Question about Catalyst Driver Updates

[Etherflyer]

Hey Guys,

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but I read the descriptions and I took my best shot.

I'm looking at giving Mageia a try but running virtual box nor LiveCD seemed to answer my question. One of the problems I've had with other distros is that the drivers are out of date for cataylst. Yes, I know you can always install from the AMD website but at least in my experience its hit or miss if it goes flawlessly or becomes a pain to fix, especially when it comes time to do regular system updates.

So I guess my question is does Mageia keep the current catalyst driver updated in their repository/driver manager? (14.12 right now)

Thanks in advance for answering my question and being patient if I used the wrong words. I know juuuust enough to get me into trouble.

[doktor5000]

You don't mention which Mageia version you tested. For the stable version, there are usually no version updates, please see our updates policy: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy
For your question, e.g. Mageia 5 will have catalyst 14.501, Mageia 4 has 14.12.

[Etherflyer]

Well I guess I was more concerned with general policy which Im not sure the link really explains(or Im obtuse).

But from your post I think what Im getting is if I run Mageia 5 for example then itll have fglrx 14.501 that was released as Catalyst 14.12 omega driver from AMD. If AMD releases more driver releases after the release of Mageia 5 I wont get an option to benefit from it until Mageia 6 as Mageia 5 will not have its Catalyst packages updated to the newer releases. At least if I stick to the Mageia display driver manager?

[pete910]

They only get updated when AMD release an official update. The beta drivers they put out don't. Like Dok has stated, MGA5 has their omega drivers as default. Not actually sure if there in MGA4 as I jumped to MGA5 now.

To be honest the AMD drivers from their site have always installed fine in Mageia. Just be sure to remove the system installed version first. I have used AMD GPUS throughout most MGA releases and not had any issues.

For the novice user I would recommend sticking with the ones in the repo(Software installer)

May I ask what card you have, personally running a 290x, Daughter inherited my old HD5870.

[Etherflyer]

Ohhhh. Well that's not as bad then if everyone gets the stable driver updates AMD releases. And ya I almost always used the AMD website ones(just use the.run file) as well (at least with Mint/Ubuntu) but lately they either don't work, or more commonly if I forget to switch back to the open driver if anything at all gets updated in the system update that catalyst uses Xorg gets borked and then I'm hoping purge/reinstall commands will save me(mostly these days they do work but in the past, i wasn't always so lucky). I noticed it doesn't do this when when installing from a proper package in the repos so I guess that's why I was looking for a distro with more recent drivers as they're released. Of course, all the distros are different so I might not even have those headaches with say Mageia, but that's why I'm so interested.

And sure, I have a Radeon 290. Which I'm assuming is a lot like your 290x where it's needed a lot of the updates over this last year to make it usable, let alone run well whether it was the open driver or propietary. Albeit, it's been getting leaps and bounds better with each update.