News: ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.2 Released. No Fedora 12 Support.

After almost a month, ATI has come up with a new version 10.2 of its Catalyst (fglrx) drivers. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 10.2 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As AMD is famous for doing nothing but just incrementing versions of there software, even this version doesn’t support xorg-1.7.4. But if you still want to give it a try, you can download and try installing the driver. Otherwise mesa-experimental drivers are your friend. Checkout the post Fedora 12 and ATI Drivers and save yourself from frustration 🙂

And yes, lets wait for next version of ATI Drivers 🙂

 

Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers

I guess ATI graphics card owners are a bit unlucky! When Fedora 11 was released, we didn’t get the proprietary drivers from AMD for months and the older version didn’t work with default kernel at that time. When Fedora 12 was released, AMD released newer version of Drivers after a few hours. But this time, Xorg becomes a stumbling block and again the driver installation fails for a lot of people!

But Fedora 12 tries to make life a bit easier and may provide support for ATI cards. From Fedora 12 Announcement

Fedora 12 introduces experimental 3D support for AMD Radeon HD 2400 and later graphics cards. To try it out, install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package. On many cards, this support should allow desktop effects to be used.

What to do?

Step 1 : Try ATI Catalyst Drivers from AMD

Nobody, so far, has reported the successful installation of ATI Catalyst drivers on Fedora 12. But still if you want to give it a shot (because the uninstall is clean and doesn’t leave a trace of ATI drivers in your system), you can follow How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers. If it doesn’t work, just uninstall using the command given at the end of the post.

Step 2 : Try mesa-dri-drivers

Keep in mind that these are experimental drivers and may not work properly or may work partially.

Install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental from Fedora repositories using Yum.

[root@fedora ~]# yum install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental

Reboot if the drivers are install successfully.

Let me know, if any of the above drivers work for you 🙂

 

News : Fedora 12 : Constantine Released [All you need to know]

Much awaited Fedora 12 : Constantine has been released and is available now! This post is more of a collection of things you need to know before you go all the way to download Fedora 12 and install or upgrade.

FAQs

Q. What is Fedora?
A. The Fedora Project page describes it in a short and nice way!

Q. I want to know everything about Fedora 12. Where do I find it?
A. You are probably asking for Fedora 12 Release Notes.

Q. Will it work on my machine?
A. What do you have? A server/desktop/laptop/netbook/xo/some-alien-hardware! It’ll work if your machine satisfies the hardware requirements.

Q. I have been using Fedora since long. What are the new features in Fedora 12?
A. Please browse Fedora 12 : Constantine Feature List page.

Q. Ok. I am convinced. From where can I download Fedora 12?
A. Nice! Please visit Download Page for download options. Checkout torrents or select mirror from Fedora mirrors.

Q. No. I don’t want that regular DVD. Do you have something different to offer?
A. Yup! Spins community is doing a wonderful job! Chose one from KDE, LXDE, XFCE, BrOffice, FEL, Games and Edu spins.

Q. I have downloaded the Fedora ISO. How do I install it?
A. There are different ways in which you can install Fedora on your system.

  1. If you don’t have CD/DVD drive, you can follow How To: Install Fedora without CD or DVD.
  2. You can install Fedora using a USB drive. Checkout LiveUSB creator.
  3. You can follow the traditional way. Install using CD/DVD.

Q. I already have Fedora installed on my system. Should I upgrade or re-install?
A. Browse Upgrading Your Current System page and find out yourself.

Q. I think I want to upgrade my Fedora 11 system to Fedora 12. How do I do it using Yum?
A. Learn how to do it from the Yum Guru himself Yum upgrading to fedora 12 from fedora 11 or browse this page on Fedora Docs.

Q. I have ATI graphics card. How do I install Catalyst Display Drivers?
A. Follow How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers.

Q. Hey, I am stuck! I need some help. Where should I ask?
A. There are different ways like Real Time Support via IRC, mailing lists, forums etc. in which you can get help on topics related to Fedora. Browse Get Help page to checkout different methods.

Q. I like this Fedora thing. Can I help?
A. There are several ways in which you can help Fedora Project. The simplest way is to help others! Other methods can be ‘Write Documentation’, ‘Design for Fedora’, ‘Spread the Word’ or ‘Write Code’ 🙂 Checkout Join Fedora page.