KDE4, Newer ATI (fglrx) drivers

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2009 at 02:48:40AM -0500, Tyler Aviss wrote:
> 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.

ATI isn't getting another chance from me until the day there is a
working open source 3D driver that really works.  Their drivers are
still far behind nvidia's in quality.  Their past driver history and my
personal experience with customer support from them is not something I
will overlook even if they managed to somehow make one working driver
release.

> 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.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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