In a press release AMD has stated that their company will support Linux and provide drivers for their popular ATI video cards. For those who are famaliar with Linux, getting drivers for support of both ATI and NVidia cards can be problematic for some distributions. With this announcement, AMD pledges to support Linux. In their statement they said:

Sunnyvale, Calif. — September 5, 2007 –AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced plans to extend its leadership position in graphics software with major enhancements to performance and compatibility for ATI Radeon™ graphics for consumer Linux users. These improvements are planned for subsequent releases of ATI’s Catalyst™ software package beginning in early September. This announcement represents a significant first step in redefining the graphics landscape for Linux consumer users. Moving forward, AMD also plans to accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community as well.

“As client computing on Linux continues to grow so has our support and focus on delivering best-in-class performance and compatibility for our products,” said Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of software, Graphics Product Group at AMD. “In the second half of 2007 we plan to deliver the most significant enhancements for ATI Radeon graphics ever for Linux and reaffirm our commitment to consumer users and the community as a whole.”

With the forthcoming Catalyst 7.9 software release in September, AMD will add Linux support for the ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 series of graphics processors. The Radeon HD 2000 series offer a number of compelling new features for Linux users including AMD’s patented unified shader architecture.

This is good news for the Linux community and another shot in the arm for Linux itself. Hopefully we will see ATI drivers in future distributions of Linux.

Full article here.

Tags: amd, ati, drivers, linux