Dave Stevens wrote:
1 a good simple test of graphics capabilities for a Fedora install?
glxgears is not a benchmark, but it will give you the general feel. You should also check what your CPU usage is, while glxgears is running (if doing rendering in software, you'll see 100% cpu usage - otherwise, either no spike or the framerate will be very high, like you saw with fglrx)
2 the likelihood that Fedora will have comparable performance to Mandriva (or any other similar distribution) any time soon?
Performance doesn't depend on the linux distro. You should get about the same performance with any of them. If you meant "when will `enable desktop effects` work?" then the answer is that it works right now, with latest fglrx and manually-installed compiz/etc. I don't remember the magic combination, but I got it running once (though I haven't used it since).
3 Is the ATI disclosure of their software internals going to result in the RadeonHD driver getting better? or when?
ATI is not planning to disclose its software internals. What they're disclosing is the hardware specifications, so that software can be written for it. Problems are: * they're only releasing the recent hardware specs. If your chipset is pretty old, don't expect radeonhd to be a silver bullet. * so far, they have only released enough specs to perform mode/resolution changes. 2D and 3D acceleration are both on hold until more information is released. Worse, they have so far only promised to release those some time in 2008. Nobody knows how soon that will happen, and some believe it might never happen.
see http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7021 for a good account of current state of affairs.
HTH
