I got a new laptop a few weeks ago and decided to dual boot with Linux. The drivers for my graphics card on Linux right now are pretty piss poor (I’m using Radeon). I was running a simple openGL program on Windows with around 65 FPS. I ported it to and Linux it ran at 8 FPS. This laptop is a fairly new model; does anyone know how long it takes ATI to update their Linux drivers? Or, do they usually never update the drivers?

ATI's drivers are being worked on. Unfortunately most people agree that they still suck. Which card does your laptop have? It may be that you are using the open source DRI driver, which is in most cases much slower than ATI's binary driver, or you might be running without 3D acceleration entirely.

Oh well.. it wasn't too many years ago when ATI's windows drivers weren't much better than the linux ones today.

Your question got me thinking.

There are a few standardized ways of connecting stuff to a PC, through USB ports, or using a PC's internal slots (PCI-e, AGP, old PCI, etc)

If each piece of equipment had an unique market ID, then, upon connection, that uID would be transmited to the OS. If connected to the internet, the OS would call up a central server, and determine the URL to get the latest drivers from, for this PC's current configuration.

A practical example: I buy a radio tuner that works via USB. I hook it up (via USB of course). The OS doesnt recognize it, so it asks for it's uID, to which the radio tuner responds with a 128 bit key (or larger perhaps). The OS then asks a central server "where can I get the drivers for <uID>?", and proceeds with the download... the equipment could even transmit an URL for driver download, and then the OS wouldnt even need to go through a centralized server...

We are talking about 256 bytes here (uID + URL), so I think this is fairly doable, I think this is a decent concept...

Note: the unique ID is unique between equipment of the same model, it is not used to uniquely identify each single piece. In other words, your radio tuner and mine have the same uID.

Quote: Original post by Prozak
Your question got me thinking.

There are a few standardized ways of connecting stuff to a PC, through USB ports, or using a PC's internal slots (PCI-e, AGP, old PCI, etc)

If each piece of equipment had an unique market ID, then, upon connection, that uID would be transmited to the OS. If connected to the internet, the OS would call up a central server, and determine the URL to get the latest drivers from, for this PC's current configuration.

A practical example: I buy a radio tuner that works via USB. I hook it up (via USB of course). The OS doesnt recognize it, so it asks for it's uID, to which the radio tuner responds with a 128 bit key (or larger perhaps). The OS then asks a central server "where can I get the drivers for <uID>?", and proceeds with the download... the equipment could even transmit an URL for driver download, and then the OS wouldnt even need to go through a centralized server...

We are talking about 256 bytes here (uID + URL), so I think this is fairly doable, I think this is a decent concept...

Note: the unique ID is unique between equipment of the same model, it is not used to uniquely identify each single piece. In other words, your radio tuner and mine have the same uID.

This is all great as long as this feature can be turned off.

Why would you want to turn it off? It's a Wizard, it will assist you, but you can bypass it if you have the drivers laying around on the HD or CD...

And the uID isnt an attack on your privacy, it's just an unique identifier for that product and version, so that the correct drivers can be retrieved.

I know most if not all of us here are very at ease with their computers, in regards to repairs and reinstalations and all that, but there are many people that aren't so at ease, and this could really assist them.

I'm pretty sure there are unique IDs for hardware already. The problem is, who would control the central server?

To be honest I don't think finding drivers is the issue. It's making sure they exist, and making them good.

Yea, good points Kylotan. Well, I guess Microsoft could control the server, and charge a few cents for the service, to keep the server up and running. The ammount of data handled per device is very small, so I don't think the server would quickly get swamped.

...and... good drivers are always an issue.

Quote: Original post by 255
ATI's drivers are being worked on. Unfortunately most people agree that they still suck. Which card does your laptop have? It may be that you are using the open source DRI driver, which is in most cases much slower than ATI's binary driver, or you might be running without 3D acceleration entirely.

Oh well.. it wasn't too many years ago when ATI's windows drivers weren't much better than the linux ones today.

I have got an ATI mobility RADEON Xpress 200.

Quote: Original post by ManaStone
I have got an ATI mobility RADEON Xpress 200.

That sounds new so the open source driver probably doesn't support 3d on it. To check whether 3d acceleration is working, run the command glxinfo | grep direct . If it returns 'no' then you'll need to get ATI's binary drivers. How to install them depends on the distro. There are plenty of installation instructions and troubleshooting info available for every major distro through google/linux.

I've downloaded and used the ati-Driver installer, but all it did was create an install folder and I am apparently supposed to install the drivers from that. The only way I can think of to do that is to use the “ati-installer.sh” file in the folder. Whenever I try to run this in the konsole though I get the following message:

Unrecognized parameter '' to ati-installer.sh
This script supports the following arguments:
--help : print help messages
--get-supported : print out a list of supported packages
--buildpkg package : if supported, the package will be generated
--install : install the driver

I’ve tried using these parameters, but I have no idea how to do that and I get an unrecognized command message,