Heads up: fglrx incompatible with 2.6.29, new driver at RPM Fusion & other news

***Firewing1*** · #1 6th May 2009, 07:17 PM

I wanted to send out the word before 2.6.29 hits stable for Fedora 9/10 that the current versions of the ATI drivers (version 9.3 for R200-R550 and 9.4 for R600+) do not support kernel 2.6.29. Although a community patch is available, it has been reported to cause system instability on some cards and it can also potentially cause DoS because a log message problem. Because of these problems, RPM Fusion will not be able to update the kmods for 2.6.29 - if you have kmod-fglrx installed and you're having some problems with yum, please exclude kmod-fglrx from the system updates for now and stay with 2.6.27.

Also, because Catalyst 9.3 is incompatible with Xserver 1.6 used in Fedora 11 and AMD has said they will no longer provide updates for the legacy driver, RPM Fusion is retiring xorg-x11-drv-fglrx for Fedora 11. If you have a R200-R500 generation card, please stay with F-10 or F-9 or alternatively update to F-11 but switch to the open (radeon/radeonhd) Xorg drivers.

Finally, I also wanted to mention that RPM Fusion is introducing a new driver series: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst/kmod-catalyst. xorg-x11-drv-catalyst is the package name for the AMD Catalyst Driver version 9.4 up (which no longer has support for R500 generation cards and below). It currently will only work on kernel 2.6.27/2.6.28 due to the problems mentioned above, but hopefully Catalyst 9.5 will bring 2.6.29 support at which point RPM Fusion will start carrying kmod packages for recent kernels as usual.

Riser Glen · #2 6th May 2009, 07:21 PM

It would have been faster to type "ATI users get screwed over again"

liangsuilong · #3 9th May 2009, 09:02 PM

Though RPMFusion work for new Catalyst for Fedora 11 and Fedora 10, I hope AMD provide official support for Fedora 10 or above.
Why can they support the latest Ubuntu biut mot Fedora? Why nVIDIA can do it?
When the kernel upstream to 2.6.30, AMD will support it soon? now nvidia can support it..

MorphingDragon · #4 9th May 2009, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by liangsuilong

Though RPMFusion work for new Catalyst for Fedora 11 and Fedora 10, I hope AMD provide official support for Fedora 10 or above.
Why can they support the latest Ubuntu biut mot Fedora? Why nVIDIA can do it?
When the kernel upstream to 2.6.30, AMD will support it soon? now nvidia can support it..

Actually they dont, Ubuntu is Just as bad. If you install the ATi driver theres a massive slowdown. If you boot the restricted drivers module in verbose mode through a terminal, its just installing them through scripts. The only distros ATi gets paid to support are RHEL and SLED.

Ill repeat that Again, ITS NOT THE DISTROS FAULT, THEY ALL DONT GET ANY LOVE.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/the_ubuntu_and_ati_blues
Lets just hope the OpenSource driver is up to snuff.

It makes me wonder how Apple can get so much support from ATi for their macs.
(Scratch that the ATi drivers are buggy in Mac OSX too...)

***Firewing1*** · #5 10th May 2009, 05:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by liangsuilong

Though RPMFusion work for new Catalyst for Fedora 11 and Fedora 10, I hope AMD provide official support for Fedora 10 or above.
Why can they support the latest Ubuntu biut mot Fedora? Why nVIDIA can do it?
When the kernel upstream to 2.6.30, AMD will support it soon? now nvidia can support it..

Ubuntu is not using the same versions of software (ie Xorg, kernel) that Fedora is using - since our versions are a bit newer, ATI hasn't had the time/chance to write support for them into the driver yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MorphingDragon

It makes me wonder how Apple can get so much support from ATi for their macs.
(Scratch that the ATi drivers are buggy in Mac OSX too...)

I'm betting it's because Apple gives ATI lots of $$

ajamison · #6 10th May 2009, 05:56 AM

I am sorry but I was a long time ATI fan until they decided to stop supporting my 9550 so I made the leap to a Nvidia 7600 GS card which is a slight upgrade but it is nvidia so no issues that fglrx has.

Unless you have an HD ATI card your offificialy SOOL (Sh** out of luck)

Ard Righ · #7 10th May 2009, 07:04 AM

ATI are somewhere in rock/hard place situation... they have a lot of legacy cards that have had scratchy support through 3rd party drivers, and now they are under the AMD umbrella, they are trying to rectify some of that.

The issue of dropping support for older cards in the official drivers isn't something new, or something soley of ATI's doing. nVidia drop support for old video cards from their official drivers all the time. So a bit less fanboyism on that issue would help.

I think the solution to getting faster support for new developments of X.Org etc will come about with AMD/ATI getting more involved upstream. How involved they are now I have no idea, but they are still playing some catch up to get where they need to be.

Overall, I am happy my 4870 works under Fedora, and long may it continue to improve.

ultra magnus · #8 10th May 2009, 08:14 AM

So does anybody have a good guide to get suspend working with the opensource driver? I'm stuck with an Radeon Xpress 1100 on my laptop, and suspend is the only thing keeping me with the fglrx drivers. Sorry if this is off topic.

***Firewing1*** · #9 19th May 2009, 09:49 PM

Status update: Catalyst 9.5 does not support 2.6.29, so we'll have to wait for another month at the minimum.

leigh123linux · #10 19th May 2009, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firewing1

Status update: Catalyst 9.5 does not support 2.6.29, so we'll have to wait for another month at the minimum.

Or two .

MorphingDragon · #11 20th May 2009, 07:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leigh123linux

Or two .

FGLRX Trobules made me give up on ATi on Linux.

I have a mac but I dont recommend anyone with an ATi card use linux.

MuadNu · #12 21st May 2009, 06:50 PM

I'm buying a laptop which has now an option of free upgrade to an ATI Radeon HD 3470 card. It's obviously tempting, but should I go for it? This thread and others I've seen seem to suggest that I should keep the Intel integrated graphics. Specially since I don't really do much 3D stuff (the most I use my Nvidia card for now is Compiz and nvidia-settings to set up external monitors/projectors, which is something I do a lot).

Suggestions?

***Firewing1*** · #13 21st May 2009, 07:32 PM

I would say go for it. You're going to get (roughly) the same performance from the Intel as the Radeon without using the fglrx drivers for now, but the situation will only improve as the open source drivers for ATI cards get better (ATI regularly releases documentation) and/or when fglrx supports 2.6.29.

MuadNu · #14 21st May 2009, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firewing1

I would say go for it. You're going to get (roughly) the same performance from the Intel as the Radeon without using the fglrx drivers for now, but the situation will only improve as the open source drivers for ATI cards get better (ATI regularly releases documentation) and/or when fglrx supports 2.6.29.

Thanks for the reply. I've never used ATI cards, so I'm not sure what to expect. What do you mean by roughly the same performance? (I mean, slightly better, slightly worst, or maybe neither?). And if I don't use the fglrx drivers, the alternative is to go for the open source ones?

And one more thing, in case anyone knows. How much battery life should I expect to lose with the ATI card as opposed to sticking with the Intel one?

ppesci · #15 21st May 2009, 07:46 PM

I have a Mac Book with an ATI R500 card and suspect that i will stick with F10 for looooooooong time. Anyway I like it