KDE4, Newer ATI (fglrx) drivers

[Tyler Aviss]

Earlier on I had shared my dismay at how KDE4 ran on my system.
Since switching to the beta of 4.2, I've noticed many of the small
annoyances have been fixed up (there are some *new* issues as well,
but I'm going to pin those on the fact things being beta).

However, up until recently, graphics on my laptop's ATI card have
still been somewhat of annoyance, especially when trying to run
anything with video on an accelerated desktop. It seems that in the
last few days ATI's release some newer drivers though (in addition to
many other "friendly" steps like releasing open hardware specs etc).
The 9.1 fglrx driver performs MUCH better than the previous ones, and
a lot of the weird graphical glitches on Gnome/KDE have now vanished
(gnome was also previously somewhat "flickery" with FMV)

I remember being very leery of purchasing a machine with an ATI
graphics chipset, but having seen some improvements since the AMD
buyout I gave it a shot. I must say that thus far I've been extremely
impressed with ATI's responsiveness in updating drivers, the overall
improvements in performance/functionality with each release, and the
way they seem to be working towards working more with the community in
general. In many cases I've even had more luck with the ATI installed
than the Nvidia one.

 For those who - like myself - had been rather anti-ATI in the past,
you may want to give them chance again.


Anyhow, just my 2c, but I thought I'd share in case anyone's
considering a new rig and debating the graphics chipset, or had been
having issues with the old 8.x or previous drivers.

- TJA
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