Fedora 12 – No love from ATI/AMD – Andrew the Hopeless Techie

Fedora 12 – No love from ATI/AMD

Fedora 12 has been out for some time now and we are on the verge of Fedora 13 just around the corner. Yet ATI/AMD fails once again to provide support for the latest Xorg release.

From what I have read around the web it appears that AMD does not think they will support xorg 1.7 until Ubuntu 10.4 is released. When i looked further into this it would appear their logic behind this is due to Ubuntu being a distribution widely accepted by users. Due to the large base of both first time and experienced users they feel Ubuntu 10.4 will be a point in which a huge majority of users will be using xorg 1.7

I say what about Fedora? Fedora has millions of users and the number grows daily, why then do we always get the short end of the stick people tend to look at our distribution as nothing more then a testing ground for Red Hat. This could not be farther from the truth in fact several companies use Fedora in their infrastructure and some even contribute back. The fact that Red Hat periodically takes a Fedora release and makes the necessary modifications to it so it suits a Enterprise environment does not mean that we are a “Red Hat” testing ground.

I might be impartial here and that is ok as a majority of the users reading this feel the same way but I ask you this now, Why is it that ATI fails to keep up with the current stable release cycle of Xorg when Nvidia does this just fine.

Now before the sticks and stones go flying here keep in mind that Nvidia has just as many graphics cards and releases a new card on about the same frequency as ATI yet they manage to always have a working Linux driver with the latest xorg. I know I could just use a Nvidia card with my computer and stop complaining but I ask you why should I? I have a perfectly good graphics card working now it happens to be ATI and I ask merely to have it work with Fedora 12 (not to mention Fedora 13 which is around the corner). I have no attachment to ATI over nvidia mind you I just do not want to replace a set of good graphics cards for the sole purpose of not dealing with the ATI Linux issue.

All that aside i realize this is just my opinion and that it means nothing and will accomplish nothing however I felt it prudent to share my thoughts.

I am in no way affiliated with Red Hat, Nvidia, ATI or AMD any views expressed here are solely that of myself and in no way represent any of the the above mentioned parties in any official manner.

24 Comments

  1. Pingback: Andrew Vermilya Jamison: Fedora 12 – No love from ATI/AMD | TuxWire : The Linux Blog Aggregator

  2. Mace Moneta

    It comes back to the distribution”s focus. Ubuntu is an end-user release. Fedora is a developer release. Developers can take care of themselves. There”s a cost to being too close to upstream; reduced stability and incomplete support from third parties being significant issues.

    I”ve used Redhat since around 4.2, and switched to Fedora when they came into existence. I like Fedora, but I can understand the attraction of Ubuntu, both for end-users and vendors.

    I think the bigger issue for both Ubuntu and Fedora in the coming years will be Android, ChromeOS and Meego. A nice big browser button that they can push is all many need, and with ChromeOS, they don”t even need that. The people that use computers (as opposed to browser appliances) are as much a dying breed as electronics hobbyists or the people that used to tinker with their cars on weekends.

    Reply
    1. Andy

      @Mace Moneta I hear you Mace! I am not against internet appliances but i tend to be the traditional Computer User that wants a computer to be more then just a glorified browser. 3D is only one thing i use the computer for I do many other things and with Linux the learning curve is always changing which is good I love learning new things and Fedora has provided that for the most part.

      My final solution (for now) was to just run Ubuntu 9.10 along side Fedora 12 to get the best of both worlds until the xorg get supported

      Reply
  3. ddd

    Meh… Even if AMD did “fix” catalyst, it”d only be a couple of weeks until xorg broke it again. How exactly they test X releases with 3D I will never understand! Clearly there aren”t any tests on Nvidia or ATI, ”coz there”s a gap before even Nvidia get their stack repaired.

    Reply
    1. Andy

      @ddd Yes but your talking weeks and maybe a month with Nvidia, ATI has been avoiding the latest xorg support now for almost 6 months this is crazy but hey I guess I should expect it. I was a long time ATI advocate (non officially) until I ran into my first snag with ATI and Linux then i switched to Nvidia but my new machine came and a small oversight on my end landed me with a MOBO that supported Crossfire instead of SLI and so i got two Crossfire capable cards. I admit i have used Windows lately to play my games that I would normally play in wine but i hope some day I hope to get ATI working or break down and scrap the two cards i have and get a really nice Nvidia card.

      Either way ATI needs to do something in my opinion which as I stated means nothing.

      Reply
  4. You

    FLOSS drivers are the future.

    They may not be perfect, but they support many of the ATI/AMD graphics cards and even AMD is providing manpower to get them more featured.

    Unless you need OpenGL2.0 or greater, or need all that performance (which admittedly we should get because it is what was paid for), they are a good alternative to the proprietary drivers.

    The Floss drivers should be supported as much as possible IMO.

    Reply
    1. Andy

      @You Hey I am up for it when the FLOSS drivers support OpenGL 2.0 or greater I will gladly use them over the proprietary onces

      Reply
  5. Dennis J

    What”s worse is that the open source driver included in Fedora 12+ has some serious performance regressions.
    I”m finding myself in the uncomfortable position of still running F11 (which works fine with modern ATI cards) but having no real upgrade path. Why this was allowed to happen is beyond me.

    Reply
    1. Andy

      @GGC I hear you and if my new machine would run it then I would gladly run F11 till F12 was able to work with it but my new machine seems not to like the xorg shipped with f11

      Reply
  6. GGC

    Better you can consider use Gentoo Linux, I try Gentoo because fglrx module was better over Gentoo, on Fedora just works on 10 version. I like very very much Fedora, but Gentoo works fine for me.

