HD2600 = R600 [LWN.net]

HD2600 = R600

Posted Jun 24, 2008 19:40 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: HD2600 = R600 by tialaramex
Parent article: Linux Graphics, a Tale of Three Drivers

It felt like a year, but maybe I actually bought it last autumn, not last summer. Actually I
bought it for gaming purposes too. Anyway, it's a little frustrating - I've bought ATI instead
of Nvidia, because they've opened their specifications, but I end up using Windows at home (at
least for a while). It's just sad that a couple of years ago my desktop could hibernate fine
(with an Nvidia video card and maybe a 2.4.x kernel?), nowadays hibernate doesn't work at all
on my desktop. It just doesn't look like that the "year of the linux desktop" is coming
anytime soon :-(

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HD2600 = R600

Posted Jun 24, 2008 19:48 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

There's a definite tradeoff here.  Buying an nVidia and using their binary 
drivers would (probably) make things work well now, while an ATI with free 
drivers might have problems now.  But with the ATI card the driver is 
likely to only get better with time, while with the nVidia card the driver 
is likely to get harder to make work.

So it should be interesting to see how things are with the same card 
running next year's software.  Or even this fall's software.

HD2600 = R600

Posted Jun 26, 2008 12:38 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

By the way, is there relatively pain-free method to test the latest and greatest drivers (and
X)? Doing a "dist-upgrade" can lead to nasty non-graphics related surprises, a live CD with
some applications (e.g. googleearth) would be more useful for this purpose.

HD2600 = R600

Posted Jun 26, 2008 12:48 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

My colleagues and I use the most recent Ubuntu Live CD for that purpose.  But those 
only come out every six months.  If I want to get more fine-grained, there are places I 
can get .deb packages of the most recent driver versions for certain cards; installing 
those while retaining backups up previous known-working versions works for me.