AMD's Radeon 7000 GPU Gets Improved Open Source Drivers With 2D acceleration

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]jonjonjon[/nom]its because they don't install anything that's not open source on their computer. which begs the question what open source games do they actually play? who cares about linux? amd should focus on fixing their horrible drivers for 99% of their customers that don't use linux.[/citation]

AMD is focusing on their Windows drivers far more than Linux and they aren't horrible. For single GPUs, they've been as good as those from Nvidia since Catalyst 12.7 and for multiple GPUs, they've been about as good as Nvidia since one of the more recent releases and very close to Nvidia since 12.7 as well.

Furthermore, people not liking closed source drivers has little to nothing to do with the purpose of the open source drivers. The open source drivers are a work in progress that will probably not have their work stopped anywhere near as soon as the proprietary dirvers. I can bet on them being better than proprietary by that time anyway.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]wdmfiber[/nom]Code breaking, brute force attacks (exhaustive key search). You run Linux and want the most powerful Radeon GPU, so preferably the 7000 series (ideally several 7970's in crossfire).[/citation]

Compute work doesn't use Crossfire. That's why you can have more than four GPUs for such systems.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]11796pcs[/nom]AMD does not have to endorse any drivers created by a third-party team they aid. I'm sure they could include a disclaimer. Using the proper drivers it's probably impossible to burn up a card and therefore AMD could dispel any liability by saying that the consumer was using unofficial drivers.[/citation]

Nvidia had a WHQL driver release that burned cards in a time where they supposedly had the best drivers, so I wouldn't say impossible.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]starcraftmazter[/nom]Because proprietary is the opposite of free. Wouldn't expect an apple user to understand.[/citation]

Proprietary is not the opposite of free, at least not in relation to free of charge. Proprietary simply means that it is not owned by you just because you get to use it with or without a cost required of you to use it. The proprietary drivers are just as free of charge as the open source drivers are.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Pherule[/nom]First Steam on Linux, now this?2012 - 2020, the decade Windows dies?Let's hope.[/citation]

I don't think getting features in open soruce drivers for Linux that the proprietary drivers have had for a while now and Windws has had even longer (especially considering what those features are) are really a threat to Windows like Steam may be. Even Steam is unlikely to be anything more than a thorn in MS. Annoying, but not really dangerous by itself.

 

[redeye]

Amd's linux drivers are a nightmare to install under linux...(the prop drivers that is)

NVIDIA's are easier in "some ways" than the windows driver... just (in terminal)crtl-alt-1, login in, sudo service lightdm stop...
chmod 775 the driver download, ./ the driver download, answer questions BINGO!...