Less than a year ago we shared with you the revolutionary steps AMD was taking to deliver significant improvements to their once infamous proprietary Linux display driver and at the same time the work they were doing to foster the growth of an open-source driver for their latest graphics card families. These steps have certainly paid off for both AMD and the Linux community at large. AMD’s proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA’s Linux driver and there are two open-source ATI drivers picking up new features and improvements on an almost daily basis.
My question is… is this true? I was under the impression that ATI’s linux drivers are still pretty buggy and light years behind nVidia’s. Should I go out and buy a new Radeon, or is this article a little… optimistic?
The drivers are getting better, it can sometimes be hit or miss if they work.
The big difference between Nvidia and ATI is going to be the open sourced drivers, with ATI doc dump the open sourced drivers are making great progress.
I have been successful getting ATI x1400 to run in 11 RC1.
I have a X1650PRO AGP (a notoriously finicky card to get running in Linux), and the latest drivers from the new ATI repo (11.0 GM) work with a single hitch (I had to run the SaX2 workaround after reboot); after that, I have full 3D (with not only compiz-fusion in Hollywood Got Nothin mode, but even my 3D games up to snuff) running for only the second time in any distribution with this card.
I have an x850 and couldn’t get the fglrx driver to install in 10.3 despite a great deal of effort. Now in 11.0 though, it’s up and running with (almost) no trouble.
I should note that I have a couple issues, but I don’t believe them to be driver related.
I’m still running 10.3 and I also have a ati x1650pro agp. I have noticed a large difference in driver quality from the 8.40 driver to the current, both in stability and performance. I actually feel a little angry that I bought my video card about a year ago and that only now I am starting to see what my card is capable of. In short if amd/ati keeps it up I feel that they will be on par with nvidia’s drivers and if they still keep it up maybe just maybe they will be the new gold standard for linux. I like AMD and I like the effort I see them putting into their linux support so I hope they do well.