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What the hell did people expect? They sell CPUs/GPUs and now they want to compete with Intel on the integrated graphics front.

It would be suicide not supporting Linux.

I can only hope that nVidia counter this by opening their architecture up as well.

I agree I'm glad AMD/ATI has finally embraced the FOSS community, but I must say, don't count your chickens before they hatch. Phoronix is reputable and I like their site a lot, but, no one aside from the editors at phoronix have seen these drivers, they certainly aren't in the wild. I have faith in AMD and have since I traded my 486-DX2 in for an AMD K5. It's too bad that they let the linux drivers suck so bad for so long though, because I totally just purchased an Intel dual core processor/mobo and an Nvidia 7600GT so I could finally have my perfect Linux box. Maybe I'll pop my Ati x1600 Pro back in after the drivers are released.

I'm sure there will be a press-release, and quite possibly an AMDti website devoted to it, but c'mon, give'em a chance! Announcements like this are made at trade-shows and cons for a number of good reasons:

1) The news (as you see) permeates the tech talking-shops across the Internet very quickly because it's being relayed by journos and bloggers who are present for just that reason. Many big tech "news" sites won't give a high priority to knocking out an article about something like this.

2) Said "enthusiast" reporters are more apt to report the details of the announcement accurately (compared to some bored PCProMagNewsNet(TM) hack), and with enthusiasm.

3) Expectation of announcements like this is a good way of getting people through the doors of these events, so everybody's happy.

Personally I'd rather they spat it out, than spent more time putting together a fancy website and a showy press launch before doing so.

amen to that. very, very true.

The "pragmatists" get to use the OSS drivers too, you know - and I don't think anyone was grateful for the huge, seeping mess that was the fglrx driver. nvidia, on the other hand...

(don't hurt me, I'm using intel)

this kinda reminds me of unions...

Hate to burst your bubble, but Intel, Dell, HP and others running Linux made it clear that AMD better get off their butts and make inroads or lose this opportunity.

which they wouldn't have done unless a sizable and vocal part of the community wanted it

Hate to burst your bubble, but Intel, Dell, HP and others running Linux made it clear that AMD better get off their butts and make inroads or lose this opportunity.

Yes, and? They are some of the purists I was talking about, at least the people in those companies pushing for this. The purists aren't just individuals who are into the philosophy of Free software for moral reasons, they are also open source purists who know that the model works better in many situations. And they include some companies.

Edited 2007-09-06 13:55

Yes, and? They are some of the purists I was talking about, at least the people in those companies pushing for this. The purists aren't just individuals who are into the philosophy of Free software for moral reasons, they are also open source purists who know that the model works better in many situations. And they include some companies.

The major OEMs pushing for this weren't listening to purists. They were just being practical. ATI's Linux drivers were a complete joke, making it infeasible to ship a laptop with Linux and an ATI graphics card.

The Linux kernel development model intentionally makes closed source drivers a pain to work with, so open source drivers make more sense from a practical standpoint.

The major OEMs pushing for this weren't listening to purists. They were just being practical. ATI's Linux drivers were a complete joke, making it infeasible to ship a laptop with Linux and an ATI graphics card.

The Linux kernel development model intentionally makes closed source drivers a pain to work with, so open source drivers make more sense from a practical standpoint.

Yes, and hence my words "know that the model works better in many situations." What I'm calling a purist is anyone who demands open source, and rejects the closed source version, whatever the reason for it is. And this is exactly what these companies are doing in pushing AMD for open drivers. You say they weren't listening to purists.. They are the purists in this situation.

Like I said, many "purists" are only so because they know that open source works and that, in the long run, it is the practical way to be. And yes, they include the decision makers of some major companies.

Yes, and hence my words "know that the model works better in many situations." What I'm calling a purist is anyone who demands open source, and rejects the closed source version, whatever the reason for it is. And this is exactly what these companies are doing in pushing AMD for open drivers. You say they weren't listening to purists.. They are the purists in this situation.

Well, you have an odd definition of purist. I'd consider an open source purist someone who insists open source is always better than closed source, no matter what.

In this particular case, the open source is considered the practical choice only because the Linux kernel developers go out of there way to make it closed source drivers impractical. This is strictly a case of "I just want things to work, do whatever you have to do." That's the exact opposite of a purist.

probably not slash costs - they're still making the official binary only driver.

