Dennis Dryden wrote:
It is alot of work for one person, i think the question i intended to ask was are there any plans to create pre-built packages for the fglrx module and get them into the Debian archive(non-free section)? I guess not.
That would be great, but I can't do that myself. An official Debian developer would have to either adopt these packages or sponsor an upload -- if there are any DDs here, or if you know one who would be interested, please let me know. Once these packages are in Debian proper, kernel modules can be built just as they do with the NVidia drivers. And that touches the other point you make: no it's not a lot of work to build all the modules, unless you are so fool to try doing it by hand. I'm not sure how the Debian maintainers manage all the kernels and related modules, but I'm sure they have a repository for the different kernel configurations and some infrastructure that builds everything at the touch of a button. If anyone has a clue, please let me know.
Note however that the current line of thinking in the Debian community is more oriented toward getting rid of anything non-free altogether, so it might not be easy to get the fglrx driver into Debian proper: see the recent changes to the Social Contract and consequent removal of non-free firmware from the kernel and from XFree86. I stopped using the official Debian kernel source packages for that reason: Free Software is very important to me, but it comes a close second to Working Software With All The Features I Need To Do What I Want To Do. Linus using BitKeeper even if it's not Free is the best example I can think of to support this reasoning.
Again i think these packages are very good, shame ATI don't open source the driver(if i had known cards above 9200 had no open source drivers i would have got a 9200 Pro and not this 9600 Pro or stuck with nVidia as there drivers are better).
I'm not sure about that, but I tried them only on a very old Vanta. That's because I prefer ATI cards, but that's something personal. :)
-- Ciao, Flavio