Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: ati-driver 8.16.20 and kernel 2.6.12

[Benjamin Grauer]

thanks ducan, and i share your thoughts. But since i made the awefully 
bad decission to buy an ati - x800 card, i can not simply switch to 
nvidia... (money and stuff :()
using the oo-drivers is to slow for me, because otherwise i would not 
buy a x800 :)
so there i am...
and now, i use the driver "ati" and get a slower rates, than my laptop 
with 600MHz :/
for the time being i will be ok with using this, but when the time 
comes, and i want to play some doom again (or something like this) i 
think about booting my rotten windows-box :( and thats what really makes 
me sad...


BUT: gentoo is greate, and i found this out *again* when i saw, that the 
8.16.20 drivers were actually around, but just masked :)
thanks gentoo :)
-> still it did not solve my problem... the screens still get black, and 
my machine hangs..

Duncan wrote:

>Benjamin Grauer posted <4314E255.3040405@××××××××××××.ch>, excerpted
>below,  on Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:48:53 +0200:
>
>
>
>>i read on the absolutely lousy ati-page, that the new driver 8.16.20 now
>>finally supports kernel2.6.12, but the package is not in portage...
>>
>>
>
>Note that I'm not a developer, so won't address the question of when the
>new driver might be in portage or why it isn't yet there.  This post
>addresses your other options.
>
>One option would be to either switch out from the
>--generally-agreed-lousy-supported-- ATI closed source drivers, to the
>open source driver that comes with X, or, if you don't like that idea, to
>switch out your video card to an NVidia, which while the open drives
>aren't as quite as good as  ATI's open drivers, their closed source
>drivers are all around generally considered far better supported than
>ATI's.
>
><strong-personal-opinion>
>
>Personally, I refuse to run what I call "slaveryware", that is, drivers
>that are closed source and therefore not "freedomware".  However, I accept
>that some gamers and the like are willing to live with closed source
>drivers, preferring to live with the closed source aspect, in ordered to
>get the hardware accelerated 3D frame-rates.  While I consider such a
>choice the equivalent of selling one's soul to the devil -- supporting a
>company that refuses to open up their sources for /proper/ open source
>support, that's a personal opinion that I realize others don't necessarily
>share, and to force my opinion on others would be more rights violating
>than the companies refusing to support open source.
>
></strong-personal-opinion>
>
>Anyway, if one /is/ going to go the closed source route anyway, almost
>everybody agrees NVidia offers far better closed source driver support
>than ATI, so that's the way to go, again, if you /must/ choose to run
>closed source drivers.  (FWIW, I run ATI Radeon 9200s here, since that's
>the latest ATI hardware with full specs available, and therefore decent
>open source accelerated 3D support.)
>
>Of course, another viable option would be returning to a kernel <2.6.12.
>
>Finally, since you say the new closed source drivers aren't in portage
>yet, you have the option of installing them using ATI's install
>procedure, and using package.provided to tell portage they are installed,
>if anything else in portage requires them.
>
>
>

-- 
gentoo-desktop@g.o mailing list