    Reply
  7. Pingback: Fedora 12 – No love from ATI/AMD | Andrew the Hopeless Techie : News IT

  8. disi

    I feel like a burned child ever since I bought my HD4770. The binary driver from ATI would, due to it”s incompatibility with xorg-server-1.7, could break your whole desktop so I tend to use the open source driver.

    The open source driver improved from scrambled desktop to very good 2d performance. On the open source driver I cannot play any games, the performance is just unplayable (Sacred for Linux and Sauerbraten tested). I mean I can play those games on my old Laptop with Intel GMA850. The ATI HD4770 is fairly new and should be 1000times better!

    My next machine has an Intel processor and Intel onboard graphic, they are good enough to play games and Intel actual developes on Linux ^^

    Reply
  9. You

    @Andy – Fedora 13 should support OpenGL 2.0 in some of the gallium based drivers.

    However I hear the Gallium driver is a lot slow in general than the classic Mesa driver, which is in turn slower than FGLRX (in 3d)

    Reply
    1. Andy

      @You I have never heard of the Gallium based drivers. I basicaly play wow which supports OpenGL2.0 (with the proper switch added to the config file) and a few WINE games basicaly if i can run directx runtimes in wine I can use just about any game i want. Though lately Mass Effect 2 has been my time consumer which will probably not run in WINE even with the catalyst drivers. But hey World of Warcraft is the main thing in Linux if that works (which i belive with OpenGL 2.0 support it will) then I am all good.

      Reply
  10. jack

    Its strange that ATI have not even released an alpha version. If they only see Fedora as a playground for Red-hat (which we have to admit – it sorta is) they should be making sure they put a binary through a few release cycles before RH6 gets pushed out. (which should be soon – if not already??!?!?).

    It urks me that I have had to move over to Ubuntu 9.10 which is a real stinker of a distro. They also seem to be heading for the bleeding edge stuff – not unstable per se , but flaky setup. Software configurations and my soundcard is giving me hell.

    I use a studio M-Audio card and the “pulseaudio” system would not detect it – or at least work with it correctly. After hours of config I removed pulse and installed alsa driver and it worked like a charm… I updated my system last night only to find my soundcard is now not even detected anymore.

    Until these sorts of issues get addressed none of the distros will be serious contenders for desktop replacement to the masses. Cant imagine having to try and help someone install a soundcard over the phone on any of these linux distro”s. With windows the instructions woudl be along the lines of download the driver – install it … tada!! *windows sound*

    With linux it”s – remove packages A1.02 B1.02.23 C0.02.1 D E … install packages F1.04.2 G2.06.1 H I J K … now update packages Z X Y (all with their own version numbers) …

    Reply
    1. Andy

      True but these kinds of things also make users comfortable doing all that package swapping annoyed that a binary does not exist

      Reply
  11. TuxAttack80

    The mesa experimental drivers work great for me!!! ATI 3200 HD, Fedora 12-2.6.32.9-70.fc12.i686, no issues what so ever! Great frame rates in glxgear, able to run compiz smoothly and the sneak peak of gnome-shell 3 that can be added to desktop effects is a very nice touch. Recently switched to Fedora 12 and the 2.6.32.9 kernel fits my ath9k perfectly and the experimental drivers are icing on the cake!!

    Reply
  12. me

    Don”t bother with ATI anymore – ATI is history.

    Reply
  13. Jerky

    ATI does not yet support the newest xorg for one simple reason, its not on a stable release (although maybe it does now as there was just a new ATI release, haven”t checked as I am not a version junkie) For all those version junkies out there, if you want something that is guaranteed to work, then use a release that the hardware and software vendors certify it to work against, yes I know, this means you are limited in your OS choice, and may not have the latest greatest toys. How do you expect a company to maintain support for the bleeding edge is not always possible,as there is significant changes between versions. Maybe RHEL6 will be based on Fedora 13 and the latest xorg, but for all we know they might release another xorg and where does that then leave ATI if it needs to yet again write an update / patch for Fedora 14 / RHEL6.

    Me personally, I use what I know will work, and check before you buy a system that hardware / os / drivers will play nicely.

    Failing that, write your own alpha driver and submit it to the community if you feel so strongly about vendors not supporting the latest distro.

    Reply
  14. Andy

    @Jerky: I was refering to Fedora 12 and Xorg 1.7 both of which are stable. X 1.7 was the latest stable X at the time. Also it was more a way of me voicing my views on ATI”s favorite distro approach.

    Reply
  15. Pingback: Fedora 12 – No love from ATI/AMD | Andrew the Hopeless Techie | Penny Stocks

  16. Jack

    Now it is possible to install ati driver on Fedora 12!

    See
    http://madathilunni.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/installing-ati-catalyst-driver-10-6-fglrx-in-fedora-12/

    for details!

    Cheers,

    Jakob

    Reply
  17. kroeker

    Installing ATI Catalyst driver on Fedora 12:

    If succeeded, the 2D performance may be slow. To solve this problem try to run

    aticonfig –set-pcs-str=DDX,ForceXAA,TRUE

    and to add following line to the Device-part in xorg.conf:

    Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps”

    Jack

    Reply
  18. Jack

    After a successful ATI Catalyst installation on Fedora12 2D performance may be worse. Try to run

    aticonfig –set-pcs-str=DDX,ForceXAA,TRUE

    and/or to add following line to the device-part in xorg.conf:

    Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps”

    to solve this problem.

    Reply

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