Open and Closed Source: New Drivers by ATI and Nvidia
AMD has put its money where its mouth is, and published the first free Linux drivers for its ATI R500 and R600 graphics cards in collaboration with Novell. After a lengthy break, Nvidia has also released a new version of its proprietary graphics driver.
The developers describe the quality of the first free ATI driver as "Alpha". The next steps on the roadmap include support for RandR 1.2, video overlay, 2D graphics acceleration and adding more hardware. The drivers are available as prebuilt installation package for Fedora, Mandriva and various Suse distributions. Users with other GNU/Linux systems can download the driver source code from the Git archive and build a driver themselves.
Things have also been happening down at Nvidia's HQ. The vendor has just released an updated version of its closed source driver which includes support for Quadro graphics chips and Geforce 8 cards. Add a larger number of bugfixes and improved support for the current X.org version 7.3 and kernel 2.6.23. Other changes and enhancements are available from the vendor's website. Drivers for Linux and Solaris are available for downloading now. Users with FreeBSD will have to wait, though.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
There's a New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle is a Linux AI assistant that can work with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.