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

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Tuesday 28 July 2009 02:58:14 John Mellor wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-07-24 at 12:23 +0200, Julian Aloofi wrote:
> > Am Donnerstag, den 23.07.2009, 20:13 -0400 schrieb John Mellor:
> > > This is a Fedora-killer.  Nothing should be higher priority.
> > >
> > > Is there any way to get Radeon HD support as a mandatory blocking issue
> > > into F12 ?  If the incredibly bad situation is not fixed by F12 with
> > > compiz and 3D gaming and everything else working correctly, then
> > > probably the only people who will be left running Fedora will be on
> > > laptops with their very low-end graphics, and some NVidia proprietary
> > > driver users.
>
> I'm ok with this, as long as a non-functioning Radeon-HD card becomes a
> blocker issue.  There is no way that F12 should be released without this
> support, and most cards working correctly.

There was a similar issue with Intel drivers at the time of release of F10, 
and it was labeled non-blocking issue back then. F10 was then released with 
flaky Intel drivers. IOW, don't get your hopes up.

Besides, as was the argument for Intel, it is not fair to block the whole 
distro only because some graphics cards have problems. All other users 
(nVidia, Intel and better-supported ATI owners) are then punished just because 
some ATI cards don't work well.

You chose the card, you deal with it. I had my fair share of that game with 
Intel (and I still do --- it still doesn't work good enough) for more than 6 
months now. It was working perfectly in F9, it broke in F10 (and this was well 
known before the release), it stayed broken through F10 and again in F11. As I 
cannot change hardware in my laptop, I learned to live with it. I suggest you 
do the same.

> For a fall-back position, we need to otherwise guarantee that F12
> releases with a functioning kernel and dri modules that fully support
> the fglrx driver.  Its not free, but the free drivers are still not up
> to the job if we are considering this option, and the functionality
> absolutely needs to be in Fedora.  This also needs to be a blocker
> issue.

The fglrx driver should support the kernel, not the other way around. And it 
being closed-source, go talk to ATI people and convince them to provide proper 
support, as nVidia does. I don't want an old kernel in my bleeding-edge distro 
just because some closed-source company doesn't provide proper support for 
their hardware. Or you can downgrade the kernel yourself once F12 is out.

Again, this is not Fedora's problem, but the user's choice of hardware. ATI is 
badly supported, and has always been that way. I can only suggest to ditch it 
and buy nVidia hardware. It is equally closed-source, but provides seamless 
support for a long time now.

But I am repeating myself here... ;-)

Best, :-)
Marko