Praveen’s Journal

I am using Lenovo Thinkpad T60 that has ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 on it. I run Debian GNU/Linux sid on my laptop. Even though I am not extensively using a lot of 3D applications on my laptop, I am forced to use AMD’s proprietary fglrx driver so that I can have my dual screen setup running with AMD’s big desktop. I have used NVIDIA’s proprietary driver on Linux three years ago. It was much better even three years back compared to the crippled fglrx driver that AMD distributes currently.

I am so much annoyed with the driver releases that AMD makes. I was so unhappy that fglrx driver didn’t have AIGLX support. This kept me away from Compiz that I was running on my old laptop in spite of the fact that I just had a mediocre Intel graphics adapter. Finally AMD added the much awaited AIGLX support in fglrx 8.42. However, I was not able to run Compiz using that driver on my box as there was a bug that made it crippled with XOrg 1.4. That is not all of it. Scrolling in most of the applications had become very slow. I can’t do anything but to wait for the next driver release where things would be fixed.

Then came the fglrx 8.43 release. I didn’t see a significant stuff in the driver apart from their change of version number. Now the driver is known as “ATI Catalyst” and the version number uses y.mm format. I got ATI Catalyst 7.11. They didn’t even care to fix the bug that crippled the driver with XOrg 1.4. The scrolling speed issue is not fixed as well. The first application to communicate with the driver would hang eternally till you kill it. Wait, that is not all! It also brings a shiny memory leak issue in the OpenGL applications. What now? Wait for the next ATI Catalyst.

Here comes ATI Catalyst 7.12. They have fixed OpenGL memory leak issue. But the XOrg 1.4, scrolling speed, first application to communicate to the driver still stays. I got an added bonus. This driver breaks the support for wide screen resolutions for certain displays. Well, I was the unfortunate. My Thinkpad can’t run 1400×1050 anymore with this driver. It fell back automatically to 1024×768. It looked horrible! I had no option than to switch back to 7.11 and wait for 8.1, where they will ‘Fix one; break two’ again.

Here are the few thoughts that came to my mind after this whole experience.

• I would never buy a ATI graphics card given the state of their Linux driver. I am planning to go for NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT for the gaming PC that I would get assembled shortly. Can’t AMD realize that they are losing at least a bunch of customers because of their awful Linux driver?
• It is clear that AMD’s driver release follows Iterative approach with an iteration cycle close to 4/5 weeks. If AMD can’t either add significant stuff to the driver or test the driver thoroughly, why don’t they revisit the iteration cycle? It makes no sense to me to release a quick degrading versions. Each incremental release should evolve consistently.
• How many developers are working on the driver as of now? I guess it is one or maybe two. Does AMD find it difficult to hire developers for their Linux driver? I would expect that AMD should have atleast 4 developers dedicated to their driver development.

One of the major headaches that I had after moving to the US was due to the way my name was handled in various places. I am from Tamil Nadu in India. In Tamil Nadu, we don’t have an official concept of last name. Instead, we have a concept known as “Initial” where we use father name’s first letter in front of the name. My name is Praveen Kumar and my father’s name is Ravi Kumar. So, I was called “R Praveen Kumar”. However, when I applied for an Indian passport back in 2003, I was asked to expand my initials as my last name. So, my name has become “Praveen Kumar Ravi Kumar” where “Praveen Kumar” was the first name and “Ravi Kumar” was the last name. Needless to say, we don’t have a middle name concept.

After I moved to the US, when I applied for a Social Security Card in the Social Security Office, the officer made “Praveen/Kumar/Ravi Kumar” as my first, middle and last names respectively. Living in the US with a last name that has two parts clearly caused a lot of confusion for me in the past five months. Also, I didn’t prefer “Kumar” to repeat twice in my name. So, I decided that I would adopt “Praveen/Ravi/Kumar” as my first, middle and last name respectively. It was not a straight forward procedure.

I had to file a petition in one of the Supreme Courts of California for a name change. As a part of this process, I had to advertise “Order to show cause” notice in a local newspaper for four consecutive weeks and attend a court hearing. In the meantime, I also had to publish an advertisement back in the area of my permanent residence in India. The latter procedure is required for getting my Indian passport updated with my new name. All these procedures burnt around USD 500 out of my pocket. Finally, I was granted a “Decree showing Name Change” by Fremont Hall of Justice a couple of weeks back.

Once I received the order, I had to go to the Social Security Office to get a new Social Security Card showing my new name. After a week, I got my Driver’s license updated with my new name in the DMV office. Finally, I had to notify my financial institutions and other places about my name change. I also applied for a new Indian passport. It was really annoying to get all these done. But I love the simplicity in Praveen Ravi Kumar!

I have bought (a month and a half back) a used Honda Civic LX 2001. The color is Burgundy. This is an automatic transmission vehicle. I was actually looking for a manual transmission vehicle (mostly Mitsubushi Lancer Rally). However, it was not that easy to find a good manual transmission car for low mileage within my budget. I bought this car from one of my colleagues. Initially I was not happy with the acceleration of the car. However, I started loving this car pretty soon. I was a bit scared to buy my first car. But, it has turned out to be really a nice one. It is more than a month and there are no issues so far. A couple of weeks back, I had to give her a jump start as I drained out my battery by leaving my headlights turned on.