score:5, Insightful)
telinit 3
fglrxconfig
cd
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak
ln -sf xf86Config -4 xorg.conf
telinit 5
(for mouse)
mice =
Use ATI driver and setup using XConfigurator then repoint the X.org file to that one and it works fine. I found this in a blog somewhere and worked like a charm.
Re:Anandtech recently did (another) article on thi (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That's the nice thing about ATI drivers for Lin (Score:2)
That's not really true. Anecdotally, I've had a Radeon 9700 PRO for about 2.5 years, and in that time I've never had any problems with ATI's Windows drivers. The Linux drivers have always sucked, though.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree (Score:5, Informative)
In contrast, I've never had any problems with nVidia's drivers... not on my TNT2, not on my GeForce 1 and not on the GeForce WhatEver that a friend of mine has. nVidia does a very good job with their drivers, IMHO. I'm not that happy thay they're closed source at least but they Just Work (tm).
This is why I won't ever buy a ATi card. They treat Linux users as third class citizens, unfortunately...
Re:I agree (Score:3, Informative)
18 months ago I tried a cheap, no-name GeForce MX440 in that machine which had terrible image quality. It was very fast in comparison (CPU usage went to 0% on 3d stuff :-) and Quake III was achieving 3x the f
Re:I agree (Score:2)
Re:I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite. Having open source drivers has something to be said for it.
Re:I agree (Score:1)
Omega Drivers (Score:1)
I've been playing with the TV software and it has barely changed since about 5 years ago. (And it worked better then...) Anybody out there know of an open source TV tuner software package that works with ATI cards (and Windows)?
ATI's
Re:Omega Drivers (Score:2)
Re:Omega Drivers (Score:1)
I've got a VCR hooked up, but it's a pain to have to use two different remotes for audio and video. It's not that I can't watch TV, it just that I need to reboot after a few hours of it. I was just hoping there was something better out there. Plus, I'd rather be able to record on my computer than using a VCR. What's the point in buying the card if you can'
Re:Omega Drivers (Score:2)
If you want a program for TV viewing/PVR functions, SnapStream or BeyondTV should work for you.
No, it isn't open-source.. but then again most people don't really need a standalone program to WATCH TV on their computer, since most people are interested in recording it (of which the GPL'd Virtual VCR will do excellently).
Rage3D (Score:5, Informative)
They have howto's, patches, and some ATI dev's even post there.
from the what-have-you-done-in-this-situation dept (Score:2)
Re:from the what-have-you-done-in-this-situation d (Score:2)
What About Laptops ? (Score:2)
It's possible to buy an IBM Thinkpad with Linux preinstalled so if anybody who has one of these machines is reading this, what drivers have IBM installed ?
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
Re:What About Laptops ? (Score:1)
I've been running *nix flavors exlusivly for over a year, and my card has worked with all of them. I don't play games, but 3D screensavers (that would hitch on some distributions straight out of the box) work perfectly.
Re:What About Laptops ? (Score:2)
Buy a matrox card (Score:3, Informative)
get a 9200 (Score:2)
Having said all of this I can't actually vouch for the 3D performance in Linux, I run Xinerama and 3D + Dual Screen don't work together (Infact Xinerama, pretty much is a PITA full stop so picky to set up etc), I boot to XP for gaming, which is the only option for faster cards than the 9200
Tips on getting ATI drivers to work (Score:4, Informative)
I got my ATI 9600 radeon pro working with the 2.6.x kernels. Here is a short procedure of how I go about it.
1. First install the rpm based drivers. Now if you look under
2. Now it should autodetect the existence of 2.6.x drivers and it will do some stuff. cd back to fglrx directory and do your usual
3. After this cd to your kernel directory where fglrx.ko is installed and delete it.
4. Then cd to
I do a
5. Now do a make in the 2.6.x directory.
6. Copy the fglrx.ko to the kernel directory where fglrx.ko was there.
7. Now run your fglrxconfig or whatever to create the XF86Config-4.
8. I have a nforce based chipset, so I enable the nforce motherboard drivers during kernel compilation and set this option on in my XF86Config.
