|
Description
I know that the Ubuntu volunteers don't have any power over this, but I think that the parent company Canonical maybe could get some pull here. Maybe they could leverage the Dell partnership to force AMD's hands.
ATI Video card drivers are very poor. The thing just plain doesn't work, and I don't see this changing any time soon. This is probably the #1 thing holding Ubuntu back to the mass population where their laptops and desktops came with ATI motherboard chipsets and absolutely NO support for video, compiz, etc from AMD.
While I am not praising nvidia's effort (closed source only) at least their drivers work.
I propose that Canonical use their leverage in any way they feel possible to convince AMD to deliver high quality (and preferably open source) drivers for Ubuntu. They are not only holding back gaming on linux, but also adoption for every day users.
Tags:
(none)
Developer comments
I am marking this as "In development" because now AMD has made the specifications for their cards available so this will likely improve as the open source drivers become more mature.
The closed source drivers are available post-install via jockey.
UPDATE: X.org maintainer Bryce Harrington responds: http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/10
Attachments
No attachments.
Duplicates
Comments
|
christopher_lees wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 04:11
|
I've found that, although the ATI driver is sometimes a bit buggy, and performance is lacking, it DOES work.
Funnily enough I have more trouble with the Nvidia driver than I ever did with ATI's.
|
|
aitvo wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 04:59
| |
The last few revs of the fglrx driver have been great. The challenge has been to get rid of the driver in linux-restricted-modules without breaking anything else.
|
|
bigfox wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 04:59
|
Soon, open source drivers made from documentation prvided by ATI/AMD will be available for newer ATI cards and things should get better.
I am sure the open source drivers will be included in a future version of Ubuntu when they are ready.
|
|
andyn wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 11:46
| |
This is critical. Ubuntu MUST work with ATI video cards out of the box. I had to pull out my expensive ATI card and stick in a cheap Nvidia to get Ubuntu to install. This is not acceptable in any OS. What is needed first is basic support, just get the cards to work. The fancy stuff like game support can come later.
|
|
wolfwitch wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 17:43
|
This is a big issue for a lot of people, including me. Ubuntu won't work with a $400 ATI video card, but it works fine (minus any 3D acceleration) with a $40 store-brand card from CompUSA (or someone else, now that they aren't around).
I know it really isn't Ubuntu's fault, as also noted by the submitter, but perhaps they can exert some kind of pressure given their wide distribution and popularity.
|
|
centx wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 22:42
|
I would call OP fail, as we speak new lines are added to the OSS free AMD/ATI driver with soon-to-be(have?) 3D support called RadeonHD.
This work is based on docs provided by AMD/ATI, as opposed to the Nouveau project having to reverse-engineer all of the specs for the Nvidia cards.
Although, if Canonical would sponsor RadeonHD, all would be well.
|
|
carpex wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 22:48
|
I think I spent more time in the past year trying to make my ATI card work well in Ubuntu than I spent time... anyway..let's not go there....
My first Ubuntu experience was a black screen after inserting the LiveCD due X not starting because of driver issues. Same thing happened after upgrade to Gutsy. That's just simply unacceptable.
|
|
zarkov wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 23:46
| |
The ATI drivers DO work, up to a point, but only with newer cards. Old cards are not well supported by them. Getting 3D support to work with, say, an older Thinkpad T40 – well, just forget it.
|
|
mp3phish wrote on the 5 Mar 08 at 15:14
| |
zarkov: I think that is what I mean by my post. We need ATI drivers that DO actually work, not just up to a point. And not just with a couple chipsets. They put out chipsets every 6-9 months and we can't even get drivers that work on a fraction of them reliably, much less do 3D.
|
|
sedra wrote on the 6 Mar 08 at 12:01
| |
simply boycott ATI and its poorly designed driver
|
|
pilat wrote on the 6 Mar 08 at 12:47
|
There are still many troubles with ATI cards. I've finally got "Direct rendering: Yes", in the glxinfo's output. But Compiz still falls to "Inderect rendering", and I nobody knows what to do exactly on this issue.
The worst thing, this point is always ignored on almost any HowTo. They only say "AIGLX is now included and Direct rendering s now "Yes"... and stop their instructions.
---
$ compiz --replace
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 01:00.0 0300: 1002:71c0 (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present.
Trying again with **indirect** rendering:
...
|
|
Eldmannen wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 00:58
|
Yeah, we all want better ATI device drivers.
I have a NVIDIA card, but I want to switch since AMD released the specifications, and NVIDIA didn't.
|
|
norman_ wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 15:57
|
Do your research. The new catalyst (no longer fglrx) drivers (8.03) support compiz with AIGLX and the most recent xorg-server. Many of the old bugs were also fixed. It's not perfect, but it works reasonably good.
