The previous Linux driver from ATI/AMD was a big step up from the previous drivers, but it was mainly intended for the R6xx users and did cause some trouble for users with older cards. With the 8.42 driver update AMD has fixed a lot of these issues and has finally also added AIGLX support. This will let you run composite Window manager such as Compiz, which is now integrated into quite a lot of the big Linux distributions, without having to turn to XGL. The driver also comes with numerous big fixes, improved video playback and overall performance boosts.
Over at Phoronix they’ve tested the new driver and taken a look at the updated Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition. There are a lot of new features and updates to the control panel, and it is actually starting to look like nice. Although there is still a lot of things missing, the most obvious being Catalyst AI.
The Compiz Fusion compatibility isn’t perfect though, but the bugs are few and as long as you use Compiz 0.6 and not the older v0.3 you should be fine.
