Part of choosing hardware to add to a linux enthusiast’s computer has always involved eliminating all of ATI’s products from the list because of their notoriously bad support for non-Windows operating systems. Until recently ATI was despised by the Linux crowd because not only did the drivers suck but ATI kept promising to make better ones and never delivered. The past month has been wonderful though, first the ATI drivers became phenomenally better with increases in performance upto 90% and then AMD (who now owns ATI) announced that they would open up the graphics chip documentation so that open source drivers can be written.

In Madras atleast, the ATI line seems slightly cheaper, so I’m looking forward to this news though I won’t buy anything until I can be sure that the new drivers will support the card I want. However if they do deliver on their latest promise then ATI will be up over nVidia simply over the open drivers issue. It’s important because that way upgrading my distribution won’t include a painful experience with the graphics drivers. Go AMD!

Update: And it’s confirmed! ATI will help with open-source Linux drivers.