Update on Jan. 16, 2014: Since I originally wrote this post, I succeeded in installing Catalyst with AMD's script in Fedora and buying myself a whole lot of time with that distribution. I also tried Debian Wheezy with live media containing nonfree firmware, and that is looking even better than Jessie if I don't want/need an EFI-friendly installer. My original plan was to stick with Fedora until the Debian Jessie freeze and then make the move (sometime late this year). But if Wheezy works out, I'd want to go to it sooner rather than later and avoid Jessie for as long as possible (or until suspend/resume somehow returns to my neglected AMD APU chip.

Update on Feb. 4, 2014: I have suspend/resume working in Fedora 20 with the fglrx/Catalyst driver, and I'm very confident that the same technique I used to get it working there will also work in Debian Jessie, so that means if I do want to run Debian in the near future, I can get working fglrx video, working suspend/resume and EFI booting with Testing/Jessie and don't need to use Wheezy unless I absolutely want to. The only thing that makes me nervous about installing Jessie now is the uncertainty over which init system Debian will end up with -- both in the Jessie and Jessie+1 cycles. But since I have everything but printing to my crappy HP USB printer working in Fedora, it's likely that I'll stick with it for the near (and maybe farther) future.

To keep a short story short, the maintainer of the proprietary AMD Catalyst (aka fglrx) driver for the Fedora-focused RPM Fusion repository doesn't want to do it anymore.

And he made this decision not before the release of Fedora 20 with lots of notice -- and not after with lots of notice BUT PRETTY MUCH DURING THE RELEASE with no notice.

That means my Fedora 19-to-20 upgrade left me without Catalyst. And that means much poorer video performance, higher heat and more fan noise for my newish AMD APU chip -- the Trinity series A4-4300M model with AMD Radeon HD 7420g graphics.

And while the open-source Radeon driver has gotten a whole lot better in the 3.12 Linux kernel, the Catalyst driver is much, much better for this hardware.

I already mentioned the slow video. I can barely run GNOME 3 with the open driver, and THIS LAPTOP ISN'T EVEN A YEAR OLD.

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I got a lot out of reading Michael Larabel's AMD Catalyst 2013 Linux Graphics Driver Year-In-Review on his Phoronix site.

He's been following all of the Linux video drivers for years, and his perspective is very valuable, especially in his assessment that it's been a horrible year for the proprietary Catalyst driver and a great one for the open Radeon driver.

I can confirm that I finally have 3D acceleration in the open Radeon driver on the 3.12.x Linux kernel but that the performance isn't what it is with the Catalyst driver. That Fedora users might no longer have a choice between the two when it comes to a pre-packaged driver is troubling.

But thanks, Michael, for a thorough look at AMD graphics and Linux.

Of course things are going better for Nvidia, Michael reports.

That's cold comfort for me with my AMD hardware, and while desktop users can generally chose to shove an AMD or Nvidia card into the box, there aren't all that many laptops with Nvidia chips on them. No, AMD is a whole lot more common, especially if you're trying to save a few dollars over an Intel-based laptop.

So overall, it's pretty much AMD vs. Intel when it comes to laptop graphics, and AMD's extremely lackluster performance in 2013 is leading to me recommend against buying AMD hardware. While the open Radeon driver project is going from strength to strength, sometimes you need (and/or want) the proprietary driver.

And in 2013, there appears to be no contest when it comes to graphics for Linux. Intel and Nvidia are doing a lot. AMD is doing a whole lot less.

If you want to delve further into the rabbit hole that is Linux graphics, start at this part of Phoronix. Good luck. I really appreciate Michael Larabel's testing and writing, but I'd rather things just worked (and wish I had opted for an Intel-based laptop when I needed one on short notice in March of this year).