ATI updates its Linux graphics display drivers

Catalyst 9.8 for x86 and x86_64 - go AMD-powered Penguins!

AMD has released a new version of its proprietary ATI Catalyst Linux display driver for both x86 and x86_64 systems.

The ATI Catalyst 9.8 suite updates the software to version 8.64 and supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 - and therefore most Red Hat based Linux distros - as well as the current Debian based Ubuntu 9.04 known as Jaunty Jackalope.

The release also supports RandR 1.2 to manage display rotation, desktop sizing and multiple display arrangement.
It also works better for users of the popular Ubuntu 9.04 who use multi ASIC configurations. They can now use normal mouse cursor movement between displays, which means the end of the static cursor.

The ATI Catalyst 9.8 works with Linux kernel 2.6 or higher and glibc version 2.2 or 2.3. If you want to have 3D display effects you also need to have support for POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm).

Also 64-bit users must have 32-bit libraries installed before updating or running the driver. The GCC compiler, kernel-headers and kernel-source are required to build the driver modules and enable 2D and 3D acceleration.

Although this sounds like your normal Linux "you have to be a computer scientist to install this" sort of warning, in reality it is a bit of doddle for those who are familiar with Linux.

It is nice that ATI is aggressively supporting Linux. It used to be that you could only run Nvidia cards on Ubuntu and its ilk.