'ati' video driver and older cards (no RadeonHD), a little question...

[Vincent Trouilliez]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:17:38 +0600
Faizan Kazi <faizan.s.kazi at gmail.com> wrote:

> all these terms confuse me sometimes... "ati binary driver" = "ati
> proprietary driver" = fglrx ??
> is that correct?

That's it :-)
It's confusing because 'ati' (all lower case) refers to teh free
driver, which can be confused with ATI (upper case) which designates
the manufacturer, whose driver, proprietary, is called "fglrx".
So the free driver is 'ati', and the 'ATI' driver is "fglrx", to sum
up ! ;-)
So the only way out is to pay great attention to the case of the
letters to make sure people don't confuse the two.

> also, i thought ati has now started using aiglx instead of fglrx/glx?

You are confused indeed ! ;-) "aiglx" and "glx" are Linux/Xorg
infrastructure pieces, "fglrx" is the (ATI) driver, so when you write
"fglrx/glx", you are comparing apples with carrotts, it does have any
sense ;-)
What you can compare is glx with aiglx, and the "fglrx" with the "ati"
driver. I have not tracked this topic for some years, but ISTR that
aiglx quickly became the favored method for compiz/effects, and that
both Nvidia and ATI have fairly quickly updated their drivers to
implement it.

Hope I have cleared up your confusion ? ;-)


--
Vince