They are only slashing costs (non existent I may add) for development and support on Linux - for Mac and Windows they are still paying good money to get proper drivers developed and supported.

me too, to encourage them.

If they really give us full specs for their cards to support open driver development, I will probably sell my Nvidia card and replace it with a new AMD card. I really hope that they are going to do it.

cool

Woo Hoo, I can install Linux on my new iMac at Office. the lack of proper ATI drivers for Linux sucked, glad to know that those days are over.

which is why the binary only driver being massively improved is also wonderful news

and actually, considering the average user doesnt need awesome 3d performance, they have all the reason in the world to use the open driver, and will, because distros will ship with that as default.

That's basically what most people experience with Windows. There is a simple (usually binary though) driver that provides basic functionality for the majority of people, and there is a high-performance driver that can be downloaded and reinstalled every time the driver is updated. Most people just use the simple driver. Gamers and some others use the high-performance driver.

Wrong.

The open source driver ALREADY outperforms the closed driver, for many of the parts where they got the reverse engineering done right, especially on R200 class chips.

The problem is when they hit a place where they don't know how something works, or haven't found the ideal way of doing something, and fall back to software rendering, which clearly slows EVERYTHING down massively.

Yes, but this is compared to fglrx which is a crap driver. New binary one just announced is significantly faster (supposed to be about as fast as Windows one because it is basically the same driver - unified arch as Nvidia's).

They'll always be able to resort to various secret/patented methods, approximations and hacks unlike in open drivers (though with the spec, we might see many clever ideas as well), and they certainly have lots of experienced people in this area.

Well done AMD, about time. Only thing we could ask more is to devote a few developers to work on DRI and OSS ATI drivers, but maybe they already ARE planning that. ("skeleton" driver as a hint). I also hope for good TV-out specs.

yuppers

aparently u missed the 8.41 ati driver release. and 8.42 will hav aiglx. 8.41 brings 50% to 90% performance increase on all cards across the board.

I must have missed it too, it's not been released yet as far as I can see, or am I missing something?

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeon.html

I hope the rumors about 8.42 are right, maybe I can finally get some decent framerates, picture quality etc. out of my x850

Any sign of xvmc support?

8.41 is supposed to be released next week, i think.

Any sign of xvmc support?

Probably not, but maybe the reverse engineers can focus on that now that they've released the specs to the 3d pipeline.

Gamers spend the most per person on a GPU. They are either geeks or get advice from geeks on what to buy. Real geeks will advise an ATI GPU, where previously they almost always advised an NVIDIA GPU. (Just my experience, yours may have been different.) I've bought 3 top of the line GPU's in the last year and a half or so, and will be buying ATI stuff in the future, as long as they come through for open source.

It won't matter much at first, but over time it will matter more and more, and lets face it, when your in second place, even a 2% or 3% change in market share is a huge difference.

Most real geeks would advise nVidia as the current 8000 series blows away anything from ATI.

AMD have only just released some updates to their drivers which get their cards up to 90% quicker. Thats not 90% quicker than nVidia's simply 90% quicker than they used to be. Currently i will stick with nVidia, it would take a few years of consistent stability and improvements from ATI to make me change.

i'm fed up with having to disable compiz on fedora7 (shutdown problems) due to the stagnant nvidia drivers, and frankly opengl performance is pathetic

I was just wondering if you could elaborate on your problems with the NV cards? I've been running Gentoo for years, and don't pay much attention to the problems on the other distros, so I don't know what the problem with compiz, NVidia, and Fedora is. But it works very, very well for me. So, I suspect that it's Fedora related, not nvidia-driver related.

As far as performance goes, the 5200 is an antique now; I believe it was released in 2003. I have no idea how old that Intel chipset is; I've never owned an Intel GPU. Is it possible that the Intel hardware is just faster? I get about the same framerates in Windows as in Linux with my 7800 GS, and would never have said that the Linux drivers have performance problems.

I suppose I should comment on TFA: Much like everyone else. I plan to switch to ATI when the OSS drivers start to mature. I've been an NVidia user since I ditched my 3DFX Voodoo card for a Riva TNT, but this is a big enough deal to make me switch.

I believe there's already an open driver(xorg radeon) that works for that card(r300) but still needs improvements.

