ATI "accelerated" driver is misleading and causes problems

[Tormod Volden]

Running the Hardware Drivers (a misleading name as well, but that's bug #202267) with an ATI card, it suggests you to install "ATI accelerated graphics driver". Of course that sounds tempting and many people install it when they don't need to or shouldn't.

Since both the default open-source driver and the proprietary fglrx driver are accelerated, this is pretty bad. In case someone missed it, the open-source driver has had accelerated 3D support on r100, r200, r300 and r400 cards for years, and of lately, also for r500.

A better name would be "ATI proprietary graphics driver" or even better "ATI/AMD proprietary fglrx driver". ATI/AMD because it makes it more obvious this is an alternative from that company and not something needed for ATI cards in general. fglrx because that's the name of the thing, and people will understand better when we talk about the open-source "ati" driver versus the proprietary "fglrx" driver.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Other than the obvious morally questionable issue of pitching proprietary software into a GNU/Linux distribution, it also causes a lot of practical problems. Installing fglrx breaks the open-source mesa libraries, and people have lot of trouble when they try to revert to the ati driver. Many computers get suspend broken by fglrx. Etc.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Renamed to "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver".

Also, it doesn't even appear in current Intrepid, since it's currently broken anyway.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.5~beta1-0ubuntu3

---------------
jockey (0.5~beta1-0ubuntu3) intrepid; urgency=low

  * Merge bug fixes from trunk:
     - Update the name of fglrx; radeonhd etc. are accelerated, too.
       (LP: #263359)
     - ui.py, backend(): Re-detect device drivers after the backend timed out.
       (LP: #273231)
     - backend.py, set_enabled(): Propagate exceptions from the enable/disable
       threads. (LP: #278034)
     - jockey-{gtk,kde}: Fix display of UI elements if no drivers are
       available. (LP: #277616, #277702)
     - jockey-kde: Actually show a license dialog when clicking on "Details"
       for the license. [Alberto]
     - Fix enabling/disabling of video drivers if multiple cards are
       configured in xorg.conf. [Alberto]
     - detection.py, get_printers(): Intercept RuntimeError harder.
       (LP: #272721)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:34:12 +0200

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Excellent. I had one other change in my bzr branch: Add the "some" to "This driver is required to fully utilise the 3D potential of some ATI graphics cards" since the driver doesn't work at all with many ATI cards.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Sorry, I wasn't aware that you already did that in a branch. I applied the "some" correction in bzr trunk, thanks for the suggestion.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Thanks. This must be a weakness of launchpad (or I am not doing it correctly). I had marked my branch "Ready for review for merging into lp:jockey", but maybe I should have added "Request a review" to that again. Anyway, the branch shows up at the bug report page, but then you have those people who just read email...

Actually I thought bug subscribers get notified when someone links a branch to it, but maybe not.