This morning I came across a blog entry by Jonathan Steffan, who is working on new Fedora XGL packages. In this blog post he expresses disappointment in owning ATI hardware and bashes the binary blob for the lack of AIGLX support.

While I share the same views with him in that having AIGLX support is needed and is great for the desktop eye candy, he urges his readers to contact ATI using the "ATI Linux Driver Feedback" form. This is the wrong approach. ATI will not immediately improve their support due to users flaming on forums or from people sending evil notes through their feedback form. If you want action, contact ATI/AMD's OEMs, AIBs, and ODMs. While it's best to contact your graphics card or computer manufacturer, contacting other large partners such as ASUSTek, Sapphire Technology, and Dell can go a very long way. You must contact these companies, and if enough people do the same, these companies (the real and only customers of ATI hardware) should begin requesting greater Linux support from AMD. I know for a fact that going through these channels will cause a much greater impact.

To get you guys (and gals) started, here are some links to the contact pages for a few influential players: ASUS, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Tul / Power Color, HIS Tech, and Sapphire. There are also lists of desktop and laptop and graphics card companies that are ATI certified. I would encourage you all to create your own messages, but below is a sample message I quickly threw together if it helps get you started.

Subject: Product Feedback

To whom it may concern,

I recently purchased one of your [graphics cards || notebooks || desktops] that had contained an ATI GPU. While I realize your products are catered toward Microsoft Windows users as they are your largest consumer base, I wish to use this product with Linux. I had used the [your model number for their product] with the ATI Linux drivers, and while they have improved a great deal recently, I still feel there is much room for improvement. The drivers in their current form run much slower under Linux than Windows, lack support for AIGLX (a visual desktop feature), and other features found within the Windows Catalyst drivers but not Linux.

I do realize you may not officially support Linux and that you have limited control over the development of these drivers, but I would kindly ask that you forward this comment to AMD and that you ask them to channel additional resources to the development of these drivers. In good time you should make Linux support from AMD a requirement. Another step that I would hope to see is including the ATI Linux display drivers on your support/driver CD. As the adoption of Linux on desktops continues to increase, I hope you are able to jointly improve your Linux presence with ATI/AMD.

[your name]

The above sample was constructed quite quickly, but I hope you're able to get the idea. You're free to list specific items you would like to see improved with the drivers (such as the gaming performance, the depleted fireglcontrolpanel, and lack of AIGLX support), but unless this call for action is overwhelmingly successful the specifics of your request may not make much difference.

I know that ASUS does include some Linux drivers for their motherboards in the United States (props to them), but in the United States I have not seen anyone bundle the fglrx display drivers. This is another area where OEM/ODM/AIBs can improve. I know for certain that at least one major OEM would like to see improved Linux support but is afraid that the Windows support would then be at risk.

By this call to action I am not saying that the fglrx drivers are evil or bad (I have already expressed some of my beliefs here and elsewhere), but the fact remains there is room for improvement and there will always be room for improvement. You can apply these same premises to NVIDIA's customers.

Jonathan also mentioned in his blog, "Just because ATi doesn't want to support their customers does not mean we should not put forth the effort to provide the best Fedora/FOSS experience to all users, no matter what their hardware." ATI's actual customers are the OEM/ODM/AIB companies and not the direct end-user. The Catalyst development teams are forced to listen to the requests of their customers, unless you're buying very large quantities of ATI components yourself. You remember last year when Lenovo began supporting SuSE Linux on the T60 with the FireGL GPU? Around that time ATI introduced new features such as the dynamic display management options and hot-key switching through the events daemon. Also introduced around that time was logo watermarking support (for use by OEMs), another coincidence? None of this was a coincidence.

If you've received feedback after contacting any ATI/AMD customers, please share your results in the comments section. Likewise, you're welcome to ask any other questions in the comments area.

mail sent to gigabyte.

i had bad experience recently with such initiatives - i tried joining similar initiative to make NeroDigital (makers of Nero burning software) revert their GPL-incompatible faad2 licence to the original state (that's why most distributions stick to faad-2.0, while there is 2.5 available). unfortunately we failed :/

more details here :
http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2006/12/20/lets-hear-the-communitys-voice-the-faad-2-5-licensing-issue

hope this initiative does not share the same fate.

Sorry, but I find such efforts are a waste of time. Letters and emails can be ignored. (and often never reach the right people).

You're better off helping open driver projects in some way. (help test, run their analysis tools, etc).

There is nothing more effective than sending a loud message to the manufacturer: "If you don't support us, that's fine. We'll support ourselves."

