will we ever have radeon drivers that aren't crap?

[John Mellor]

On Fri, 2009-07-24 at 12:23 +0200, Julian Aloofi wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 23.07.2009, 20:13 -0400 schrieb John Mellor:
> > This is a Fedora-killer.  Nothing should be higher priority.
> > 
> > Is there any way to get Radeon HD support as a mandatory blocking issue
> > into F12 ?  If the incredibly bad situation is not fixed by F12 with
> > compiz and 3D gaming and everything else working correctly, then
> > probably the only people who will be left running Fedora will be on
> > laptops with their very low-end graphics, and some NVidia proprietary
> > driver users.
> > 
> > If it can't be fixed in that timeframe, is it possible to revert back to
> > the old DRI interfaces so that the proprietary ATI drivers will work
> > again?
> > 
> > I can test, but not if it is going to hose my machine in a way that
> > cannot be easily recovered from.  Unfortunately, I don't have the time
> > available to code, as my real job takes priority.
> 
> As soon as the Fedora 12 Alpha is released we could start another test
> day for radeon cards. We could contact the original initiators and ask
> them if they'd like to join us. The most important thing is that we will
> need at least one person experienced with radeon driver hacking, do you
> know one? When the Alpha is released one of us should contact Dave
> Airlie and ask him whether he has the time to do the dirty work.
> I didn't know the radeon situation is that bad, I guess I'm just lucky
> having the right card (Radeon HD 2600).

I'm ok with this, as long as a non-functioning Radeon-HD card becomes a
blocker issue.  There is no way that F12 should be released without this
support, and most cards working correctly.

I can test, with my HD-3650 AGP card, as long as I'm given a backout
mechanism to allow me to recover from installing a bad Radeon package
safely.

For a fall-back position, we need to otherwise guarantee that F12
releases with a functioning kernel and dri modules that fully support
the fglrx driver.  Its not free, but the free drivers are still not up
to the job if we are considering this option, and the functionality
absolutely needs to be in Fedora.  This also needs to be a blocker
issue.