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
I have an AMD so I need to switch off mtrr
Option "mtrr" "off"
9. Now try a X, remember you need a dri enabled kernel and you need to have enabled dri in your xf86config.
If you look in your
And for all those people who say nvidia chips are better. Once you get the ATI drivers working, they are a good competition to nvidia. In fact ATI had things like quad buffer opengl stereo on X, which was why I switched. Also I don't have a vaccum cleaner running inside my box.
If you (or anybody) get it working please reply to this post, so I can write a feedback report on the ATI website.
Good luck.
Hope this helps.
Re:Tips on getting ATI drivers to work (Score:2)
Re:Tips on getting ATI drivers to work (Score:2)
I've tried that already -- it doesn't work on Fedora Core 3, because Core 3 comes with Xorg, not XFree86. The fglrxbuild can't detect the XFree86 version (doesn't exist), so it gives up saying:
I managed to get the build working by tweaking the make.sh script so that it finds the drm.h headers at their new locations. However, w
Re:Tips on getting ATI drivers to work (Score:2)
I wonder if... (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently, there is much discussion about the meaning of the IBM sell-off of its PC division. One of the current conjectures is that IBM might be preparing to release a low-cost PowerPC based machine for home use.
Now, if that is the case, I could see IBM going to both ATI and nVidia and saying:
Now, the question is, how likely is this?
Re:I wonder if... (Score:2)
Sure IBM is a heavyweight that can basically get its way. Sure I can understand the rationale behind the symbiotic relationship with Linux.
But what you suggest is either completely out-of-character for IBM or a major revolution.
If "low-cost" means "value niche," I'd say that you're crazy; IBM doesn't do both low cost and low volume at the same time. And if you really meant "mainstream," then IBM had better understand that they are having to
Re:I wonder if... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder if... (Score:2)
but there used to be, Matrox [matrox.com] used to be the best thing to have ever come down the pipe! I'm still using a G400Max Dual-VGA card [matrox.com]. Everything was done in heardware, it was great, but now you can't dream of touching their current cards.
A little bit of poking around revealed [yahoo.com] that they are shrinking, -15% Revenue reduction, -30% empolyee reduction. And Revenue of just over $89 Million; it is privatley held and owned by the chairmen and president of the company.
Now if
Re:I wonder if... (Score:2)
I'd think that it's much more likely that IBM would collaborate to "port" the existing drivers to their new (ppc) platform. Even if there was no g5 to point at I wouldn't think it'd be such a gigantic effort.
Re:I wonder if... (Score:2)
It's convoluted and mad enough to be the truth...
UT on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Score:2)
What I did.. (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting.
Re:What I did.. (Score:2)
When you've got IP that somebody doesn't want to release, the company will only pay for driver development where they'll have the most use -- in Windows. ATI will suffer very little monetary loss from not supporting Linux, and barring turning over the IP to the OSS community, they may have to spend more than their potential profits to bring their drivers to Linux.
Free software works better with Linux and other Free systems (c.f. Cygwin's difficulty in
Is X.org going to make driver install easier? (Score:2)
Is X.org going to make it easier to install the binary drivers for Linux? I used to have an Nvidia card (TNT 2) and after getting a Radeon 9500, I found that while its more work (I grew frustrated and never bothered to install ATI's) they are longer and more arduous of a process than Windows (and prob MAC) binary drivers.
I'm not a Linux noob but I don't
Re:Is X.org going to make driver install easier? (Score:1)
Re:Is X.org going to make driver install easier? (Score:1)
ATI Drivers, unfortunately, not free, but work grt (Score:1)
No 64-bit support, too! (Score:2)
Getting fglrx rpms to work is a little tricky (they DO work, if you try hard enough--and you don't have Xorg 6.8.1). However, getting 64-bit 3d support is impossible.
