KDE KWin May Drop Support For AMD Catalyst Drivers

An anonymous reader writes "The KWin window manager maintainer for KDE is looking at removing the legacy OpenGL 1.0 renderer from the KWin code-base due to the costs of supporting legacy hardware. This means dropping support for non-GL2+ graphics cards, which are all over six years old, but in the process would mean that for now there is no longer any support for the AMD Catalyst driver on the KDE desktop. Due to driver bugs, AMD's proprietary Catalyst software only works well with the GL1 renderer even though their latest hardware supports OpenGL 4."

It's the right move, unfortuntately

[haruchai]

Six years is a long time in the graphics world and AMD / ATI have had plenty of time to fix their broken stuff.

KDE, Gnome

[santax]

I remember when they first started out. Their gui-system would replace windows, but better. With less bloath and more freedom for users. Those days are long gone. I do hope the guys at kde understand that this will mean a new (and probably) big lost of users. AMD should get their drivers straightened out, but I can't help but have the feeling this will bite KDE in the butt and not AMD. Still a shame those gui's became so bloathed and slooowwww. And thank God for fluxbox and the likes.

Re:KDE, Gnome

[jadrian]

Still a shame those gui's became so bloathed and slooowwww. And thank God for fluxbox and the likes.

If this is how you feel, then you'd use Kwin with effects off, and wouldn't care about lack of OpenGL compositing. So I don't see your point.