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Re: amd64 and video card experiences?


On Aug 21, 2004, at 7:28 PM, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:


On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 12:01:39AM +0100, Hugo Mills wrote:


   I have an ATi Radeon 9600 Pro. It works (in the sense that I can
get X running acceptably). 2D works; 3D is unsupported. There are no
64-bit capable drivers for the 3D parts of the card for linux yet.
ATi are being completely uncommunicative on the subject, and I'm
starting to regret buying the card, after having been a happy ATi
customer for many years.


 ATI treats the Linux community like crap (which is very sad, because
 the Linux community used to be very supportive of ATI).  Some months
ago (March maybe) someone from ATI, which I'm not allowed to name, said a Linux driver for Opteron systems was under development, and I was led 
 to understand that it would be unwise to hold your breath waiting for
 it to be available.  This driver would be of course binary-only.
ATI does treat us like crap. Their binaries drivers have gotten worse with each of the previous ten or so revisions. I recommend avoiding them. 


 So, if you want current-generation hardware you have no choice but
 NVIDIA, which is available now and works.  They provide binary-only
 drivers, but if you ask the right people and do it nicely[0], you can
 get a reaction and with a bit of luck, a reply.  NVIDIA does staff
 and/or fund a certain number of people for doing Linux development.
 They have been hit repeatedly with a cluebat and they are getting
 better at it.
I recently shoved an Asus V9520 (a GeForce 5200 card) into an Athlon 64 machine running Debian. As far as I can tell, after scouring the internet for related information, this is pretty nearly the only card you can get with working dual DVI outputs on 64-bit Linux. After struggling with non-working ATI dual digital outputs for years, I am so happy to have this working (finally).
I use NVidia's revision 6111 drivers for amd64, but they don't install properly. They are able to delete the standard GL libraries but they can't install the NVidia-supplied copy. Oh well, I don't care for 3D anyway.
I do have to wonder why they continue to support Red Hat so strongly. Of all the Linux users I know, and especially the developers, not a single person uses Red Hat Linux on a desktop machine. Yet, NVidia and most other 3rd-party software vendors continue to support Red Hat exclusively. I wonder when they will get a clue in this department? 

-jwb
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