NO. AMD is a Company. Big company. The only argument they will notice are money. So. Don't buy anything labeled "AMD/ATI" and we will see. If Intel changed his point of view and now support opensource (GPU, CPU, chipsets), there's no reason tu buy AMD (lack of support for chipsets, GPU). Until AMD change his mind, our money are the only tool to press on the AMD. And it's obvious, it's a powerfull tool.

Not a word about free drivers. Not even in your "(I have already expressed some of my beliefs here and elsewhere)" ( http://www.michaellarabel.com/index.php?k=blog&i=27 ) article. Who cares about improved blobs? Free drivers is what we need and for that we need specifications of the hardware.

Even though ATi's fglrx drivers do not support the COMPOSITE extension to X.Org (nor AIGLX), there ARE other drivers. Yes, boys and girls, there IS an open-source ATi driver project, and they have made quite a lot of improvements in the past year or so. Today I am running Beryl on X.Org with the AIGLX and COMPOSITE extensions, as they are supported by the free drivers.

Though it would be "nice" for ATi/AMD to update their proprietary drivers for Linux to some sort of parity with their Windows/Catalyst drivers, what would REALLY help is if ATi/AMD just cooperated with the open-source community project. Of course that is wishful thinking, but not completely far-fetched. Note Intel and their GPL'ed drivers (so I am told).

With or without ATi's help, the Free/Libre Open Source Software developers soldier on. You can already get your eye-candy on TODAY with free software drivers. 3D graphics are hardware accelerated, but they are not nearly as fast as they could be were ATi to free up some specs. I firmly believe that if ATi were to open up their hardware, the FOSS community could help develop drivers for their chips that would blow the pants of ATi's competition. You would think that ATi would realize this. Such advancements could also be translated into screaming fast GPL'ed drivers for Windows, giving ATi some competitive muscle again. They certainly aren't developing stellar drivers on their own. Even their Windows/Catalyst drivers could use a lot of improvement. Heaven forbid they should ever see the light. Go ahead, drink the kool-aid, ATi... It' will open your eyes and your mind to the possibilities.

Tim LePes

I would much rather that the open source ATI drivers were improved. I think ATI/AMD should help with performance, multimedia acceleration, and hardware support for newer cards in the open source driver.

http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Proper_Way_To_Get_Better_ATI_Linux_Support

I just came across a new post on Alan Coopersmith's blog (he works on Xorg tasks for Solaris), and does agree that this is the approach to take.

"Just a quick note... Michael Larabel's post on “How To Get Better ATI Linux Support” is spot on with what we've heard from ATI and from others about ATI in various conversations — if you really want to get their attention, go through their OEM's and resellers, whether that be asking for improvements to their closed source drivers or ports of them to other OS'es, or even opening more specs/sources to the open source community."

http://blogs.sun.com/alanc/entry/how_to_get_better_ati

What about set up a boycott of companies whose products don't offer Linux GPL drivers.

AMD has worked with Red Hat to maximize Virtualisation in its large Linux Servers. I am sure if we boycott there video cards they will get the message quick enough.

What we the Linux community need is a web site where we can list all the hardware that people should avoid recommending to their friends or buying themselves. Remember that Linux users are the geeks that ALL computer users come to for advice on what to buy, be it windows Mac or Linux. Once we start advising against AMD / ATI and others they will get the hint. The Dell situation if they go ahead will have a huge ramification. I will certainly have no hesitation in recomending Dell to my friends if theyt offer Linux certified PCs in the near future.

Is there a Linux certification program where we the users can go to small PC shops and test there clone PC,s for Linux compatibility. Possibly suggesting components that are more Linux friendly. We could use something like a Ubuntu Live CD with a simple hardware compatibility test that then sends a copy of the Hardware test to a central database over the internet. If the PC is Linux compatible, the database could produce a certificate that the vendor could print out and affix to there PC. This would create Linux awareness and help the vendor sell more Linux PC's.

George

Funny, I work at an organisation that has just started replacing all their 24hr operational machines with RedHat Enterprise Linux boxes. Each of these workstations requires high end graphics cards for the work done on them. There was a decision to go only with nVidia based chipsets because of the lacking linux driver support for ATI. It's rediculous that ATI/AMD can't get their act together and offer stable binary drivers with GLX support for linux, it's costing them...

My next video card will definitely be nVidia's. 2 previous were ATI's.
ATI had their chance to make good drivers/release specs/GPL the driver.

At least i've made up my mind. I won't be giving my money to ATI anymore!

