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.
Issue 234/2020
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
-
Linux to Get High Resolution Wheel Scrolling
Work on high resolution wheel scrolling for the Linux desktop is being completed.
-
KDE Developers Are Working on a TV Interface
The developers of the KDE desktop are hard at work to create a TV interface.
-
System76 Is Developing a New Keyboard
The company behind the incredibly powerful Thelio desktop is developing a new keyboard.
-
Zorin OS 15.2 Now Available
The latest release of Zorin OS offers numerous improvements.
-
Firefox to Get an Additional Sandbox Layer
Starting with Firefox 74, the open source web browser will include the new RLBox security feature.
-
Microsoft Defender ATP is Coming to Linux
Microsoft is ramping up its efforts to fight attackers across all platforms.
-
South Korean Government Considers Move to Linux Desktop
Seoul Mulls Migrating from Windows to Linux.
-
OpenSSH Now Supports FIDO/U2F Security Keys
SSH users can now add FIDO/U2F to the list of supported multi-factor authentication tools.
-
System76 Launches New AMD Threadripper Machine
System76 has added an AMD Threadripper option for their Thelio desktop lineup.
-
LibreOffice 6.4 Released
The unofficial office suite for the Linux platform has performance in mind for users.