I recently switched to gentoo AMD64 and I don't see any reason to go back. Even if the performance benefits for natively compiled applications are minimal, 64-bit is the way to go, in my opinion. I emailed ATI complaining for their lack of 64-bit drivers. NVidia has provided 64bit drivers for a long time. We'll see... Guess my Radeon 9800 Pr
Re:No 64-bit support, too! (Score:1)
odd, as that is it's strong point.
otta the dvd install with gentoo 2004.?
packrat2
Re:No 64-bit support, too! (Score:2)
Well, I've been using slackware for quite a long time, so it didn't seem particularly hard. I'm still not quite used to the gentoo way of doing things (e.g. etc-update, rc-update and other "automatic" tools). Anyway, the installation is straightforward and I did copy many of my previous config scripts (firewall, xorg.conf etc) from my previous install so it did not take much time to configure.
My
Re:No 64-bit support, too! (Score:1)
win lasts about an hour before the drive gets eaten. Mandrake 10.1, about 6 minutes.
rh9, me. lockups are common. rebooting x usally ( but not always) gets ya out of it.
and yes, i have a 18000-25000 volt(?) surge whatis. doesn't help much, works as an nice on/off switch thou.
slackware? Naw, not yet. Still use rh9 with a seperate
FC Drivers (Score:5, Informative)
We have worked with the guys at Livna for drivers for FC2 - and are ready to go with FC3, once the new drivers are released.
Some links for those who care...
http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308
http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296
And through Fedorafaq.org
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#radeon
All I can say, is watch this space.
Re:FC Drivers (Score:2)
Re:FC Drivers (Score:2)
Re:FC Drivers (Score:1)
Re:FC Drivers (Score:2)
Sign the Petition! (Score:1)
Unhappy with the current state of ATI's Linux drivers? Add to the ~20,000 signitures already found on this online petition [petitiononline.com]
Matrox (Score:1)
Step 2: Install any operating system you want, any version, any distro.
I don't mean just relatively mainstream ones like Linux, either.
Step 3: It Just Works. No, really, it actually does just work.
Seriously, Matrox cards are good stuff. They maybe don't have all the flashy
features that excite the everything-must-be-overclocked-including-my-sound c ard
crowd, but they're very solid, well-specified, and compatible with everything
that will even think about running on PC
ATi? Linux? (Score:2)
ATI drivers for windows that work? (Score:2)
I just picked up a used ATI Rage II/PCI to add TV-in features to my PC, and discovered that it's not supporting in anything newer than Windows ME.
NVidia and others at least seems to support older cards a little better in newer OS's, and of course they've traditionally supported the alternate OS's (linux et al) better and longer than ATI.
Re:Buy NVidia (Score:4, Informative)
Probably the best GPL driven video card is the ATI 8500. Still buggy with occational crashes, but everything (OpenGL etc) works.
The ATI drivers are excelent for this card also, but core 3 (x.org) is not supported. Supposedly this December there will be new ones.
Re:Buy NVidia (Score:3, Interesting)
My 9200's work quite well with FC3 btw.
Re:Buy NVidia (Score:2)
The 9200s are faster but they only apply a single texture in each op while the 8500 can handle 2 textures. The 9200s do have a better geometry unit and slightly better bandwidth/fill rates. But the 8500 engine edges out the 9200 cards.
Re:Buy NVidia (Score:2)
The FireGL 8800 is the fastest r200 card. The Radeon 9100 is the second fastest and is way cheaper and easier to find. The Radeon 9200 is slower than the 9100.
The 9100 is your best bet.
Re:Buy NVidia (Score:2)
Re:Use apt/yum with livna (Score:2)
I blame fedora.us for not publishing a sinlge Fedora Extras RPM for FC3 so far. Livna builds on the fedora.us stuff, and has been releasing packages which can be built against the FC2 versions from fedora.us.