The main reason for the low performance is less due to the good folks at AMD being idiots- far from it. It's because until recently, they've kind of viewed us as a "red-headed stepchild" of a userbase and treated us accordingly with much lower levels of resources. All their resources seem to be focused into set-top, Direct3D, and mobile devices, with a token effort to desktop OpenGL for trying to keep FireGL sales going. I'm not QUITE sure where they're heading- but talking to their OEM partners can't hurt too much- they're definitely not aware of the fact that they've been shooting themselves in the foot for what they thought was a lucrative space (Direct3D...)

At the moment I would certainly avoid any ATI graphic adapter: why would I bother with it? I get all the performance *I* need from the intel one. And the drivers are good.

With ATI and nVidia I need to do extra work and I risk getting my hardware not supported in case I upgrade my kernel. Bad.

Note that what I wrote here is over-simplistic: some ATI cards will work. There is an effort to write a free nvidia driver which may bear fruits in a year or so. But the bad name for both ATI and nVidia is already there for me.

Likewise of via, BTW. Free drivers exist, but of terrible quality.

Hi Micheal!

I'll admit upfront that I don't understand why you are defending ATI so much. What's in it for you?

I believe they deserve (or should I say need!) some bad publicity because their driver just plainly sucks (to keep it simple). I mean, is it that hard to implement few things that Linux community needs? If people without exact specifications managed to provide support for some features, how hard can it be for them?

I don't know, I own Radeon 9500 Pro, and while that card is a very fine example of good engineering, today, on this Linux only desktop, it mostly just sucks.

I would advise people totally the opposite, go straight to the ATI site and complain. Be polite, but be direct so they understand what's going on.

As for me, I'm a Linux user, ATI's support for Linux is bad, so I'll obviously be doing business with another vendor when the time comes. At least, the logic is simple.

I won't even bother complaining to them, I'm *that* dissapointed and don't believe in them anymore (I've waited for a long time).

[ And could you please enlarge a little bit the textarea I'm typing this comment into? It's using about 2% of my screen real estate, and it's not like I can play games on this card and comment at the same time :) ]

The Open Graphics Project (OGP) is developing graphics cards with fully published specs and open source drivers. http://opengraphics.org/

posted to HP Australia.

No, i won't bash on ATI, since i will never use again their products. I am better of using my old Gefore4 then my Radeon9800pro. That GFX Card from ATi was a waste of money/time for me. I waited for about 6 month to enable the PixelShader 2.0 in the driver. I wrote some emails. I went to irc channels to speak. OK. I never ever will buy a ATI GFX again. That's the point.

John,

In due time you shall see that these channels are more effective.

ATI deserves a boycott.

How about we just send a message by not buying anymore ATI cards? I have a nice pretty Radeon, and I'm sorry I bought it now that I'm running Ubuntu.

ATI SUPPORT SUCKS!
Go NVIDIA
I am so gonna make sure I nor anyone that comes to me for advice purchases ATI Cards (or pc's w/ them) :), that's a good 50-100 users.

Since AMD now own ATi, I think things will change in time. I don't believe ATi really had enough reason to produce decent Linux drivers because money is always a motive. There may also be some ties with ms buried there somewhere that gives them even less reason to do so.

I find this article ironic really because back when I had a nvidia card in my Linux system. I had hardware problems with the video card overheating and causing system instability. I seriously couldn't believe a low end video card could overheat so much at the time. Now that I have an x1600 AGP card to replace it, everything is fine.

I am impressed with it's performance, but I am sure there is huge room for improvement. Maybe it's a good thing that ATi doesn't support Linux the way it ought to. Otherwise we wouldn't have a reason to have open source drivers in the first place. I still use the fglrx driver any day though. I've never managed to get the open source driver to work.

"what he thinks will help"

It's not a thought, it's a FACT I know about how to attain better support :)

Um this is kinda beating a dead horse don't you think!? ATI AMD already knows they need better drivers or better support for Linux. You are pointing out things that many have already stated in letters to ATI. You assume (not really) but ... that everyone is making negative posts or emails to ATI. For how many years have they over looked Linux as a viable market. Yes you get your knuckle heads that flame forums and spam there inbox. Though there are far more posts that have a positive tone to them that get either over looked or a cookie cutter reply is sent back.

Do not write ATI AMD a letter or a silly email about how you would like to see better support. They already know! Just don't buy there products stop being fan boyz ,follow the support and don't put too much faith into companies that first and for most are to make money and Linux doesn't pay the bills for ATI

ATI has drivers that work good for your basic needs. Thats said why would you go buy a car if it didn't have a feature you needed to have, like... lets say AC or Heat...no you would say I'm not going to buy that brand and go with a company that supports this feature or has it at least. Ok I'm done. I've beat my dead horse.