What would happen if a different platform got decent graphics drivers that is technically superior to Windows?

Nothing? When technical superiority goes up against inertia, I bet inertia wins.

I am one of the first to shout out about MS's abuse of it's virtual monopoly, but this? You have got to be kidding me!

Just look up some of the documented cases of NDAs involved in producing any form of technology not pertaining to software (and including allot of software to boot) and then re-read your post. I'm sorry, but it's utter hogwash.

A wise man once said 'look close enough and you'll find a conspiracy anywhere.'

"A wise man once said 'look close enough and you'll find a conspiracy anywhere.'"

I'm only vaguely interested, but the conspiracy theory that was quite popular...but people forget.

Is that certain previously open to Linux manufactures suddenly got a little more cold after certain hardware for consoles was selected.

The bottom line is *there* is real abuse by Microsoft all the time. It is just a waste of time concentrating on those that are "handshakes behind closed doors", when open abuse like that of OOXML goes unpunished, and the cover-up even more so.

A wiser man once said "Microsoft is accountable to nobody"

An even wiser man said "This couldn't be any more off topic." ATI's drivers have nothing to do with MS, except that it's always cheaper to develop for 94% of the market. As far as OOXML goes, that's even more off topic

Edited 2007-09-05 23:11 UTC

I'm sorry but again, total hogwash!

MS is accountable to it's share holders. Nothing you say will ever change that. Sure, one situation could be construed as some form of strong armed tactics, but it seems to me more like simple economics.

When dealing with a paying partner, especially as lucrative a partner as MS, you generally do much in the way of boosting that relationship as far as solidarity goes. Everybody knows Linux is a thorn in the side on MS, doesn't mean MS asked nVidia to suddenly change it's Linux support plans just to concrete a deal.

nVidia, which makes the vast majority of it's money from gamers, is not going to make a bomb out of Linux any time soon. For them to hang up a tiny venture for the sake of sweetening as large a deal as a gaming console is, frankly, a no brainer.

"total hogwash!"

Lets get one thing straight. Microsoft is openly Corrupt. It acts in its own best interest. How they have acted with EU is a great example.

I have shown the conspiracy(sic), is it true. I don't care. I said as much. It wouldn't surprise me, and its not out of the realms of possibility.

What I did say is that rather than concentrate on what happens behind closed doors...you should look how they have been shown to be corrupt.

OOXML is just one extreme example. Of where they have corrupted 11 counties. They have even been caught out, and yet haven't been held accountable. It was covered up.

So the bottom line is its an unsubstantiated rumor about a company *know* for this kind of behavior.

Being paranoid doesn't mean that you're right you know: the risk of being sued for using software patents may be enough for ATI or NVidia to closing their sources.

And contrary to what you've said as video cards evolve from fixed function hardware to GPUs the importance of the drivers have increased a lot, so 3D drivers of videocards are really complex.

They just did.....



ATI just opened up their drivers, and is going to release an optimized, properly fuctioning Linux driver. Just because you're a cynical, jaded, pessimistic individual who can't be glad that ATI/AMD did the right thing, doesn't make it untrue.

That's nonsense, they are using licensed technologies in their software, so they cannot just "open" their drivers. They can perhaps give the specifications, but they aren't fond of free drivers, because sometimes you can press people to buy new hardware - guess why? New operating system, new drivers, but for the latest hardware only

It's that easy. So why is AMD doing this? Because they have a problem with their CPUs and graphics cards, at the moment Intel and nVidia rule the market.

It's a good step indeed.

"That's nonsense, they are using licensed technologies in their software, so they cannot just "open" their drivers."

This has been disproved lots of times. You should read some of the blogs and entries of the open source drivers.

Open source drivers for the r500 already exist.http://airlied.livejournal.com/?skip=20

"So a marketing dude said something about open drivers for AMD/ATI gpus and working with the community.

Can people get excited when AMD/ATI actually do something rather than showboat for media headlines?

Like ATI won't let me release my r500 source because I shouldn't have used a utility they gave me under NDA on those cards, now the thing is I done the correct thing and contacted them asking if I could release the code, so far this has just been stonewalled by their Linux driver management and their "legal" department, this isn't the action of a company trying to interact with the community or one that gives a rats arse about community.."