New ATI Linux Video Driver Has Support for OpenGL ES 2.0

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced last evening, August 25th, yet another improved version of its ATI Catalyst Linux display driver, available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. ATI Catalyst 10.8 introduces final and stable support for the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 operating systems, and official OpenGL ES 2.0 support.

The software version was updated to 8.762. Below are the highlights of ATI Catalyst 10.8:

· Fixed Catalyst Control Center launch issue after an X restart, if the primary display was disabled (dual-head/clone mode);
· Fixed another Catalyst Control Center launch issue, for owners of two Gemini ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series multi-adapters;
· Fixed fgl_glxgears/glxgears issue when the application was closed from the X button;
· Fixed a fgl_glxgears/glxgears performance issue, on various cards;
· Fixed Xorg Server crash if an OpenGL application was launched in fullscreen, and CrossFire was enabled;
· The desktop arrangement area will no longer appear empty, if Catalyst Control Center is relaunched, and the secondary display is hot-unplugged or disabled.

Supported operating systems:

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) suite;
· Novell/SUSE Linux product suite;
· Ubuntu Linux (including 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).

Requirements:

· XOrg 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 or 7.5;
· Linux kernel 2.6 or above;
· glibc version 2.2 or 2.3;
· POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is needed for 3D applications;
· You need all of these packages before installing: XFree86-Mesa-libGL, libstdc++, libgcc, XFree86-libs, fontconfig, freetype, zlib and gcc;
· For the best experience, you should also have: the kernel module build environment, either the sources or the headers, and, if you plan to use the RPM packages, you need to make sure the RMP utility is working properly.

As usual, a lot of known issues remain unresolved in this release. Check them out here.

Detailed installation instructions can be found here, in PDF format.

Download the ATI/AMD Linux Display Driver 10.8 right now from Softpedia.