14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has just released a new beta driver update for its current product line, integrating support for the latest Linux kernel and a number of important fixes.
AMD is working its way towards a 13.10 stable release of their driver and the developers are implementing more and more fixes with each version.
The following distributions are officially supported: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Suite 6.3 and 6.4, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3, OpenSuSE 11.4 and 12.1, Ubuntu 12.04.2 and 13.04.
The changes included in this version of the AMD Catalyst driver include a fix for a system hang up that occurred when entering the startx command after setting up an Eyefinity desktop, a fix for permission issue with procfs on Linux kernel 3.10, and another fix for system hang observed while running disaster stress test on Ubuntu 12.10.
According to the developers, the AC/DC switching is now automatically detected, which, in theory, should help the laptop owners. Also, the laptop backlight adjustment has been fixed, making this a very friendly driver update.
A host of other changes have been implemented, like a fix for Glxtest failures observed in the log file when forcing Anti-Aliasing, a fix for Cairo-dock, and a fix for a C4Engine get corruption with GL_ARB_texture_array enabled.
The AMD Catalyst Linux software suite has a few system requirements that must be met: Xorg/Xserver 7.4 and above (up to 1.14), Linux kernel 2.6 or above (up to 3.10), glibc version 2.2 or 2.3, and POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support.
A complete list of changes, improvements, and supported graphics cards can be found in the official announcement.
Download AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta 2 Driver right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It also means that a few other problems are still present, despite the extensive number of fixes.