AMD dropping support for pre 5000 series cards in new drivers

[sswilson]

Doesn't this just mean that linux distros will have to poll for vid card hardware and choose an older set of drivers if it's no longer supported by the newest ones? I don't see this as being all that big of an issue so long as the old drivers are still available.

[MARSTG]

AMD knows there are a lot of old card in the market and being used so they are ditching the support to ramp up same sales of modern hardware. BTW where are the low powered versions from the 7000 series? The likes of 7450 or 7550?

[Arinoth]

I can't see this being a massive deal as it just means distros of Linux will have to do a little bit more work, or their users will. It's not like you can play most games on Linux, it's mainly having basic graphical support required 9/10 times for Linux users anyways.

If this had been for say windows though it would have been a horrible move.

[Chris]

I have always used AMD/ATI linus drivers on my Linux/Debian, and I could not understand some error messages. Finally I had enough, a month ago, I switched back to the native linux drivers in Debian, and all is fine, no errors and no hiccups. BTW, I have HD4850.
So, it does not matter to me since Debian has done a good job supporting my card.