Last month, AMD took the decision to suspend support for 2000/3000/4000 series Catalyst drivers and open source them. This had saddened many hardware owners and there was also a rumour going on that AMD may stop development of the binary Catalyst driver and focus solely on open-source drivers.
However, this rumour is inaccurate. Jammy Zhou of AMD recently told Phoronix, "We will definitely continue the fglrx development, which is becoming more and more important for AMD."
ATI Radeon X1000 (R500), through Radeon HD 4000 series, now lives in AMD Catalyst legacy branch and one may expect an update on it soon.
AMD earlier admitted about its Linux problems and is now working hard to address them. The open-source AMD Linux driver has made a lot of progress in the recent past but still doesn't support some features like OpenGL parity, CrossFire support or advanced antialiasing modes and the performance is also not upto the mark.
It will be interesting to see the progress of AMD in driver support for Linux after this statement.
Saurav Modak
Saurav Modak is an engineering student and FOSS enthusiast who believes that best things in the world, such as software should be free (as in freedom). He is a hard core Arch fan and loves to show off his customized Arch Linux installation to friends. You can connect with Saurav on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
