ATI Customer Care Response...
 

I'm not sure if this belongs in Hardware of what (it kinda applies to both hardware and software so I'm gonna put it here)

I recently emailed ATI customer care about the general uselessness of their drivers, asking if any better ones were coming soon as I'm strongly considering an Nvidia-switch.

They had the following to say:


"Thank you for contacting ATI Customer Care.

ATI is constantly looking for ways to improve its products and services.
Feedback such as yours allows us to address the needs of our most valued assets
– our customers.

We currently offer Linux drivers that have been fully tested by our Linux
development team for the RADEON 8500 series and higher. These drivers can be downloaded by going to http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html. A HOW-TO that provides installation instructions for ATI's Linux driver can be found at http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/...owto-ati.html. For additional information, we've also published an FAQ located at
http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst/linux.html with answers to the most
commonly asked questions. If you have any feedback regarding the driver, feel free to submit it at http://apps.ati.com/linuxDfeedback/index.asp.

Currently, ATI Customer Care supports Linux on the FireGL line of products and is investigating the potential of supporting Linux on the RADEON line of
products. We appreciate your patience while we evaluate the possibilities and look forward to serving you in the future."





It was like a machine was talking to me. They say they have been fully tested when its obvious that almost nobody can get them to work properly (especially with this doom 3 debacle). I don't think we can expect anything better from them in the near or distant future, judging from this message.

well, that quite surely is a "machine" :) meaning that they have a ready template for the people like you who ask about linux drivers. they then send it, possibly adding a word or two to create an illusion that somebody actually wrote it. I doubt that nobody didn't really, at least only for you :)

big companies aren't interested in small users, and ATI isn't until the group of linux users grows bigger than that of windows users...until that day, we can only swear and hope that something works, or make it work ourselves. linux didn't come out-of-the-box easily, so I don't think we can expect it any more today. hard but true.

Though it might not seem that way, ATI's drivers are slowly improving. As far as customer care is concerned, I've yet to find a useful company when approached with questions of linux.

Recently rage3d had a chat with ATI on direction of the linux drivers, which shows some hope in the direction that they are going in:
http://www.rage3d.com/index.php?node...TIChats%2F&p=4