Linux 2.6.32 To Get R600 Kernel Mode Setting
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 9th Sep 2009 22:29 UTC, submitted by lemur2
Linux Open source 3D graphics drivers for ATI R600 garphics cards has been submitted to the kernel-next tree for possible inclusion in the Linux kernel 2.6.32. "David Airlie has pushed a horde of new code into his drm-next Git tree, which is what will get pulled into the Linux 2.6.32 kernel once the merge window is open. Most prominently, this new DRM code brings support for kernel mode-setting with R600 class hardware as well as 3D support."
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lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

You can talk about how great open specfications are all you want, but theres simply no alternative to NVidia on Linux if you want to run 3D applications without stability or performance problems, today - for the rest of 2009, and almost certainly for 2010. So ATI/AMD have (finally) released the specs. Gee, they've only been promising to do that since, i dunno, 2007? So now we're going to see horrible API churn, breakage and multi-level instability like with the Intel/Xorg/KMS work that has been going on recently. And i'd estimate a driver that supports full and stable support for all the features on the ATI R600 cards with average 3D performance optimisation will be here by, say, christmas 2011. Wake me when that happens. Until then, at least you have a choice of graphics card with Mac or Windows - under Linux, NVidia is the only currently usable option if you want reasonable 3D performance.


This is un-necessarily pessimistic.

Please note that Intel graphics driver for Linux are written by Intel. They are not written by the people who are intimately familiar with the Linux kernel or the xorg graphics stack.

That is not the case with these ATI drivers. They should be as integrated with the rest of the system, and as in step with it, as is any other in-kernel driver. This is a first for Linux graphics drivers, really, we have not really seen this before.

As for how it performs ... let's wait for the benchmarks, hey.

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