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AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support
That's right, read it and weep. Now, I'm going to repeat th is, because it's been true for the entire time I've run Gnu/Linux: if you are planning to run a non free video driver, do NOT buy anything with an amd/ati video card or chip.
AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support (forum discussion thread). Read the full story here. :: Quote :: In what will certainly be controversial and disappointing to some Radeon Linux desktop users, AMD will soon announce that they will effectively be discontinuing support for several Radeon product families from their proprietary Catalyst driver. After that point, for future Linux distribution updates, the open-source Radeon Linux driver will be your only option for accelerated graphics. This is likely happening with the Windows Catalyst driver too, but at least there they have a better-maintained legacy driver process.
This summer, around the time of Catalyst 12.7, AMD will be dropping support for pre-Evergreen hardware from their proprietary graphics driver. This means that the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series will cease to be supported by the mainline driver. The support will live on in a legacy branch of Catalyst, but that branch for Linux users will not be updated with new X.Org Server and Linux kernel support. If this sounds weirdly familiar, it should. Once again AMD is dropping support for cards that are still being sold today. This happened to me once before, on my sgfxi test box, I got a cheap radeon card, then a few months later, the fglrx driver dropped support for it. So I got a new card, thinking I'd be set for a long time. That was maybe 2 years ago now, not sure exactly. So forget AMD and any long term non free driver support. If the free driver meets your needs and supports your chipset, then you're fine, but keep in mind, AMD funds much of the free xorg driver development as well. Again, if you need features of non free drivers, like speed, performance, or most of the stuff working, do NOT buy an amd card, buy an nvidia. they have done a good job supporting linux now for years in their non free driver development, despite what amd / ati fanboys (and again, why on earth would anyone be a fanboy of a corporation, for profit?). There is simply no reason at all to buy a new high end amd video card anymore, it's a total waste of your money, just get nvidia or intel for basic graphics, and ignore amd completely. Unless, of course, you just need the basics, then it should be fine. Until amd decides to axe their free driver group as well, of course.... Back to top |
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Hear hear.
The AMD fanboys used to get on my nerves in their desperate attempts to convince anyone (or maybe it was really to convince themselves) of radeon superiority over nvidia. I'm not a fan of any corporation, but at least nvidia (proprietary) drivers do work in linux without too much effort. Back to top |
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:: anticapitalista wrote :: Hear hear.
The AMD fanboys used to get on my nerves in their desperate attempts to convince anyone (or maybe it was really to convince themselves) of radeon superiority over nvidia. I'm not a fan of any corporation, but at least nvidia (proprietary) drivers do work in linux without too much effort. Nvidia's drivers are updated more frequently than AMD's and bugs are usually dealt with fairly quickly The free radeon drivers are not quite all there yet and even nouveau is making more progress towards an open nvidia driver Back to top |
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