ATI graphics support?

[Vitorio Okio]

"Mihamina Rakotomandimby (R12y)" 
<mihamina.rakotomandimby at etu.univ-orleans.fr> wrote in message 
news:485EBD70.7080803 at etu.univ-orleans.fr...
> Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
>>> I heard some time ago that ATI would free their drivers.
>>> How is it going on?
>>> How is the current ATI support in Xorg?
>>> Is it now better to choose an ATI device over an nVidia one if 
>>> running
>>> ubuntu 8.04 and the future releases?
>> The development of the ATI driver is going very slowly, work on 3D, 
>> 2D
>> and video acceleration only started a few weeks ago.
>> http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd
>> So the short answer: the ATI might be ready/mature in a year if 
>> they
>> keep working hard and steadily, but right now Nvidia is still the 
>> only
>> practical/realistic choice for "gaming" add-on 3D cards.
>
> What about stability? My first goal would be to have a stable enough
> system with those drivers. I dont currently care about the "desktop
> effects".
> One of the problems with nvidia is when wanting to use a Wen kernel: 
> not
> possible without hack.
> My brother, the gamer, will still switch to Windows to play his 
> games. I
> just want a cool system. Why insisting on ATI? Because of the 
> freedom of
> the specs.

On my desktop I have ATI Radeon 9550 card and I'm using open source 
driver with it.  Though I do not play any games.  But for general use, 
some graphics, occasional video playing and some Compiz effects (I do 
not bother to use a lot of them either) it works just fine.

In fact for me the open source driver works much better then a 
restricted one ("fglrx").  I tried "fglrx" but it kept freezing my 
system whenever I wanted to log off or to switch a user.

There is a bug reported about this, and a lot of people experience 
this problem with "fglrx".  Though it looks that the problem is do to 
some specific hardware configurations: like specific motherboard/ATI 
card combination and such.  This is not clear up to date.

So, I removed "fglrx" and I do not have any problems with the open 
source driver.  It is very stable.  But keep in mind that to enable 
some advanced features like 3d, etc. you'll still probably have to 
tweak it.  Though I found it much easier to do than with "fglrx".

On my laptop I have NVIDIA card and I use a restricted driver with it 
(still had to tweak it to some point).  With the way I use both my 
laptop and desktop (see above) I've not noticed any difference in 
drivers behavior and stability.

Keep in mind that the open source driver does has a better support 
from both the project guys and from the community.  At least this is 
what I've found so far.

So, the conclusion is as usual: the final decision is very much 
depends of what are your requirements, what are your personal 
preferences, etc., etc.

IMHO, if you want to get the most of your graphic card you'll have to 
spend quite a bit of time whatever your card is, whether it is NVIDIA 
or ATI.

I personally found the open source ATI driver quite mature for my use.