Neue ATI-Treiber (Linux)

[davinci]

Da man durch den ATI-Treiber Thread über die neuesten Windows-Treiber wirklich wunderbar auf dem laufenden gehalten wird starte ich jetzt das Linux-Pendant:

neuer-Treiber: fglrx-3.7.1

ATI-Treiber Download

[davinci]

neuer-Treiber: fglrx-3.7.6

ATI-Treiber Download

[davinci]

neuer-Treiber: fglrx-3.9.0

ATI-Treiber Download

[davinci]

neuer-Treiber: fglrx-3.14.1

ATI-Treiber Download

.. und bei der Gelegenheit auch gleich der Hinweis auf die laufende Petition zur Verbesserung des ATI-Treiber-Supports unter Linux:

ATI-Treiber Petition

[Thaman]

Wenn doch nur die ATI Treiber unter Linux einfacher zu installieren wären? Das ist zum verzweifeln bei Linux !! Sie sollten es so ähnlich wie bei XP machen, ein paar Mausklicks und fertig .

[davinci]

neuer-Treiber: fglrx-3.14.6

ATI-Treiber Download

Das ist nur ein kleiner Bugfix-Release (Doom3), aber für den geplanten Dezember-Release sind die Erwartungen deutlich höher ....

[davinci]

Gestern fand ein recht interessanter Chat mit ATI-Leuten zum Thema Linux-Treiber statt. Falls es jemand interessiert:

ATI Linux Chat

November 11th, 2004 at 4pm EST

Guests for this chat were:

* Terry Makedon - Senior Product Manager
* Jon Carvill - Public Relations Manager
* Matthew Tippett - Linux Software Manager


Q: Anandtech recently did a comparison of linux performance between ATI and Nvidia cards. They reported they needed several kernel-recompiles, a lot of tweaking, and general problems. They ended up with inferior performance for ATI products at all fronts, aswell as being unable to run many of the benchmarks, what is ATI's response to that?

A: Our current focus is on stability and features. We are getting incremental performance increases as they become available. So it was no surprise about the performance in the review. Our drivers are primarily targetted at Red Hat, and we work with SuSE to repackage our drivers, and so AnandTech got off to the wrong start by not using those. Once the SuSE packages where used, the issues about tweaking and general problems were not present.


Q: GLSL has been in the Windows CATALYST OpenGL for about a year now, while it is currently abscent in the Linux OpenGL implementation. This suggests to me that the two do not share the same codebase. Are there plans to take a more unified approach so that developers can gain access to new OpenGL improvements and extensions at roughly
the same time for either platform?

A: Since 3.9, the code has been tracking the windows codebase for each release. In upcoming releases we will match the Windows version number (December will be a 8.08 release. A feature disparity may in some cases (GLSL for example) may be absent since the code is not stabilised or there are technology restrictions for Linux. As we have opportunity we will bring features on par with windows.


Q: Some volunteers are starting to work on a nice GTK based control panel. Is there any way they(we) could get some detailed information or some api (the docs under NDA if wanted) to further work on that panel? Perferably via a direct channel and not the developer program on the ATi site that gets you no response?

A: Since our control panel is currently QT, we have sources shipped. We are working through some licensing issues in accepting patches. We have accepted patches from various people since I made the comment 'that we hadn't received anything for the control panel'. An idea that I am playing with (there are a few technical prerequisites before we can do this). Is that the control panel is developed in part by ATI and in part by the community - Rage3DTweaker is an example of some of the things that may be exposed. There may be some ATI only extensions that will be included in the released ones in binary forms, but I have no fundamental problems with working with the user community to build up channel. On the QT vs GTK, currently we have some code in QT, and so GTK would be a reset in the control panel.


Q: From your As it looks to be a priority for ATI to get support done right on the 'business' linux platforms, especially since you at the moment only seem to focus on the RedHat/SuSe enviornments. What can the average enthouiast expect from ATI in the near future?

A: Our primary focus is commercial GL customers. Enthusiasts and gamers can expect high value fixes such as the doom3 fix as they are needed. Keep in mind that a lot of the commercial customers are focused on performance as well and that will be available immeadiately for the enthusiasts. A benefit of OpenGL as the 3D subsystem for Linux is that the Workstation development becomes available immediately for the enthusiast gamer. Under Windows, the work involves OpenGL for workstation, DirectX for Gamers (as a general rule - ignoring doom3).


Q: What is the number of developers working over linux drivers?

A: I do know but for competitive reasons we dont give direct numbers. All I can say is its roughly proportional to the size of the Linux market.


Q: On the control pannel subject, the open-source drivers have a standard XML based interface for exposing tunable options. Will ATI support that interface in their drivers?

A: As indicated before, there are some technical pre-requisites, one of these would be considering the DRI configuration infrastructure (which is XML). No promises that it will be that though. URL -> http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/m...nfrastructure. We haven't finished our analysis on what is needed.


Q: AMD64 users are generally forced to use cards from a competitor to have decent 3D support on 64-bit Linux systems. Are there any (at least) beta drivers for AMD64 Linux, and if so, are there plans on making them public as the Windows beta drivers?

A: We are planning our first release of AMD64 with the next release.


Q: Given ATI's business focus, The priority seems to be on 2d performance and functionality. Does ATI have any plans to support new desktop developments such as the X.org Composite extention?

