From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115 Description of problem: I have two Fedora boxes both running the Fedora core 2 test release. One uses an ATI Radeon 9800. The other uses an ATI Radeon 8500. Fedora core 2 installed nicely on my systems. However it appeared that the video drivers offered by ATI in the form of RPM were not installed. These drivers are necessary to play modern games on Linux. The latest driver package on the ATI website was fglrx-4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.rpm as of this post. I'm writing to make a feature suggestion that this package be installed by default if you are using an ATI card. Out of box support for both ATI and nVidia graphics cards would go a long way towards improving the Linux desktop for the average user like me. Also, if you actually download and try to install the drivers, you will get a nasty error about a conflicting package. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Fedora core 2 test release How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install Fedora Core 2 test CD's 2. Note that the FGLRX video driver package is not installed 3. Go to the ATI website, try to download the driver and then try to install it. Actual Results: When you try to install the ATI video driver with RPM -Uvh f*.rpm you get a nasty error about a conflicting package. Expected Results: See above Additional info: See above
Here is what happens if you try to manually install the ATI driver RPM: [root@localhost root]# rpm -Uvh fglrx-4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.rpm /etc/security/selinux/src/policy/file_contexts/file_contexts: No such file or directory Preparing... ########################################### [100%] file /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 from install of fglrx-4.3.0-3.7.6 conflicts with file from package XFree86-Mesa-libGL-4.3.0-45.0.1
After forcing install of the RPM with RPM -Uvh --force fglrs*.rpm you are prompted to compile the kernel module. This process errors out as well: [root@localhost build_mod]# ./make.sh ATI module generator V 2.0 ========================== initializing... Error: XFree86 drm includes at /lib/modules/2.6.1-1.65/build/include/../drivers/char/drm do not fit this driver. This driver is designed to only work with X4.1.0 or higher. You can match this by getting Linux kernel 2.4.8 or higher.
Closing as wontfix, as the drivers you're talking about are not open source, and as such will never be part of Fedora Core. I understand the desire for these kinds of drivers to be there "out of the box", but it's just not possible. As for any problems you're having with the ATI drivers, you'll need to contact ATI with any requests for assistance or feedback; the Fedora project has nothing to do with their development -- ATI developed and packaged them...
The average user *needs* these drivers to be out of the box. It is too much of a burden to task the average user with installing this stuff. At a minimum, I would suggest including the third party packages with your distribution CD's and working with ATI to make them installation friendly. Compare the installation experience to Windows for a sec. Windows includes such drivers out of the box for convenience of the customer. I can boot up a Windows CD and do a fresh install. I can then install a game CD and I'm off to the races. However with Linux it is a completely different scenario:(
I understand your point; however, it is simply not an option. The rules under which open source software projects have to operate are entirely different from the rules under which closed-source *products* operate. In the closed-source world, when company A decides they would like to include company B's software with their own software, often money changes hands. Distribution and non-disclosure agreements are signed. All of these things are not options for open source projects -- think about it; a non-disclosure agreement loses its meaning if the source code is freely available. It's hard for money to change hands if one of the parties involved is not an individual, or a corporation, but hundreds (maybe thousands) of people that -- together -- comprise the "community" responsible for developing the open-source software. So, as much as it would be wonderful to have drivers for these cards, the only way that is going to happen is if ATI (or nVidia, for that matter) open-sourced their drivers. But that is very unlikely, unfortunately...
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your outstanding product. I found some additional information that I wanted to add to the original feature request. First of all, from what I've been reading many are having installation, performance, stability and other problems with the ATI drivers on many different distributions. What I discovered was that SuSE Linux bundles the ATI drivers with their Linux distribution apparently on the install CDs and on their website. Here is a link. ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/XFree86/ATI/suse90/fg lrx/ SuSE also authored their own readme file that explains how to install the drivers. Wouldn't it be nice if installation of these video drivers necessary for gaming with 3D acceleration were integrated into the Red Hat install process:)