Posted on Wednesday, March 11 2009 @ 1:45 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
This year NVIDIA has been following the "release early,
release often" mantra with it seeming like two weeks can't even go by
without seeing a new Linux driver -- whether it's a beta driver, an
official driver update, or one of their legacy drivers picking up a few
fixes (at times they have even released four drivers at once). On the
opposite spectrum, AMD continues with monthly Catalyst driver updates on
both Linux and windows. Rather than a continual stream of new public
driver releases, AMD maintains a private beta program for their Catalyst
Linux driver. This private program is made up of AMD developers,
hardware vendors, users of different Linux distributions, other Linux
vendors, and end-users. Phoronix has been apart of this program for
years, but those testing this driver are under a strict Non-Disclosure
Agreement with AMD regarding pre-releases of their Linux software.
Today, however, AMD has decided to declassify some information
pertaining to its Linux Graphics Driver Beta Program.
Read more
at Phoronix.