Smart Home Blog

It isn’t so fresh news but still. ATI released a new version of its proprietary drivers for Linux. The 9.3 provides better options to configure display for HDTV in the ATI Catalyst Control Center. Also a few bugfixes were done with detection of display port, TV standards aspect, video playback after hibernation and dual display configuration. There is a good news for developers. They have now a way to control video card parameters from their applications using AMD Display Library SDK.

I received a positive feedback about using ATI Radeon HD3200, previous version of ATI Catalyst 9.2 and alpha version of LinuxMCE 0810. The video playback is ok now. But there is still a few issues: cursor cannot be hided without mouse and there is no way to call menu when screen server is started. Probably the new version of Catalyst drivers will solve that.

nVidia has been released another version of its proprietary *nix video drivers. 180.44 includes support for few new GPUs, fixes of OpenGL crash while running KDE4’s Plasma, a lot of VDPAU bugfixes. Traditionally there are version for Linux IA32/IA64/AMD64/EM64T, FreeBSD x86 and Solaris x64/x86. I didn’t update my LinuxMCE box since 180.18. So, tomorrow will do it. Hope it’ll improve performance during HD video playback and maybe it’ll help to get audio over HDMI (I know that it’s done under Kubuntu 8.10, but I still run 7.10).

New version of proprietary ATI Catalyst 9.1 video drivers for Linux was released recently. There is a few main changes such as:

• Support for New Linux Operating Systems
• Full OpenGLâ„¢ 3.0 Support
• Hybrid CrossFireâ„¢ support for Linux
• Multiview Support

Additionally it was improved support of ATI Radeon HD 3200 – video adaptor which gives a lot of troubles for LinuxMCE users. So, try that newest drivers. Maybe they will solve your problems.

The stable version 180.22 of nVidia video drivers was released yesterday. Following main changes were done since last release:

• Support of CPU 9XXX and some 8XXX and 7XXX.
• Added initial support for PureVideo-like features via the new VDPAU API (see the vdpau.h header file installed with the driver). The VDPAU API is already implemented in the mplayer, libxine, ffmpeg, vlc and MythTV.
• Added support for CUDA 2.1.
• Added preliminary support for OpenGL 3.0.
• Added new OpenGL workstation performance optimizations.
• Enabled the glyph cache by default and extended its support to all supported GPUs.

A bunch of bugs found in the previous version of the drives was fixed.
The nVidia 180.22 video drivers are available for Linux (IA32, AMD64/EM64T), Solaris and FreeBSD.

Here is a list of devices which don’t have open source drivers for Linux. Devices provided proprietary drivers are also included there. That list is used by Linux Driver Project group to develop and add to the kernel drivers for those devices. Feel free to add your device if it isn’t supported by Linux and you isn’t listed in that list.

It’ll be useful to check that list at stage when you’re planning to build media center of other type PC which will be based on Linux. Hope that list won’t be increased 🙂