Re: Do ATI HD cards have good working drivers for Linux (Debian Squeeze in particular)
On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:30:05 +0530, aditya menon wrote:
> I'm planning to get a new computer, and the one I really like is an
> All-in-one from Lenovo with *ATI HD 6450 *graphics. Does anyone have
> experience with that? I made a huge mistake last time by getting an
> nVidia Optimus card, it turned out that neither Linux nor many games
> work properly with it (nVidia's fault for not releasing proper drivers).
> I tried a lot of stuff including bumblebee etc (which doesn't work but
> I botched the uninstall and it still lives on my computer)
>
> I want to mitigate that risk this time... please help? Thanks!
I find the current graphics card market very unpleasant for linux users:
1/ Intel chipsets are usually well supported from the open source driver
but their hardware is (or "can be", depending on the user needings) a bit
lacking.
2/ nVidia has a good deal between their hardware (apart from their
"bambidubi" thingy, of course) and driver but you probably end up using
the closed source one which is very good but non free.
3/ ATI... well, ATI has (or should have by now) a good open source driver
(radeon) and also powerful VGA cards/chipsets but you'd first ensure the
chipset you are planning to buy is supported within the kernel version
you planning to install.
Let's see. ATI HD 6450 pertains to their "northern island (caicos)¹"
series and looking into the Xorg card matrix², it seems this chipset
is supported since kernel 2.6.38 (remember that Squeeze has an older
kernel 2.6.32 but there's still the backported one 3.2.x).
¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Northern_Islands_.28HD_6xxx.29_series
²http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature#Feature_Matrix_for_Free_Radeon_Drivers
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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