Does ATI hate Linux? Issue with Gnome 3 and Catalyst

[nsmcho]

Hi,

I have a Radeon HD 4670 on my laptop and I've never managed to make Gnome 3 work properly with the ATI Catalyst drivers.
The latest, 12.2 does the same thing as 12.1: my Gnome 3 interface disappears and reappears from time to time or permanently (so I have to reboot my laptop).
Also, it's incredebly slow unless I use the clutter_vblank trick.
The previous versions don't work better, it's even worse.
What's wrong with ATI? My pc with an NVIDIA card works perfectly with Gnome 3. Isn't there a way to make it work? Gallium3D has a poor power management and makes my laptop heat up too fast.

Thanks.

[classic]

Short answer: yes. ATI + Linux just suck. Next time buy Nvidia if you plan to run Linux.

[AlbertP]

Have you already tried the just released 12.3 driver?

By the way, you first have to uninstall your old driver before installing a new version.

[rekik]

It's not a problem between ATI and linux but a problem with gnome 3. No problem at all with Unity (and for Xfce, KDE, etc.). So it's Gnome3 that suck, not ATI

[AlbertP]

The only drivers that have problems with Gnome 3 are ATI's. It's definitely a driver bug in them - probably Gnome 3 uses an OpenGL function that's largely unused in other desktops.

[DrHu]

Different vendors have different support for the other OSs' like Apple or Linux

Nvidia has long supported Linux with their binary drivers
ATI has been lax
--but they have caught up in recent years, however you can still say Nvidia is the safest choice for graphics under Linux..

[hal8000]

I have an ATI HD5750 with the fglrx driver.

Works superb with KDE4, Xfce4, Unity, any desktop except Gnome3.

This means that distributions who choose Gnome3 are unusable by me ( Or I just change window manager).

It is the same with Cinnamon on Mint 12.
I have had to use the Mate desktop with fglrx driver.

You probably know this already but a good link to tweaking Mate is below:

http://deviceguru.com/ubuntu-11-10-without-shell-shock/

although its for Ubuntu it works with Mate and requires alt+ right click before you can alter/modify panels.

May I ask where you got the updated fglrx 12 driver? Presumably from ATI?
I know Mint 12 driver is catalyst 11.8
Thank you in advance.

[AlbertP]

You can get newer Catalyst from: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... linux.aspx

That version works quite well with gnome 3 for most users.

[Alpha-Geek]

Mint 12 works fine as long as I use the default ATI driver. I've tried different versions of ATI's driver since installing Mint 12, and while the newer drivers seem to be getting better, eventually I start having the same problems with the desktop . I'll wait to install ver 12.3 until after I see what the feedback is.

[makalele]

Don't install any ATI drivers. Even with last drivers I have issues.

[AlbertP]

I know. Some users have issues, some have no issues at all with the latest 12.x anymore.

So if you can run without drivers, just don't worry.

[hal8000]

You can get newer Catalyst from: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... linux.aspx

That version works quite well with gnome 3 for most users.

Hi Albert. Which ATI card do you have?
Mine is ATI HD5750. With the catalyst driver the fan on the card makes a noise, which is why
I'm forced to use the fglrx driver.

Have never had gnome3 working properly on any version of linux to date, this may change if ATI
create a better driver.

[AlbertP]

@ hal8000: I don't have ATI at all. I use nvidia as they don't have any driver problems with whatever desktop you use.

[geocool]

That problem is on Ubuntu too.It's general gnome 3 problem and I don't think it's drivers problem.
I have now a fresh install of linux mint 12 and I just installed the latest drivers (Ati Catalyst 12.3) but that didn't fix the problem.
My VGA is HD 6790.
What can we do about the problem ? Report it to gnome developers and give them some logs ?
OS Is really unstable with gnome shell I can't use it.
Also here says that this bug is fixed... but it's not...

EDIT
I forgot to mension that i have the same problem on my laptop which uses ati mobility 3000 series.

[R9Devyatka]

That problem is on Ubuntu too.It's general gnome 3 problem and I don't think it's drivers problem.
I have now a fresh install of linux mint 12 and I just installed the latest drivers (Ati Catalyst 12.3) but that didn't fix the problem.
My VGA is HD 6790.

I had an issue with the missing taskbars and mine is a Hd 6750.

Were working fine until few days ago until didnt worked again so i switched to classig gnome and were fine. However i like the Taskbars design on Gnome 3 and tried a solution but didnt worked as i expected (launched the classic taskbars and window name were absent) Since there were no critical data i formatted the partition. I know than is that the easy way but i would like to know how to fix that in the future.

As far as i see i won't install the ATI drivers for a while if this behavior repeats again without them.

[linfidel]

Well, I have an AMD Radeon 5450 which works fine with both the standard and the AMD proprietary drivers for Gnome 3 itself. It does have problems with the proprietary driver in some Gnome shells, though. But the reason I ended up with this card is because I first tried a similar price/features card from Nvidia, and with dual-monitors, it refused to make the digital monitor (on the left, for me) the main monitor with the menus, etc. This was a few versions back, with Ubuntu.

Perhaps Nvidia has improved, but in the earlier days, I wasn't overjoyed with their behavior with Linux.

[bernovi]

I'm having exactly the same problems on a Lenovo S205 with an AMD APU E350 (integrated Radeon 6310) on a fresh install of Linux Mint 12 x64 with all updates to date.
Just posted the full details here (post no 8 ): viewtopic.php?f=208&t=96636#p569005

I read somewhere that Catalyst 12.4 will fix the current problems with Gnome 3 but I wouldnt keep my hopes up. Did anyone find a solution or a good workaround to this? Linux is unusable for me this way..
Thank you