fglrx
| Developer(s) | Advanced Micro Devices |
|---|---|
| Stable release | Catalyst 10.4
/ April 28, 2010 |
| 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.
Criticism
 | This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. |
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.[1][2][3][4]
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.[5] As of August 2009, many issues still remain: 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. Accelerated desktop effects are only partly supported and lack features such as alpha blur. [8]. ATI's drivers for linux simply are inefficient and lacking when compared to its drivers for windows.
Alternatives
For ATI cards and the X.Org Server, a number of open source drivers are available.
See also
References
- ^ 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)
- ^ WineD3D developer statement concerning fglrx (2008-12)
- ^ fglrx bugs for "Xine"
- ^ fglrx bug 7 created 2005-01
- ^ [1]
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 Richard Stallman.