will we ever have radeon drivers that aren't crap?

[JD]

On 07/23/2009 04:14 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Thursday 23 July 2009 20:48:44 jdow wrote:
>    
>> From: "Robert P. J. Day"<rpjday at crashcourse.ca>
>> Sent: Thursday, 2009/July/23 10:56
>>
>>      
>>>   apologies for the unduly harsh tone but, seriously, will there ever
>>> be radeon drivers available for fedora that aren't complete junk?
>>> this has been going on for some time now, and nothing's changed.
>>>        
>> Hell no. This is X-windows. I've had drivers crashing left and right on
>> my old laptop since FC5 or so. And it's just been getting worse with time
>> not better. Now I understand why ATI drivers are crap on Windows, too.
>> They must play the Adaptec game, you pick your chip rev for the bugs you
>> are willing to work around. Over the last 5 or so years I have developed
>> an intense hate for ATI anything, even now that they are related to AMD.
>>      
>
> +1
>
> It seems that radeon driver works for some cards (typically old/low-end ones),
> but in general it is basically a complete gamble. Proprietary ATI drivers Just
> Don't Work (tm). And it's been like that since I got my first ATI card (at the
> time of FC2).
>
> The situation is really sad --- ATI claim to support open source, yet they
> release the code only for obsolete cards. Intel cards are open source, but
> that still doesn't mean that bugs get fixed, and the driver is extremely
> unstable. This leaves us with nVidia --- yum install akmod-nvidia and
> everything Just Works. Yes, it's closed source, but it works, contrary to both
> ATI and Intel.
>
> I really don't understand why so many people hate nVidia. It has good support,
> they demonstrated very good cooperation with KDE4 developers recently, the
> driver works with both high- and low-end cards... Yes, it is closed source,
> but so is ATI (except for the old X-family cards). And people at nVidia are at
> least honest about not giving the source.
>
> If you want a high-end graphics card to do
> 3D/gaming/googleearth/Compiz/whatever, nVidia (with binary drivers) is
> basically the only choice. ATI drivers don't work with 3D, open-source radeon
> driver doesn't support HD cards, and Intel just doesn't have high-end graphics
> cards.
>
> I know, nVidia also had its bad moments, but on large timescale they
> demonstrate stability. ATI has never demonstrated any. I'll never buy ATI
> graphics card again.
>
> Best, :-)
> Marko
>    

While I echo your sentiments, I cannot remove my laptop's old ATI chipset.
I am stuck with it. So, I keep sending emails to AMD/ATI about their 
dysfunctional
Linux/FreeBSD drivers in the hope they will relent and do something right.

JD
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