AMD/ATI drivers from website vs. proprietary drivers in Ubuntu 12.04 Repos?

Question

I have 2 questions regarding to different AMD Radeon drivers:

1. What is the difference between the 3?

   • AMD/ATI Driver ( 12.04 Repo )
   • AMD/ATI Driver, Post release update ( 12.04 Repo )
   • AMD/ATI Driver 12.4 ( AMD Website )

2. If I install the "Post release update" driver from Ubuntu Repos; Will I get future driver updates from Ubuntu, In other words what's Ubuntu Radeon driver update policy?

Solution

Here are the differences,

The fglrx package, contains the driver version available at distro release.

The fglrx-updates package, contains the newest driver version packaged for Ubuntu.

The AMD website download, provides the newest driver released.

It takes time to properly package the official AMD releases, so fglrx-updates might not always be the absolute newest release. fglrx-updates is often still very recent, It was specifically packaged for Ubuntu, and I normally prefer it to the other options. The only time you would want to go either up, or down, is when a specific situation arises.

Comments

[Admin]

The doc. talks about the Open Source driver for AMD/ATI graphics, so doesn't answer my question.

[Jason]

Thanks for the quick response. So "fglrx-updates" should be updated when AMD releases 12.5, 12.6, etc. but it's going to take longer for Ubuntu to update the drivers correct?

[artfulrobot]

Is there any way to find out which version fglrx-updates is based on? apt-cache show fglrx-updates does not show any version number like 12.5. Be good to know.