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On January 27th, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) announced a brand-new version of its versatile ATI Catalyst proprietary Display Driver for Linux users.

ATI Catalyst 10.1 updates the software to version 8.69 and it introduces production support for the Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) operating system from Canonical. Available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures, ATI Catalyst 10.1 also fixes the following issues:

• X.Org no longer crashes on an Ubuntu 9.10 system, if multiple Xinerama-enabled X.Org server generations are executed;
• Switching between virtual desktops no longer breaks the operating system;
• Single mode is now shown properly in the “Display Manager Properties” tab of the ATI Catalyst Control Center, instead of multiple modes, if the “big desktop” mode is enabled;
• The system no longer crashes if an HDMI monitor is hot-plugged, or if the users toggle between HDMI and LCD;
• Fixed an issue on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 32-bit systems, when the “Detect Displays” button was selected in ATI Catalyst Control Center, and an HDMI display was hot-plugged.

However, lots of known issues remain unresolved for this release of the ATI Catalyst suite, especially for Ubuntu users!

Requirements

• X.Org 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4;
• Linux kernel 2.6 or higher;
• glibc version 2.2 or 2.3;
• Support for POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) is necessary for 3D programs;
• The following packages should be installed on your system: XFree86-Mesa-libGL, libstdc++, libgcc, XFree86-libs, fontconfig, freetype, zlib and gcc.

Also, please note that 64-bit users must have the 32-bit libraries installed before executing/updating the driver! Moreover, a GCC compiler, kernel-headers and kernel-source are required to build the modules and to enable 2D and 3D acceleration.

Supported operating systems

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux;
• Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux;
• openSUSE Linux;
• Ubuntu Linux.

Detailed installation instructions for the ATI Catalyst installer can be found in this PDF file.

Download the ATI/AMD Linux Display Drivers 10.1 right now from Softpedia.