A boycott is nice and I certainly don't buy their products when I have a choice (which is bad for them of course). But sometimes you get stuck with it (eg. laptops, work computers, etc) and it'd be nice for this to work. We can approach the problem from both directions though which should increase the pressure for support... hopefully ;)

It's simple: stop buying ATI. I assemble 5 computers in a week and I simply don't recommend ATI to my clients. If every professional recommends Linux-friendly boards, the ATI executives will quickly move their asses.

Joseph George of Sun Microsystems has also blogged about this:

http://blogs.sun.com/josephgeorge/entry/how_to_get_ati_to

@Toussis Manolis

There will still be a driver update this month, but it will not add AIGLX support.

"I know for certain that at least one major OEM would like to see improved Linux support but is afraid that the Windows support would then be at risk. "

How the hell would linux driver development ever put windows support at risk?

Michael, with all due respect, your point is absurd. Where do you get the idea that a full on boycott will not be effective. Why on earth should I, or anyone else, support a company that refuses to support our operating system?

Why should people buy ATI crap when this fact is perfectly well known by all Linux users?

They made their marketing choice, and now they have to accept the long term results of that. Buying ATI stuff is something we ALWAYS recommend against, for all our users.

With one exception. Because ATI has provided such abysmal driver support for their cards, the free xorg ati driver project has flourished, and now, as has been pointed out already, has created an increasingly viable free driver for the older ATI cards.

So the interesting situation has now arisen: we recommend EITHER older nvidia or ati cards, or newer Nvidia.

In other words, for users that want to spend real money, spend it on nvidia.

This approach of begging, wheedling, and praying to the ATI corporation for support that somehow or other the nvidia corporation is able to provide without any problems is absurd. Don't buy ATI, ever, for any reason, again.

There's nothing more to it. As Linux takes on increasing market share, ATI will suddenly find themselves a pariah in the open source community, and will have to spend their money to rebuild the trust and support they decided to lose.

That's their job, not mine. Why should I waste one second of my life getting a company to do its job? If they want to pay me for that, great, fine, I'll help them do their jobs, but if not, our real vote is with our money, so vote, don't buy ATI.

Forget this nonsense, they are adults, they can take the consequences long term of their bad decision to not support Linux, that's their problem, not mine. Nvidia is NOW doing great work, and they deserver to be rewarded for that work. ATI is doing bad work, and they should be punished directly for that failure.

Money talks, you're wrong. Just because Linux desktop market share is low this year doesn't mean it's going to be low in 2 years, and by that time ATI's reputation will be such trash that they will have to spend millions to try to regain what they should never have lost.

What a joke, please, be serious. Don't buy ATI, period.

I was recently sitting in a business meeting with AMD(ATI) and rised the Linux question. Their answer was clear in the end : Their management does not think Linux (and FOSS) is important.

Maybe they need to learn the hard way.

I have very strong comments from engineering and scientific community who uses intensive graphics (CAD, protein modeling, simulation, games and etc).

All agreed, ATI on windows and linux do not provide sufficient path for programming and development.

I cannot help notice the lack of post sales support by vendors as well on ATI chips. I am litterally left without option to use the "GPU" in it.

I have little option but to buy new laptop. That had left me with a bitter experience with HP and ATI. My USD1500 laptop is reduced to a dumb window terminal over a chip, is not something I look forward to own when I bought it. I have done all I can to communicate this problem to ATI/AMD. I will give it another 6 months for AMD to act to resolve this and opensource the driver.

If there are no resolution I am taking off ATI and AMD from my purchase recommendation. I have pause recommendation of ATI/AMD. Will see how things goes in 6 months. It is bluntly stupid not to opensource the driver to make it much more available to all to fix and improve it.

There is no OpenSource 2D support in Linux for R500 series video cards.

For 2d or 3d performance your only option is ATI's prorpiatory drivers.

For R100/r200/r300/r400 series ATI video cards we have both 2D and 3D support in Linux for ATI using _Free_software_ drivers. ATI's propriatory drivers for those video cards are completely optional (except for certain specific troublesome cards)

ATI should realy help out with the open source efforts. But they don't.

I'm (my litle young company :)) seling pc's. For people i recomend Linux +full our support (about 8 of 10ten buy's withouth windows). Almost all answers,- yes for linux. We all know why. What v.card side i will recommend ? ..All linux user know & i dont see any problems. Peoples have own choices..

I think that there is some misunderstanding.... with ATI drivers and cards. In MEPIS, whom I love very much, getting ATI card to work properly (with right driver) is difficult. BUT in dreamlinux ... well, go and try. NOT so hard. For my radeon 9200, works compiz and thats it. It was a year ago, when I did succeed to get on driver, but Im remembered that I did it. Please comment on zzovik@gmail.com