Linux, as an operating system, has been at the forefront of maintaining support for older hardware, even for the two-decade-old ATI Radeon GPUs.
ATI Radeon GPUs Still Are Getting New Features at Linux, Contributed By Independent Engineers
There's always interesting stuff to find at Linux when it comes to getting information out of merge requests, and this time, Phoronix has spotted an update for the rather 'ancient' ATI Radeon R300 GPUs, credits to the open-source developers that are giving their time to maintain support for outdated hardware. This time, with the Mesa 25.3 version, the ATI Radeon GPUs will get two memory-related OpenGL extensions, which will provide more details around the GPU's memory, including ensuring effective memory utilization.
The interesting part is that memory-oriented features are being released to monitor VRAM sized around 64 MB, significantly lower compared to modern-day standards. The figure itself has become so special that open-source developers are actually giving it special treatment. The new OpenGL extensions include the GL_ATI_meminfo and GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info, mainly targeted towards checking memory utilization, and have been pushed out by the developer Brais Solla.
The last time we saw support for ATI Radeon GPUs on Windows was back in 2009, and this shows how 'durable' Linux is when it comes to hardware capability, and it still hasn't phased out support for the R300 GPUs. The report claims that work is still being done on the Radeon DRM driver to ensure that the ATI Radeon GPUs on the platform work seamlessly, although we are curious about what kinds of users are utilizing such hardware in the modern world.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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