ATI Radeon 9700 and Red Hat Linux, a bad mix?

[Zap]

Hey all,
with the news of UT2003 having client-side linux support, and myself already with my Radeon 9700 on the way, i was wondering if anybody has heard of release of Linux drivers for this awesome card? I'm just looking for standard drivers for it to run as of right now.does anybody know anyone who is developing or has drivers that can operate the 9700 in Red Hat Linux 7.3 ?

 

[Pete]

Given ATi's past track record, I wouldn't count on 3D acceleration for a while. Maybe the Weather Channel will expand its effort to the 9700 (if they're still funding open-source 8500 Linux drivers).

You can check here for a little more info: Radeon 9700 Linux support anytime?

 

[Zap]

hmm... at least that gives me insight as to the idea there are others out there with my problem... Like him, i want to dual boot to linux and Windows 2000. If Linux would even recognize it as just being a standard VGA card, that would help, as all i want to do is work with linux as a server on my main machine, but not have it look to shitty...

 

[tb]

not too bad

Hi!

The offical linux drivers are 1.4.3. I've had the opportunity to test the latest beta linux driver version 2.0.16 (from 17.9.2002) - and they have support for R200, RV250 and R300, R300-4P. So I think, it doesn't take too long, until ATi will release these drivers for the public. RtCW runs fine, but UT2003 crashes, because of some not fully implemented ATi OGL extensions. They should be ready, when UT2003 ships.

Regards,
Thomas

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Currently ATI's binary linux drivers don't support s3tc (for whatever reason), which is why the UT2003 demo doesn't work. Similarly, the opensource drivers don't have S3TC as it's patented by S3. Supposedly they are working on trying to get VIA to give them permission to implement it in the opensource DRI drivers, though I tend to wonder if that will happen or not.

Anyway, I'm guess ATI will get it's binary drivers working decently, probably using the same tricks as nvidia with theirs (using the windows drivers in a wrapper of sorts). Especially now that ATIs drivers have matured some they'll probably have a bit more time/resources to throw at projects like getting the linux drivers working well.

Nite_Hawk