A: As the technology becomes deployed in the market, we will respond to what is needed. Currently there is minimal requirements for Composite and so on, until some fundamental architectural changes are made.


Q: Back in Mid-August, 2004, at http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1085#c4 , Ati stated that they would be re-releasing driver 3.12 with X.org 6.8 support in a few weeks. What is the status on this re-release?

A: That was a leak from beta program mailing list... It was 'planning' and not a definite statement. (I didn't say it, Stefan from SuSE did). We had other important things to work with that delayed that work. ATI did not state... Stefan did. Anyway, 6.8 is going to be in the next release.


Q: Is there any focus on implementing AIW features under linux?

A: Currently there is no focus.

[davinci]

Q: Will ATi offer plain tar.gz/tar.bz2 package of the fglrx driver, if no why not?

A: No. Because there are fundamental issues with providing tarballs. We are however working on our installer that will simplify things for a lot of people. In general, the distribution's packages are preferred for distributions that not directly supported by ATI. (SuSE/Debian/FC/Gentoo all have packages)


Q: Reading dissusions on the x.org mailing lists it seems X is heading in an OpenGL based direction with an Xgl implementation. Does ATI have any plans to support this?

A: As said in the response to composite extension Q. There are some fundamental technology issues that need to be solved before that becomes widely available. When Xgl becomes deployed and relevant, we will move in that direction.


Q: Any plans for BSD support?

A: At this stage: no.


Q: Does ATI plan to increase the resources it allows to the Linux developement or are they satisfied with the pace they have established so far?

A: As market demand increases, the team will increase. In the last 12 months, demand _HAS_ increased, and hence the resource count has increased.


Q: Close to a year ago, Ati made an announcement they would be relocating their driver development to Canada as a means of increasing the productivity of their drivers, can you explain to us what benefits we, the end users, would notice as a result of this move?

A: ATI _never_ made an official announcement of the move. But the driver development did move from Starnberg to Canada. The initial benefit is that I have a job. (Matt's attempt at humour) The initial benefit is that the drivers are now released on a regular canter (every two months). We use the same codebase at the time of release - CAT 4.11 windows drivers will have the same core code as the 8.08 Linux drivers. We have direct access to HW and SW engineers, to resolve problems faster. We have direct access to PR and Marketing. As you can (will) see, the next drivers have a few extra goodies, which is a direct result of the work.


Q: How concerned is ATI about the effect the quality of it's linux drivers has on it's good name? This considering a lot of linux enthousiasts serve as a guide for less-technical friends and family in their purchasing decisions? And in this light, did ATI ever consider temporarily boosting the develment resources to bring the drivers up to par on 3d performance?

A: You bet that we are both very concerned about anything that impacts the reputation of our software. As such we will now adopt a more open approach to keeping the user community update on our Linux developments, as we regularly update the press on our progress in the same manner we do with our windows drivers. In fact you will see more coverage on ATI's linux developments in the coming weeks at some of your favorite tech web sites and we will continue this trend moving forward. My response on the burst development. We are more interested in sustainable development than one-shot wonders, hence we want to ramp the team, but do it carefully.


Q: is there a chance flgrx will switch to using the open (xorg/sfree86) DDX (2d Driver) and continue with the closed 3d driver? THere are already quite a few bugs that still affect the flgrx driver taht have been fixed in the xorg ddx

A: No. There are proprietary extensions that we can not fold into the Xorg release.


Q: PPC Support? PPC is one of the primary platforms- especially with IBM pushing it. What support is planned for PowerPC on the binary drivers?

A: None at this stage.


Q: Will ATI setup a Bugzilla for all of us in the Open source community wanting to help crush bugs and give you huge amount of information on fixing the Linux Drivers to overtake the competition?

A: No. Our bug list will include issues other than end user problems. We will not seperate into two lists.


Q: Considering the fact the next release will be available for x86 aswell as x64, the amount of work to be done for each release will undoubtebly increase. will ATI employ additional resources for the x86x64 platform, or is this done with the same(sized) team?

A: As true customer demand increases, resourcing will increase.


Q: As a Linux users who is in market for new video hardware, why should i choose ATi and purchase a video card from you over nVidia?

A: Because as THE market leader in graphics, with award winning hardware across all product lines. We have tackled our Windows driver problems of the past head on and not only overcome those problems, we are now setting an unprecedented pace in Windows drivers. Innovations such as monthly releases, CCC, VPU recover, Smartgart, etc are all things we worked our a$$'S off to deliver and we vow that the same passion will go into our Linux drivers


Q: What are the issues in supporting ACPI sleep states? I understand that this is still under very heavy development but it seems that restoring video state is the main problem at the moment. Are the future drivers being overhauled to support ACPI sleep and suspend?

A: We are working on our Power Management infrastructure, but as was mentioned, it is still evolving under Linux. I can't say when it will be in a truly supportable state.


Q: When will running several X session be supported, if it will be supported at all?

A: It will be supported, but I don't have any firm dates.


Matt's Closing Words
If people really want to help us solve our problems. Work with each other to create a test case. If you can make the test case return 0 for return 1 for fail, then we can track it down easier. Post it through rage3d Linux/Drivers for the moment... Watch this space for more information in the coming months.

[davinci]

neuer-Treiber: fglrx-8.8.25

ATI-Treiber Download

Ein Monat zu spät, aber jetzt ist er hier.
Neues Versionschema und viele Neuerungen.