As long as Ubuntu continues to make the most current proprietary video drivers available easily, your problem is very much a non-issue.
|
|
melkore wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 19:36
| |
I've only had problems with the restricted driver built in with Ubuntu. The actual ATI driver from their site installed with minimal issues. I still had to run aticonfig --initial for it to fix the damage that the restricted driver did to my xorg.conf file though.
|
|
Steve413z wrote on the 9 Mar 08 at 17:41
| |
I just hope ATI realizes they are loosing alot of money because of this. Alot of people avoid ATI just because of Linux compatibility.
|
|
sedra wrote on the 10 Mar 08 at 12:47
| |
while amd/ati are loosing the battle they still provide a ridiculous driver for Xorg what kind of developer they have? boycott it now! dont buy ATI cards boycott via too
|
|
jshackles wrote on the 25 Mar 08 at 14:21
|
Everyone here hating on ATI need to remember that it was not very long ago that ATI changed their stance on Linux drivers, I believe it was a very short time after being aquired by AMD.
I think everyone here will agree that the ATI driver is getting better, but the newer driver packages are so new that there are a few confusions as far as which driver to install, what ATI driver package to run, etc etc.
These issues should sort themselves out in the next 6-8 months, and then I think the ATI driver will be right on par with Nvidias. Just my 0.02
|
|
SorinN wrote on the 26 Mar 08 at 03:21
|
I never understood why - opensource ATI Drivers - when ATI Drivers (FGLRX) are free by default and ready to use.
Why a lot of peoples to work on a thing that is allready better. The opensource driver will never compete with official driver.
Also this is not the case of MS Office vs Open Office.
Just to complete an ideal ??? this is comic - If you buy any ATI card - You buy the driver too and usage rights for this driver [ as you buy a game or other programs ].
to >> Steve413z which wrote "I just hope ATI realizes they are loosing alot of money because of this. Alot of people avoid ATI just because of Linux compatibility."..
A lot of money for a people but not for a company ;)
Well, Linux is insignifiant (as financial reason to do driver development for Linux) for AMD/ATI they make those drivers for us because they want to ... YEP purely because they want to do that, and they love Linux ... Is there a strong feeling that Linux will be the dominant system in the future - beside that - they are nice peoples with an open minded management. They prefer to loose time and money to invest in future ( as Mark Shuttleworth do ..).
For present Windows / Mac OS - there are the real market for AMD/ATI.
Hundred of thousand if not millions ( $ ) per day.
|
|
amiga_os wrote on the 8 Apr 08 at 19:10
|
As well as Canonical encouraging AMD in their open sourcing work, and in improving fglrx...
...could some of the Ubuntu coding magic contribute to the xorg-ati and xorg-radeonhd drivers?
|
|
mrthefter wrote on the 23 Apr 08 at 23:00
|
I see a lot of confusion on this topic.
First point: Ubuntu's included restricted drivers are outdated compared to ATI's. ATI's latest drivers are much more stable and more feature-complete.
Second point: Using a LiveCD, restricted drivers aren't available. However, the CD attempts to load the opensource ATI driver, which has very limited support for the latest cards. RadeonHD has better support, but feature-wise, it's not as far along as the open source radeon driver.
Third point: The opensource drivers are required for running older ATI cards, because the official Catalyst drivers dropped support for them. This is for all
|
|
mrthefter wrote on the 23 Apr 08 at 23:05
|
Crap, not all of my post went through. I'm not going to retype it all. So in summary...
1. ubuntu's included official drivers = outdated
2. livecd doesn't use restricted drivers, so no newer card support
3. old cards need opensource driver, amd/ati don't support it
4. some linux users are opensource purists, won't use closed source drivers. also, open source allows features to be added faster, such as AIGLX, EXA, and the upcoming TTM/DRI2. Closed source drivers have only recently added AIGLX, while the open source radeon already has all the above features for a long time (except for ttm/dri2. still in development, as the protocol itself isn't complete)
and lastly, canonical doesn't have much leverage to pull, as all current driver development is already commercially backed, except for the old radeon driver, but that's still actively developed, as almost all changes go through it first before being added to new drivers.
|
|
HermanChess wrote on the 26 Apr 08 at 05:42
| |
Yes! I'm starting to have a personal hatred on ATI, and I'm just waiting to have the money and go buy me some nice nVidia card, which I'm sure is going to change my pc experience dramatically. I've never had luck with the drivers, I either have a black screen on logging out, or a white screen while logging in, so I'm stuck with the mesa drivers, which are pretty decent except for 3d acceleration.
|
|
mp3phish wrote on the 20 May 08 at 23:21
|
@sprogg2001: this is exactly the crap I'm talking about. Until ATI/AMD video cards have REAL WORKING drivers that work with REAL hardware that is actually on the market, then all this hype and crap about ATI opensource crap is just nonsense.
Buy nVidia until AMD wakes up. The drivers aren't opensource, but they do WORK. And not just some models, but EVERY model.
|
Post your comment
|
