Guys, Here is one worth noting. The radeon driver has come a long way in the past couple of kernels or Xorg packages. I know the driver itself hasn't changed since 11/2009 (ver. 1.3.0-1), but my desktop is working much better than the last time I updated. I have switched all 12 or so of my boxes to Arch (work and home included). The only two that are still suse are my laptops due to the fglrx driver. I have 2 spare drives for each laptop and on one drive for each laptop I did a complete wipe and then installed Arch. I did this about 14 months ago and I update the spare drives every month or two. The only reason I haven't moved my laptops to Arch is solely the gpu kernel module issue. ( to complicate matters, both laptops use the 'legacy' driver as a result of ATI screwing its customer base and dropping all support for linux for all pre-2400 series chipsets) This hit laptops hard. The last laptop I bought was 2008 and it is now a 'legacy' box The benefits that the fglrx driver provide over either the radeon or radeonhd drivers are primarily 2-fold, speed (obvious) and most important gpu clock powerdown (idling unneeded parts of the gpu) while running with massively reduces the gpu heat load. (and fan noise, etc..) On update tonight. I stared the box, fired up gnome, started compiz and Wow! It was working fine. I was actually 'smooth'. Much improved over the old jerky behavior that existed when I last updated at the end of Feb. It's not as fast as the fglrx driver, but it is no longer a sticking point on moving the box to arch. Cooling is also improved. The heat is still an issue as heat drives fan noise. However, I have been able to work in Arch for the past several hours and my palm-rest is not on fire! And when I'm idling the box, the fan noise is down to a soft hum -- workable. Much improved over the XB-70 sound with all 6 afterburners lit ;-) So to whoever the kudos go -- job well done! I never thought I would see an open-source radeon driver work as well... -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com
