Canonical Publishes ATI Catalyst 8.10 Beta

[snova]

It's closed source, they can't share it upstream. They just managed to get something from ATI earlier than others.

I think the key word to see here is "earlier". They'll get it eventually.

I couldn't agree more. Without that damned fragmentation Linux would be a real contender in the desktop, not just a promise, year after year. Ubuntu is about to circumvent this by becoming a de facto standard, hopefully leaving behind all that lack of decisions which others call "choice". Finally. Thank's God.

I doubt it. Choice is important, but how many people are interested in the technical merits of distro X over distro Y? It's one thing to say that an application is missing a few features compared to another, but try explaining deb over RPM.

Besides, the nature of Linux is such that "de facto" is about as close to a standard as you can get. Ubuntu might become the biggest distro around, but that doesn't mean the others will cease to exist.

And as long as it stays in tune with the rest of the Linux world, I don't really care.

[Exershio]

If this was true, why is the release also in the ArchLinux repositories?

http://archlinux.org/packages/testin...atalyst-utils/
http://archlinux.org/packages/testing/x86_64/catalyst/

[handy]

*Sigh* Typos + magnifiers + excitement = One enormous mess.

Please wait for real information and do not jump to sudden conclusions. Posting "me too" type posts will only magnify what is undoubtedly misinformation. We all know what happens when a thread reaches 6 pages; people start missing posts that are useful.

As for the software, keep in mind that it's proprietary so distros get it through ATI in cases like this. From what I can tell (although the Phoronix article is still distant from real information) this is just a bleeding edge early release because Ubuntu wants bleeding edge and asked nicely.
It isn't like ATI invented a time machine, went into the future and gave back an actual stable, final 8.11.0 product just for Canonical. That isn't how software development works. A final release is sat on for maybe 5 minutes before everyone sees it with this type of distribution.

The article neglects to mention whether Fedora (or any other distro) actually wants to risk packaging an unfinished driver. The folks who work on Fedora are pretty clever and they know what consitutes reasonable risk, so I don't doubt that they have a good reason to wait. Keep in mind that Ubuntu 8.10 is still a beta release, so it makes sense for all parties involved to use it for *gasp* generating bug reports; the software is not meant to be stable yet. Fedora 9, on the other hand, is stable so of course shouldn't be packaging unfinished drivers.


[Speaking of typos, I've edited my post at least 10 times now. Sorry about that!]

Sensible post.

I don't think there is an enormous mess. Some will blow it out of proportion, but it won't have any real effect on the public perception of Ubuntu.

Some people are addicted to sensationalism others use it to further their own cause.

[Vadi]

Bitter bitter people.