fglrx
| Developer(s) | Advanced Micro Devices |
|---|---|
| Stable release | Catalyst 8.12
/ December 10, 2008 |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Device driver |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | ati.amd.com |
fglrx is the name of the Linux display driver used for ATI Radeon and ATI FireGL family video adapters and stands for "FireGL and Radeon for X". It contains free open source as well as proprietary and closed source parts. For proper Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) 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 month.
| Version and Release Notes | Release Date | Brief Change Log |
| Catalyst 8.12 | 10 December, 2008 | "Early Look" support for Ubuntu 8.10. Catalyst Control Center now shows bus and memory bandwidth. ATI Stream Computing support. Support for hybrid CrossFire ("SurroundView"). |
| Catalyst 8.11 | 12 November, 2008 | Support for RHEL 4.7. Xorg 7.4 (Xserver 1.5) support. Display scaling for standard TV timings. Catalyst Control Center now indicates when application is running in CrossFireX mode. |
| Catalyst 8.10 | 15 October, 2008 | Several bugfixes. |
| Catalyst 8.9 | 17 September, 2008 | Support for Red Flag DT6SP1, OpenSUSE 11. |
| Catalyst 8.8 | 20 August, 2008 | Support for CrossFireX, adaptive antialiasing, overclocking, MultiView. |
| Catalyst 8.7 | 21 July, 2008 | Support for Ubuntu 8.04 xorg 7.3 (not 8.10 with xorg 7.4), OpenSUSE 11, Red Flag DT 7.0. |
| Catalyst 8.6 | 18 June, 2008 | UYVY and YUY2 pixel format support for interleaved stream video playback. Radeon HD 4850/4870 support (not listed in release notes due to timing of product introduction). |
| Catalyst 8.5 | 21 May, 2008 | Catalyst A.I., improved 2D performance, DKMS support in installer, Linux 2.6.25 kernel support. |
| Catalyst 8.4 | 16 April, 2008 | "Early look" support for Ubuntu 8.04 ("Hardy Heron"). XVideo extension and VESA frambuffer black screen bug fixes. Packaging script updates. |
| Catalyst 8.3 | 5 March, 2008 | X-Video support for the Xpress 1200. Blocky video and diagonal tearing no longer occurs when using X-Video. Fixes problems with screen resolutions not integer multiples of 64 pixels. Image brightness issues resolved. |
| Catalyst 8.2 | 13 February, 2008 | Changing screen resolution in a horizontal or vertical desktop setup without DDC no longer crashes, the Xserver no longer freezes on shutdown if atieventsd is running, the first OpenGL application run after starting a session on Xserver version 1.4 no longer hangs. |
| Catalyst 8.1 | 18 January, 2008 | Repaired screen corruption after a longer time period, custom mode lines in xorg.conf will no longer be ignored by the fglrx driver, suspending to RAM or DISK on kernel version 2.6.23 or later no longer fails. |
| Catalyst 7.12 | 20 December, 2007 | Add FireGL support. OpenGL memory leak fixed. |
| Catalyst 7.11 | 21 November, 2007 | early-look support for new operating systems. |
| 8.42.3 | 23 October, 2007 | AIGLX support, Xserver 1.4 support. |
| 8.41.7 | 12 September, 2007 | HD 2xxx (R600) and new driver codebase with big performance improvements.[1] |
| 8.40.4 | 13 August, 2007 | TV Out Functionality and Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition features are introduced. |
| 8.39.4 | 23 July, 2007 | The kernel module build no longer fails on kernel version 2.6.22. |
| 8.38.7 | 28 June, 2007 | Hotfix for segmentation fault when using aticonfig --initial |
| 8.38.6 | 25 June, 2007 | support for RHEL5 and fixes the moving a video window between two monitors in a big desktop configuration and playing multiple videos at the same time with textured video issues. |
| 8.37.6 | 31 May, 2007 | the Catalyst Control Center version 1.0 and resolved few issues. |
| 8.36.5 | 18 April, 2007 | support for the latest Linux Kernel, 2.6.20. |
| 8.35.5 | 28 March, 2007 | Beta version of the 'AMD Catalyst Control Centre: Linux Edition' to replace the FireGL Control panel |
| 8.34.8 | 21 February, 2007 | support for ATI Xpress 1250 IGP and fixes the XVideo Extension loading segfault on X1K cards and x86-64 server. |
| 8.33.6 | 10 January, 2007 | support for X.Org 7.2 and Linux Kernel 2.6.19. |
| 8.32.5 | 13 December, 2006 | support for the ATI Radeon X1650 Support and X.Org 7.2 RC2. |
| 8.31.5 | 15 November, 2006 | |
| 8.30.3 | 31 October, 2006 | |
| 8.29.6 | 20 September, 2006 | 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). |
| 8.28.8 | 18 August, 2006 | 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 |
| 8.27.10 | 27 July, 2006 | 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 | 26 June, 2006 | 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 | 24 May, 2006 | 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 | 18 April, 2006 | support for X.Org 7.0 and kernel 2.6.16. According to 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. |
Criticism
AMD/ATI Linux support has been heavily criticized over the last number of years. From stability and performance issues as well as lack of options, AMD/ATI proprietary drivers have not been received well[2][3][4][5]. Video playback occasionally has quality and stability problems, especially in Xine[6]. 2D benchmarks show that ATI cards using these drivers are two orders of magnitude slower than the competing NVIDIA cards in basic tasks such as text rendering[7], making even graphic consoles feel sluggish. Wine gaming support through fglrx is possible for old games only[8]. The state of the driver has improved over time with ATI trying to work in concert with application developers recently, but this is expected to be a slow process[9].
Alternatives
For ATI cards and the X.Org Server, a number of open source drivers is available.
See also
References
- ^ Phoronix AMD 8.41 Display Driver Preview
- ^ AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review on Phoronix. Mostly negative forum response.
- ^ Insight Into AMD's Linux Driver Development (2007)
- ^ The State of ATI Drivers on GNU/Linux (2006)
- ^ A Look at the State of ATI Linux Drivers (2005)
- ^ fglrx bugs for "Xine"
- ^ fglrx bug 7 created 2005-01
- ^ Wine FAQ entry (2008-12)
- ^ WineD3D developer statement concerning fglrx (2008-12)
External links
- Unofficial Linux ATI Wiki
- The Fglrx page on the Thinkpad wiki
- fglrx options use in X configuration files (x*.conf). This is a manpage created from public records and is available here via cvs.
- R520 Card specifications released to public by AMD.
- Protest in 2006 against ATI nearly led to the arrest of RMS.