fglrx

fglrx is the name of the Linux display driver used for ATI Radeon and FireGL family video adapters. It contains open source and closed source parts. For proper Direct Rendering Infrastructure support, the kernel source code for the currently running kernel must be installed and compiled. The driver can work without the kernel module, but DRI will not be available.

Versions

Versions exist for XFree86 and X.Org for both x86 and x86-64 systems. ATI releases a new version approximately every four weeks.

• 8.36.5 was released on 18th April 2007. It added support for the latest Linux Kernel, 2.6.20. Release Notes
• 8.35.5 was released on 28th March 2007. It introduced a Beta version of the 'AMD Catalyst Control Centre: Linux Edition' to replace the FireGL Control panel Release Notes
• 8.34.8 was released on 21st February 2007. It adds support for ATI Xpress™ 1250 IGP and fixes the XVideo Extension loading segfault on X1K cards and x86-64 server. Release Notes
• 8.33.6 was released on 10th January 2007. It adds support for X.Org 7.2 and Linux Kernel 2.6.19. Release Notes
• 8.32.5 was released on 13th December 2006. It adds support for the ATI Radeon® X1650 Support and X.Org 7.2 RC2. Release Notes
• 8.29.6 was released on 20th September 2006. It adds support for the latest Linux kernel, 2.6.18. Version 8.29.6 ends support for Radeon R200 based cards (i.e., the series of Radeon 8500 through 9250). Release Notes
• 8.28.8 was released on 18th August 2006. It adds support for ATI Radeon Xpress 1200, 1250 and 1300 models and allows IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads to switch the active display devices using the Fn+F7 hotkey. ATI now publish a unified installer which detects the host architecture (x86 or amd64) and installs the appropriate packages. The driver now remembers which display devices were activated across restarts, rather than unilaterally enabling all attached displays. Some problems with XVideo have been identified with this release. For more information see the release notes
• 8.27.10, was released on 27th July 2006 and adds support for X.Org 7.1 as well as Fedora Core. Issues relating to OpenGL with Java2D and launching XGL on display :0 have been fixed. However, TV Out is still unsupported on Radeon X1x00 cards and the OpenGL issues with Radeon 9000 appear to be unresolved.
• 8.26.18, released 26th June 2006, is mostly concerned with minor bug fixes. However, it does include an events daemon which allows hotplugging of Digital Flat Panels and thermal throttling of the GPU through daemon events to prevent overheating.
• 8.25.18 was released on 24th May 2006. It includes support for FireGL V7350, V7300, V7200, V5200, V3400, V3350 & V2200 and enables DPMS support by default. X.Org 7.0 is now supported by the installer. At least eleven issues have been resolved with this release.
• 8.24.8 was released on 18th April 2006 and includes support for X.Org 7.0 and kernel 2.6.16. According to the release notes the driver now supports the Radeon X1300/X1600/X1800/X1900 (including Mobility versions of these) as well as adding accelerated video support on Avivo cards.

Alternatives

Most cards will work, without acceleration and with reduced display resolution, using the vesa driver. The open source radeon, r128 and atimisc drivers (available in the xserver-xorg-video-ati package in Debian) provide 3D acceleration.

See also

• Unoffical ATI Linux Wiki
• Pre-packaged drivers for RPM-managed distributions
• Linux Driver and Software page in ATI knowledge base
• The Fglrx page on the Thinkpad wiki
• Debian package pre-release page

• fglrx options use in X configuration files (x*.conf). This is a manpage created from public records and is available here via cvs.