Download Driver For AMD Catalyst Linux Display Driver 12.8

AMD has also released new Linux drivers for its Radeon video cards along with drivers for Windows. The download is just over 100MB in size, but can be used in both 32bit and 64bit environments. Version 12.6 is suitable for the Radeon HD 2400 and higher, the FireStream 9170, 9250 and 9270, and the embedded E2400 and E4690. In addition, versions 6.9 through 7.6 of X.org, Linux kernel 2.6 and above, and glibc versions 2.2 and 2.3 are supported. AMD hasn’t supplied release notes with the Linux driver for quite some time now, so we can’t tell you exactly what has changed. Phoronix looked at it as usual, but can’t get too excited about it either:

AMD Catalyst 12.8 Driver For Linux: Not Exciting

A Catalyst 12.8 proprietary driver release is now available for Linux, but it doesn’t pack much in the way of changes.

As usual, members of the Phoronix Forums community have been quick to monitor AMD servers looking for new driver releases to discuss. They are now playing with Catalyst 12.8 but for Linux users there isn’t much in the way of exciting changes.

Catalyst 12.8 is based upon the fglrx 8.982 release, which is sad. the Failing Catalyst 12.6 for Linux was also based upon the 8.98 release stream so in the past two months there isn’t much in the way of changes.

The only official change for this new Catalyst 12.8 Linux binary is production support for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but there’s already been suitable 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” support previous to the 12.8 release.

Meanwhile, internally at AMD and within their closed beta lists they’ve already been onto the 9.00 stream for several weeks. However, it looks like AMD is giving the more recent driver code greater time to bake before sharing it with the world.