14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has announced that the second Catalyst 14.6 Beta video driver for the Linux platform has been released and users can now download and test it.
It's been quite a while since the previous driver release by AMD for the Linux platform and it looks like the company still isn't ready to promote a stable version. This means that the Linux users will have to contend with yet another Beta. At least it comes with a few fixes.
Most drivers usually bring support for new devices, but that's not the case with this one. The developers have improved the compatibility with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), a number of package and distribution generation options have been added, the recommend options are now set by default, the installation procedure will help users to manage the generated distribution package, pop-up messages are now provided to help guide users through the installation process, and any installation of pre-requisites is now identified properly.
Also, a number of issues have been corrected as well. For example, a random lock-up that occurred with Witcher 2 when launching the application has been fixed, a screen corruption that occurred when connecting an external monitor to some PowerXpress A+I platforms has been repaired, the X server no longer crashes when rotation is enabled with the Tear Free Desktop, a failure on exit of OpenGL programs has been corrected, an error message that was displayed when running clinfo in console mode has been removed, and a blank screen that occurred when hotplugging the HDMI monitor from MST hub has been corrected.
A few problems still remain, as it was to be expected with a Beta release. For example, DOTA 2 may hang while playing on the AMD Radeon 7900 or AMD Radeon R9 280X, and Witcher 2 exhibits intermittent corruption when swinging sword in the Arena.
The driver also has a few very specific system requirements and dependencies: Xorg/Xserver 7.4 and above (up to 1.15) and glibc version 2.2 or 2.3. POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is recommended for 3D applications, but it's not mandatory. Users will also need to have Linux kernel 3.13 in place. Later versions are not officially supported, but that problem can be circumvented.
You can download the second AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Linux video driver right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.