Last night, I was bemoaning xorg 7.1.1 breaking the ATI’s binary video driver that my laptop requires. Before bed, I said:

02:14 < @StoneTable> i’m gonna sleep, and dream that ati releases a driver tomorrow for 7.1

I was on an afternoon conference call when I saw something new pop up in my RSS reader:

12:47 < @StoneTable> Before attempting to install the ATI Proprietary Linux driver, the following software must be installed:
12:47 < @StoneTable> * XOrg 6.7, 6.8, 6.9,7.0 or 7.1; XFree86 version 4.3
12:47 < @StoneTable> I WIN
12:47 < @StoneTable> I WIN
12:47 < @StoneTable> I WIN

So today, at 12:33PM CST, ATI released a new binary driver that supports xorg 7.1. Their release schedule continues to drop every 4-6 weeks, and the timeliness of this was perfect. ATI beat NVidia in releasing a binary driver that works with xorg 7.1. ATI seems to be the least-preferred vendor when it comes to video hardware (particularly in laptops), but I don’t know how much of that is warranted anymore.