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Hi,

From Linux Today; AMD admits it has to work on improving Linux OpenCL supportMy personal assessment is that they are using the multiple Gnu/Linux as an excuse. Read the whole article to get the big picture.

Excuse me, but all distributions are based on the Linux kernel. Diversity in distribution is not related to driver development environment.

It is and isn't there is both X.org and XFree86 still both out ther and the cards need to work with both. I'll also lay odds that Robinson was only refering to their newest cards. AMD has ruined ATI imho and their handling of the product line, especially in Linux ahs been going downhill since the spring after the HD4xxx launch.

Beg you pardon, but nVidia IS better than ATI Radeon, and much better at that.
That is, if you concentrate on the positive side of it and omit the general complaint about "insufficient" support for linux. The latter I take as a given, so in my opinion, if there's something you're terribly missing in Linux, which IS supported in MS Win, then I see no other option than to run MS Win (sorry for having to admit it)...

The hw support is better in both nouveau and nVidia (proprietary) drivers.
I'm using an old laptop of 2004 makeup or so, 32Mb video memory. What can you expect to see on such piece of old junk with 500Mb of RAM?
Well, every modern distro (OpenSuSE and Ubuntu, for example) runs OK using nouveau. Sure, GNOME 3 runs in the fallback mode, which is fine for me. 2-monitor configuration is well supported, one being the laptop's 15" with poor colors, the other an LG 17". Whatever there is to squeeze out of 32Mb video, is all put to work and it works fine with nouveau. In this case nouveau shows itself as a far better option than the corresponding legacy nVidia driver, the latter being complete crap even compared to the good old (now dead) NV driver.

Now as AMD Catalyst drivers are concerned, they have caused me problems even on MS Win platform, where you would naturally expect little problems (cause every hw manufacturer loves M$, does he not??). I've never been that much impressed with AMD, time only proves my prejudices to be well-based.

Intel CPU & Graphics: in my experience these have been the best under linux. Given, too, Intel's effort in supporting Linux platform, I quite expect their CPU graphics core to have good support and performance in linux. Don't know in what state it is at present, as I'm quite satisfied so far running my 4 and 8 year-old hardware and don't yet upgrade.

Generally, though, right now I see no other option than to stick to nVidia for graphics cards. Though I must admit it, I don't use any advanced graphics functionality, so I'm not in a good position to give an expert opinion in this regard. But from what I can see at least a little bit beyond the surface, nVidia is OK and nouveau is fine and in active development.

Oh, and writing angry letters to these guys will hardly help much, I suspect.

From my experience, HP printer drivers have NOT improved of recently. So I'm using Samsung and am quite satisfied. True, that's B/W and I'm not aware what's going on in the realm of COLOR printing, but... if HP's B/W printer drivers perform poorly, why should I expect their color drivers to be any better?

Then nobody would use Linux anymore, since at one time there will always be missing something that is supported in Windows and not in Linux. The solution to this is not to run away to Microsoft, but to get that function in Linux. May take some time, but is a better solution.

I hated AMD's proprietary drivers. I always feared updates. Either the new Catalyst drivers would be incompatible with the latest Xorg, or my xorg.conf would be incompatible with the newest drivers. And even when everything was working, performance was poor.

I'm not gonna say nVidia's proprietary drivers are perfect, but far superior to AMD.

I maintain that the solution is in Linux and not in AMD, Nvidia and all those other big enterprises. Those magic programmers, those hacker geniuses have done wonders in linux with the little info they have had to work with.
I for one have a double boot linux (whatever flavor I'm with at the time) and some version of Windoze. I am on Windoze very rarely and only as a fallback for scanners, games, etc.
For music(planet CCRMA), graphics(Blender), writing, publishing, databases, servers, programming, trying out fun things (html canvas lately), it's linux all the way.
But we still have to nurture those magic talents out there.

I'm glad I recently switched from a completely AMD system (chipset, CPU, graphics) to an intel/Nvidia based system. Despite this being a downgrade the nouveau driver consistently outperforms radeon. ATI were never known for their OpenGL performance however.

hm, I rather meant some cases like this:
and then seeing all this (which view I completely share):
...I don't believe any Linux enthusiasts will even think of quitting Linux & turning back to Windows. I'm rather positive about it :).

I was rather in the mood to kill when I heard the news about AMD dropping support for HD 4000 cards. Now I know one company that won't be getting any of my money for my next build.

I'm running a 4890, and it definitely doesn't fall in the "legacy" hardware category. Sure it's not the most powerful card ever, but it serves my needs and any company that treats its customers like trash deserves no support, monetary or otherwise.

Of course it is not legacy. The HD4000 series is AMD's current solution for integrated video for their current top of the line FX CPUs. It is currently sold hardware, not legacy hardware.

This is not the first time AMD have done this, they also pulled support for the X series chips and older far too early... Back then the radeon driver was much less mature than it is today.

I've been an AMD user almost from the start. I used the early 486DX4 clones, the K5, K6/K6-2 CPUs and the Athlons from the XP up to the Athlon64 X2. I've used three different ATI cards after finally retiring my old voodoo5 in about 2003/4 (I like to make hardware last). I've always supported AMD, but will never buy AMD again.

Luckily I switched to Nvidia just in time as my HD 3xxx series chip will no longer be supported.

AMD's attitude seems to be that the radeon driver supports the r600/r700 well enough.

Same here, I started with AMD from the DX, and up to the Phenom II X4. Used Matrox for my GPUs until they stopped consumer cards, then switched to ATI. Since AMD bought ATI, seems like AMD isn't doing so well. My last 3 GPUs have been nVidia, and for the first time since my Pentium 233mhz, I bought an Intel i7. I'm done buying AMDs GPUs, thought I may still buy their CPUs in the future.

imho the best way to get companies like AMD to change their ways is to target their wallets by not buying AMD products until they start releasing drivers for Linux. Plain and simple, if enough people boycott their video cards, maybe they'll take notice in their bottom line.
just my :twocents: for what it's worth, that and $7 will get you a weekend pass on the Metra system.

As far as the desktop cards are concerned, AMD considers it legacy. They've moved support to a legacy driver with quarterly updates on Windows. On Linux, support is non-existent now.