Date:
Monday , August 23, 2004
Category:
GPU / Video Cards
Manufacturers:
ATI
Author:
Kyle Bennett

ATi Drivers & Linux

Some questions for ATI from our HardForum readers about ATI's Linux drivers. Some of these answers will likely make things a bit more clear for our Linux users.

Recently my attention was directed to a thread in the HardForum's Linux/BSD/Free Systems section. There were many questions being asked about ATI's Linux OS support when it comes to their video card drivers. We went through the thread and pulled the questions that seemed most relevant and asked Terry Makedon if he could get them answered for us. With a resounding "Yes," here are the questions and ATI's responses.

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1.) "..Nvidia's (video driver) installer is not distro specific, and can be used in varying setups. ATI's are specific to Red Hat from what I have seen. Nvidia’s aren't perfect, but are about on the same level as their Windows drivers. They can get a little behind in support for hardware, but they don't fall too far behind."

ATI's Proprietary drivers are not Red Hat specific, they are currently packaged in RPMs for convenience for dominant market players. Distribution vendors including SuSE and Gentoo regularly simply repackage the drivers for the convenience of their distribution users.

There are a large number of users covering SuSE, Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian and Mandrake. Careful examination of the documentation and download site will show only glibc and XFree requirements.

2.) "Well, like the one guy said. ATI's drivers are tailored to work with only one distribution and that is Red Hat Linux. Gentoo has used their awesome skills to somehow edit the proprietary drivers to work well on their distribution. However Gentoo is too hard for many Linux users to install (myself included...I tried 9 times)."

No editing required, just repackaging. Follow this link for much more in information http://odin.prohosting.com/wedge01/gentoo-radeon-faq.html

3.) "Why do ATI's Linux drivers only work properly with RedHat Linux? You say you are "very committed and serious about supporting the Linux community." However, it seems to me you are only committed to the Red Hat community. Why is this? Why not make the drivers open source so that other developers can take a crack at improving compatibility with other distributions and configurations, taking some of the pressure off your hands?"

See the responses to the other questions regarding Linux.

Always a contentious issue. ATI has worked very closely with the Open Source community for quite some time now. Open Source is not a panacea, and doesn't guarantee that drivers will come into existence.

A sampling of ATI's involvement with Open Source follows.

Support of the XFree86 and DRI Project for all cards leading up to the Radeon 8500. Support for 2D only in Radeon 9500 and above. This also included the IGP 9000 and 9100.

Funded development of ATI's audio driver for the IXP series of Integrated South Bridges. This is in ALSA 1.0.3.

Contributed patches for ATI's IDE controller in the IXP series of Integrated South Bridges.

ATI provides both sample hardware and programming specifications for almost all of our non-3D hardware.

As a side point, the Linux control panel is linked against the free version of QT. The source has been included in every release of ATI's Proprietary Linux driver. To date we have received *ZERO* patches or user contributed fixes even though the control panel is available in source form.

ATI is committed to Linux and the open source community. It is important to note that our involvement will always have a peripheral focus of ensuring we maintain a competitive advantage.

4.) "Why did it take so long to implement D3TC? UT2003 players were forced to get an nvidia card to play ut2003 in Linux."

We delivered this as soon at the earliest possible opportunity.

5.) "I just want to know why the performance under Linux as far as 3D goes is subpar to the Windows counterpart? - Why don't the Linux drivers perform up to par with the Windows drivers in so many situations (such as UT2K3)?"

Our most important target currently is stability. As the drivers mature we will spend increasing time on performance tuning. Since our drivers are relatively young, we have a lot of ground to cover.

Be careful in comparing Windows games to their Linux port. You must always ensure that you are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges (OpenGL and Direct3D).

6.) "Do you think you could look into using a more non-distro specific system for installation?"

That is planned work for later this year.

7.) "How about providing the information necessary for the DRI project to make their own drivers for your hardware?"

For older generation hardware, they have all the information that is needed. As you are all aware, 3D Video card technology is being enhanced at a furious pace, hence ATI cannot give away information that will potentially benefit our competitors.

Of the companies that provide a proprietary driver, the Open Source drivers for ATI's cards are the most fully featured. This is primarily due to the openness of ATI to registered developers who wish to develop for ATI's hardware.

8.) "A new driver every two months is not adequate considering how quickly the Linux world and even your own hardware world moves. For example, I don't see support for the X800 at this moment in your Linux drivers. And, X 4.4.0 is available now, and your drivers don't support that either. Why aren't new drivers released when necessary?"

Editor's Note: As of publication, ATI does have a Linux driver publicly posted for their X800 series. v3.11.1.

Following on from the Catalyst program, our first step is to ensure that there is repeatability in our driver releases. People can come to expect a release on a regular basis. Very soon we will be tracking every second Catalyst release.

Of course as newer technologies become available we will move forwards. Unfortunately for bleeding edge people, we need to support the drivers. That means we will track fairly closely the support that is needed for distribution. As it currently stands, Fedora Core 2 is the only distribution shipping with XOrg 6.7, virtually no one is shipping with XFree 4.4. All other distributions are still with 4.3 (although SuSE is in-between with XFree 4.4RC2.

10.) "I've heard complaints of defunct TV-outs and other parts of your hardware in Linux. Why don't your Linux drivers support every feature of your hardware like the Windows version do?"

The Linux driver group has a large responsibility, supporting all of ATI's hardware from a reasonably small team. This means that we fight the battles that we can. We intend to support as many features as possible, but it will take time.

11.) "ATi, I would like (if possible) a source "port" of your Windows catalyst drivers. By port, I mean the same performance, IQ, and stability as Windows user enjoy. Source drivers would be nice as well, thanks a lot Terry! (I’m not sure if u can actually do this, but it would be great)"

A large portion of the driver is built from precisely the same source code as Windows. Of course we do not use a port of the D3D code, but rather the OpenGL code. Fully Open Source drivers have been mentioned earlier. For the current generation of hardware (Radeon 9500 - Radeon X800) we will not being release driver source.

12.) "Why doesn’t the ATi control panel allow you to set ansiotropic, FSAA and other settings?"

We have a number of upcoming work items that will include a rework of the control panel to allow easier control and more sensible support of these features as they are made available under Linux.

13.) "Why don’t you contact the major Linux distribution vendors to allow them to package your drivers along with their distributions to make it easier for your users to get up and running?"

We have good relationships with the Major vendors. Red Hat will not accept proprietary modules within their distribution. SuSE, Gentoo (and soon Debian) repackage our drivers for use within their distributions. We are slowly moving through other distribution vendors to ensure that we are supporting their distributions requirements properly.

14.) "Why isn’t there a Linux driver on the driver CD that people get when they buy your cards?"

We intend to have the drivers on CD at some stage in the future. Currently our target is on improving the offering - this will mean frequent web based updates.

15.) "The control panel doesn't like installing under KDE, my shell of choice. Is this a common problem and if so, why?"

We haven't heard of any problems so far. If you do have problems, provide enough information to allow us to repeat the problem internally via the Linux driver feedback web page at http://apps.ati.com/linuxDfeedback/index.asp.