On 05/24/2012 09:55 PM, Akemi Yagi wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 2:44 AM, zxq9<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>
>>         A digression about the driver on SL6:
>> The annoying thing is that every time you update your kernel you'll need to
>> rebuild the drivers against the new kernel headers. The awesome part is that
>> the driver building process is mostly automated for you, AMD has lately done
>> a very nice job of maintaining its driver set for Linux, games, CAD, and
>> anything else graphical you want to do really fly on an A8, and all this is
>> free (both types of "free" -- AMD opensourced its Linux drivers, so the
>> Catalyst package is no longer "evil", or at least not as evil as it once
>> was).
>>
>> I wrote a procedure for the E350 (with some background) that should work
>> fine on your A8 on the SL forums here:
>> http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showtopic=415&view=findpost&p=7102
>>
>> Procedural notes for SL6 have also been added to the AMD driver wiki here:
>> http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Scientific_Linux#Scientific_Linux_6x
>>
>> The AMD release page is here:
>> http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx
>> (if not you can select your type from http://support.amd.com )
>>
>> Hope the explanation didn't confuse, and that the driver links are helpful.
>
> ... Or head for elrepo.org and install kmod-fglrx :
>
> http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-fglrx
>
> It survives kernel updates transparently, so there is no need to
> rebuild/install each time you update the kernel. Also, 'yum update'
> will update the version of the ATI driver when a new version of the
> driver becomes available.
>
> Basically, it a 'install once and forget forever' type operation. :-)
>
> In Scientific Linux 6, setting up ELRepo is as easy as:
>
> yum install elrepo-release
>
> Akemi

A note on this... in our experience there is a slight performance 
difference between the generically built ELRepo driver package and ones 
built directly against your kernel header on your hardware.

In the case of an A-series processor this probably won't be noticable 
unless you are an extremely demanding gamer, but on lighter systems like 
the E-series APUs using them as 3D CAD stations or enabling the desktop 
eye candy is just a touch annoying without letting the GPU pull out all 
its tricks.