I'll echo these sentiments. My next laptop will NOT have ATI.

I had acceleration working, then I compiled a custom 2.6 kernel, and it's giving me huge headaches trying to get it working again.

Remember kids, just say "no" to ATI

I've never got the ATI fglrx drivers working properly. If OpenGL acceleration works, then my video playback looks terrible. I hardly ever play games, so I stick with the stock radeon driver.

Update on the Ati issue in today's changelog:
and

My video card is an ATI RADEON 9600, 256mb.

And actually, in my slack 10.1 kernel 2.6.17.6,
it works fine, even then 3d acceleration, so I can run all the games
that I used to play when I had an nvidia.

I'm worried because I want slack 11 to support my ati too, just (or better) as 10.1 does today.

Maybe it will support your ATI card, maybe it won't. In Slackware10.0, I had DRI with my ATI 7500. When I did a clean install of 10.2, and went through the same steps to enable DRI, it didn't work anymore, the driver just wouldn't load correctly. Sure I can still use X, and have 24bit colors, but no DRI. Thats why last week when I ordered my new notebook, I made sure to have an NVidia chip instead. I never did like ATI, even in Windows, their drivers just plain sucked, and thats coming from somoene who doesn't even do a lot of gaming! The only reason I bought an ATI, was because my older graphics card died, and I just needed something to replace it.

[edit]

I wonder what version of ReiserFS Slackware11.0 will ship with....

I gave up on ATI cards a couple years ago after untold hours of frustration trying to get them to work correctly. Apparently things are better now than they used to be, but as a result of that maddening experience, nVidia has earned my business. Just my 2 cents, based on my own experience.

In any event, I am eagerly looking forward to the Slack v11.0 release. I'd again encourage all Slackers to support the project by purchasing the official release

Hi All,

OpenSuSe is xorg 6.9 I can get DRI no problem on that distribution with my ATI card; radeon 9600Xt. Well, once SuSe fixed the 10.1 GM by adding a patch for some 'lib' file, about 2 weeks after it was released it worked.

Regarding nvidia vs ATI:

Quite simply for me:

-any computer that I own that is dual boot w/windows would get ATI for me, I've just had fantastic luck w/ATI in windows and bad luck w/nvidia cards. Whenever I called ATI for support they were just fantastic for me on the windows side of things. I like that I can buy a card from the people who actually make the chipset. I've found that nvidia card makers tweak things, and at times the open driver inerface for windows drivers just dont work, and you never know if and when if ever it might bite u in the backside. Side note: Tho I really really like nvidia motherboards linux or windows, 'via' was a bad experience for me too.

- If linux only on the pc, then it's going to have nvidia for me. I'm about to purchase new nvidia video cards for my slackware boxes now that I'm really liking gnu/linux as my primary desktop. I was holding out to see if ATI would make any great strides in the past 6 months that I've used linux, and I don't see it. Now that Slackware is more 6.9xorg/nvidia headache free then my choice is clear for me for here on out. I really want to have translucency, 32 bit color, suspend/hibernate support that does not disable DRI, and "contrast" (not gamma only) support from the video card itself. From what I read, nvidia has support for the 7.1 of xorg which supposedly on paper is going to be really significant for gamers, and overall video experience. From what I read on blogs, not official ATI they don't support any of it. I just feel the ATI development is just too slow in gnu/linux. I will write them a letter telling them why I bought cards from elsewhere, it will probably be thrown out, but as a customer I want them to know why I am leaving ATI.

But just a generic question about slackware, as this is my distro of choice. Why is Pat using 6.9? and not the 7 series? Is it because the 6.9 is more 'tried and true' than 7 series of X-Org? Just wondering.

My guess is that he doesn't want to introduce any possible problems at this stage of the game. Stability is king!

As an aside, I installed Slackware-current today and noticed a 10% speed increase in the output of glxgears with the same hardware. Under Slackware 10.2 I could get 204 fullscreen FPS. Under -current (or 11.0-RC3!) I'm getting 226 fullscreen FPS. Awesome!

It's my understanding from the x.org site that 6.9 is the functional equivalent of 7.0. It's just that 6.9 uses the monolithic codebase that was present in versions <= 6.8 and not the modular codebase that is in 7.0. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, though.

I've heard this too but I haven't 100% accurate info on subject.

The difference between Xorg6.9 and Xorg7.0 is the build system: Xorg6.9 still uses that old and nasty imake, while Xorg7.x uses the newer and nasty ./configure, the code base is exactly the same.

"X11R7.0 is the first release of the complete modularized and autotooled source code base for the X Window System. X11R6.9, its companion release, with identical features, updates X11R6.8 from an identical code base but for its traditional imake build system features."

"[...] The 7.0 version is built from the same source code as the 6.9 so it contains the same additional hardware support, functional enhancements and bug fixes; however, it has been split into logical modules that can be developed, built and maintained separately, but still fit together coherently into the larger source code base as they have in the 6.9 tree."

I wonder which one is nastier LOL (que mamón se oye)

Cool, thanks for the clarification. I knew it was something along those lines.

But what about 7.1? AFAIK 7.1 has many new features and I don't think there is a 6.10, which is bad versioning anyway.

Ahh...
(from http://www.x.org/)
That sounds nice, hopefully 11.1 will have it?

maybe you will have it in -current after 11.0 being released
after releasing 11.0, Pat can tried to deliver most updated packages in -current without worrying it will brake many system as the next release will be in 6-9 months later