ATi LinuX Driver

[metallinikil]

What functions does the Radeon 8500 driver(drom ATI) for linux miss? I have heard S3TC is not implemented. Will this change in the future? Id really like to play UT2003 in Linux.

 

[antlers]

ATI takes a very different approach with their Linux drivers than nVidia. ATI provides their chip specs to driver developers who actually do the work of developing the drivers, resulting in nicely Open Source drivers that don't have complete functionality, while nVidia develops their own Linux drivers which provide a lot of functionality but are closed source.

I think there are features of their chips that ATI can't or won't make public for intellectual property reasons. I think S3TC support might fall in this category, because S3 required a separate license for non-DirectX implementations.

 

[vogel]

As far as I've been told future ATI Linux drivers will expose the GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc extension. In the mean time you could try the commercial XiG drivers.

-- Daniel, Epic Games Inc.

What functions does the Radeon 8500 driver(drom ATI) for linux miss? I have heard S3TC is not implemented. Will this change in the future? Id really like to play UT2003 in Linux.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

ATI actually does both. There are DRI based opensource ATI drivers, and it appears that there are now binary only closed source drivers from ATI as well. the DRI drivers currently do not support S3TC, and can't until VIA agrees to let them use it for free. The commercial drivers probably could have it since ATI should have a license to provide it. I believe ATI has said their future drivers should have it.

Then there is also groups like XIG, but I've never had much experience with them.

Nite_Hawk

 

[metallinikil]

Do you think they meant for they 9x00 series or also for the 8500s?