Linux and XFree86 Information

General Information
Product Features
Further Information and Assistance

General Information

Linux Introduction

Linux is a clone of the operating system UNIX, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from many developers across the Internet. Most Linux software, including Linux itself, is available as Open Source.

Open Source software developers make their source code available to the public, with no fees or royalties for use or distribution, and usually covered by the GNU General Public License. This agreement explains the goals of the Open Source movement in detail.

Linux by itself provides only a command-line interface (like DOS). For a Graphical User Interface, many Linux distributions provide XFree86, an Open Source implementation of the X-Window System that runs on UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems.

Linux software for ATI products will usually involve XFree86.

For more general information related to UNIX-type environments, please refer to "UNIX Environments".

 

Linux Drivers for ATI products

ATI actively assists qualified 3rd party Linux developers writing software for the majority of ATI products by providing them with development kits and information.

We have also made every attempt to provide hardware 2D acceleration for all shipping products and will continue to assist XFree86 developers with their work.

For more information on these projects, you may want to check the Alternate Operating System Driver Support Chart. This pdf document has been maintained by ATI Developer Relations. You must have Adobe Acrobat installed to view this file.

Additional information will also appear on this page as it becomes available.

Please note, however, that ATI is not responsible for the content of any third party web site, or the software you might find there.

 

Linux Support and Documentation

ATI Customer Care receives a large number of inquiries regarding driver support for the Linux operating system.

Most of these "Linux" questions are really about XFree86, being the graphical X-Windows System that is bundled with many of the popular Linux Distribution packages.

Please note - ATI Customer Care has NO INFORMATION regarding:

  • which ATI chips or products are supported in a particular version of Linux or XFree86
  • how to configure Linux for a given ATI chip or product
  • when or if drivers are being developed to support ATI chips in a given version of Linux or XFree86
  • what features these drivers might have

Answers to these questions may be available from a number of sources in the Linux community

Product Features

2D Graphics Acceleration

Full-featured and optimized XFree86 drivers are available on the ATI website for the following product families ONLY:
  • RADEON 8500 and later retail products
  • MOBILITY RADEON 9000 and later mobile products
  • FireGL 8800/8700 and later workstation products

XFree86 currently provides hardware 2D acceleration for most ATI graphics adapters. For new products it normally takes at least 12 weeks from retail product shipment for driver support to be become publicly available.

Chances are your Linux distribution includes a version of XFree86, which already includes support for your ATI product. The most recent release of XFree86 is available from www.xfree86.org.

Xi Graphics, Inc. specializes in creating high-performance, premium quality graphics software to support graphics hardware on computer platforms running Linux/UNIX®. They offer their own hardware accelerated X-Windows products as a commercial alternative to the freeware XFree86.

 

3D Graphics Acceleration

ATI has made the necessary hardware and programming information available to Linux developers for the development of hardware 3D acceleration.

ATI Family 3D Status
RADEON 8500 and later

Hardware 3D provided by ATI Proprietary Linux Driver (NOT Open Source)

Open source 3D drivers should be available or under development from the DRI Project.
RADEON 7500 3D drivers available from the DRI Project.
RADEON 7200
RADEON 7000
RAGE 128
RAGE PRO 3D drivers available from the UTAH-GLX Project. for XFree86 version 3

Accelerated-X products by XI Graphics, Inc. also offer hardware accelerated 3D using OpenGL. Accelerated-X is provided as a commercial alternative to the freeware XFree86.

 

Video Playback

XFree86 uses the XVideo (or Xv) extension to enable hardware video overlay, which is used to accelerate the playback of video clips. The following drivers all support video playback using Xv.

The ATI Proprietary Linux Driver also allows OpenGL to be used as an overlay (mutually exclusive with Xv, however).

Some ATI hardware has DVD acceleration features. However, this functionality is NOT currently available in any Linux driver that we know of. ATI is investigating the possibility of providing these features in a future driver release.

 

Video Capture

Video capture under XFree86 is currently handled using the Video4Linux2 (or V4L2) API, which should be available for 2.2.x and later kernels. It is included with most current Linux distributions.

ATI Family Display1
Driver 		 V4L driver Capture Applications
ALL IN WONDER products GATOS, DRI GATOS AVview
TV WONDER
TV WONDER VE		 Any bttv xawtv, zapping, tvtime, others

1GATOS also provides their own display drivers, which should be used with the GATOS capture driver. While GATOS may still work with drivers from the DRI Project, it will NOT work with the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver. bttv can be used with any display driver.

We are not aware of any V4L capture driver for ATI TV WONDER USB.

For users of Accelerated-X desktop software by XI Graphics, an application called Xvamp is available on the XI Graphics FTP site, which provides TV Tuner support for some ATI multimedia products.

 

TV Output

TV Output can be enabled in the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver for RADEON 8500 and later cards that have this feature.

The GATOS Project is also working on TV Output using Rage Theater.

 

Further Information and Assistance

Linux Distribution Vendors

Most Linux distributions include driver software for current ATI products. Check the vendor's website for information on which hardware is supported in their distribution.

Some Linux vendors offer their own technical support services. Check the documentation you received when you purchased a Linux Distribution to determine whether technical support is available from the vendor.

We have provided links to some of the more popular vendors here:

 

General Linux Documentation

You may also want to check the following sources for more information or support:

 

Getting involved in Linux development

If you have an interest in computer programming, and would like to see more ATI product features become available under Linux, then we highly recommend joining an appropriate project for the development you wish to help with.

It is also recommended that you join the XFree86 Project as a developer.

To participate in any of these open source projects or to find out more information please visit the appropriate web sites.