ATI drivers on Linux.

Hi all.
I have questions for people who develop on Linux platform with ATI cards on Linux.

I’am an OpenGL developer (hobbyst), and now I am preparing to enter in the OpenCL world (after I have developed with it on the PS3.)
I used NVIDIA hardware on Linux platform since many years, and you know, NVIDIA drivers work perfectly.
Now I have to update my PC, and ATI products seems very competitive, but for many years ATI Linux drivers has been considered unstable/buggy/slow.

The question is: are the AMD/ATI drivers for Linux comparable with NVIDIA drivers (stable, updated, etc…)??
The second question is: they are usable on NON officially supported distribuition ?? (I use Arch Linux, or Crux)

Thanks in advance.

I think the archive AMD provide is usable with any linux distribution, because it’s just binary libraries.
Moreover there is no installer, to benefit from the ICD system (using nvidia and ati platforms) you will have to put a file in /etc/opencl/vendors/ pointing on libatiocl*.