There has, of late, been some small discussion of the "devs", in general, not supporting ATI Radeon.
I don't know, but if anyone remembers me back at Xandros and also at other distros, ....the point is that I have always tested a distro with both ATI cards and Nvidia cards.
The ONLY ATI cards that I had REAL "problems with" were the cards produced back in I don't know...around 2006...
In fact, the situation has become so "moot" that I have donated most of my cards, both Nvidia and ATI.
I'll repeat what I discovered back then and that I have stated quite often, and that is, that:
if one is having a problem with any kind of card, this does not apply to laptops,
simply remove the card and use the onboard video to get things going, make sure that you have the "additional drivers" installed, or, go to the hardware compatibility list and find the driver you need, see if it is in the repos, and download either from the HCL or the repos and install it.
That does not mean it will "run" then, it is merely installed.
Then....shut down, put the card back in and you may get a big huge kludzy screen that is a pain to navigate in but you can then go to the drivers and enable them.
HOWEVER, nowadays, in almost any "modern" distro, if you ALREADY have the driver installed, the distro "should" just see the card, and ask if you want the driver or not.
Here is the Linux Hardware Compatability List for ATI cards.
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon
The next BIG COMPLAINT IS........why have they not done a driver for MY card?
Are ALL of the cards on the HCL? ....well, no, this is Linux, done by volunteers, not a paid situation. I will not go, ad nauseum, into the problems with proprietary stuff and also....the lack of humanpower.
But I will provide ONE example.
I have two cards that are "both Nvidia"....
a) one is the original "Nvidia GEforce 8600 512 MB PCIe"...it runs fine, plug it into the slot and bing, bang, bam, it runs.
b) the other is a PNY OVERCLOCKED "Nvidia GEforce 8600 512 MB PCIe" ...... to get it to run, I USED TO.....have use the method above....but now, with a "modern" distro it just goes.
Are these two cards "the same card"....welll yes....and no....
When one purchases a "video card" even though two cards may seem to be equivalent they may not be....
PNY puts all sorts of enhancements on their cards, which are proprietary, to play games UNDER WINDOWS.....
There are thousands of "video cards" that have also been "tweaked" by various vendors....and that has produced tens of thousands of VARIATIONS of cards....
Are they the "same card"....yes.....and no....
Then one has the "situation" with the distro itself. Some distros have the people power to actually tweak SOME of the various drivers to get them to work with "out of the way" or "bleeding edge" cards, but they may not have the person power or the desire to tweak YOUR driver....
So, the simple answer to this is that if..... one does not find the EXACT driver then one might come back to the forum and just simply ask a question about which driver that folks might recommend.
Here is the overall HCL site:
http://www.linux-drivers.org/display.html
Again, If you have questions, just simply ask.
woodsmoke
I don't know, but if anyone remembers me back at Xandros and also at other distros, ....the point is that I have always tested a distro with both ATI cards and Nvidia cards.
The ONLY ATI cards that I had REAL "problems with" were the cards produced back in I don't know...around 2006...
In fact, the situation has become so "moot" that I have donated most of my cards, both Nvidia and ATI.
I'll repeat what I discovered back then and that I have stated quite often, and that is, that:
if one is having a problem with any kind of card, this does not apply to laptops,
simply remove the card and use the onboard video to get things going, make sure that you have the "additional drivers" installed, or, go to the hardware compatibility list and find the driver you need, see if it is in the repos, and download either from the HCL or the repos and install it.
That does not mean it will "run" then, it is merely installed.
Then....shut down, put the card back in and you may get a big huge kludzy screen that is a pain to navigate in but you can then go to the drivers and enable them.
HOWEVER, nowadays, in almost any "modern" distro, if you ALREADY have the driver installed, the distro "should" just see the card, and ask if you want the driver or not.
Here is the Linux Hardware Compatability List for ATI cards.
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon
The next BIG COMPLAINT IS........why have they not done a driver for MY card?
Are ALL of the cards on the HCL? ....well, no, this is Linux, done by volunteers, not a paid situation. I will not go, ad nauseum, into the problems with proprietary stuff and also....the lack of humanpower.
But I will provide ONE example.
I have two cards that are "both Nvidia"....
a) one is the original "Nvidia GEforce 8600 512 MB PCIe"...it runs fine, plug it into the slot and bing, bang, bam, it runs.
b) the other is a PNY OVERCLOCKED "Nvidia GEforce 8600 512 MB PCIe" ...... to get it to run, I USED TO.....have use the method above....but now, with a "modern" distro it just goes.
Are these two cards "the same card"....welll yes....and no....
When one purchases a "video card" even though two cards may seem to be equivalent they may not be....
PNY puts all sorts of enhancements on their cards, which are proprietary, to play games UNDER WINDOWS.....
There are thousands of "video cards" that have also been "tweaked" by various vendors....and that has produced tens of thousands of VARIATIONS of cards....
Are they the "same card"....yes.....and no....
Then one has the "situation" with the distro itself. Some distros have the people power to actually tweak SOME of the various drivers to get them to work with "out of the way" or "bleeding edge" cards, but they may not have the person power or the desire to tweak YOUR driver....
So, the simple answer to this is that if..... one does not find the EXACT driver then one might come back to the forum and just simply ask a question about which driver that folks might recommend.
Here is the overall HCL site:
http://www.linux-drivers.org/display.html
Again, If you have questions, just simply ask.
woodsmoke