On Wednesday 24 June 2009 08:47:35 am you wrote:
On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 04:39:49PM +0200, Susanne Oberhauser wrote:
Now what we _can_ do is, we start building the different ati driver versions in parallel in an obs project:
project: ati-fglrx packages: ati-fglrx-8.8 ati-fglrx-8.9 ati-fglrx-8.10 ati-fglrx-9.1 ati-fglrx-9.2 ..
Unfortunately we can't do this for fglrx driver and probably any proprietary driver in obs. So either for this we would need a 3rd party buildservice or convince ATI to host such a system of repos.
Stefan
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Stefan, All, This issue should be at the top of the priority list. As we all know, with the introduction of the 8-10 driver providing support for Xorg 7.4 and the 2400 series cards, the driver was broken for many earlier cards x1200, etc., leaving the last functional driver for many being the 8-9 release. With ATI dropping support for all pre-2400 series cards with the 9-3 driver, and the 8-10 to 9-3 drivers not working for a whole lot of laptops, opensuse presently cannot offer a workable driver for all laptops with pre-2400 series cards because the 8-9 driver does not support xorg 7.4 Further complicating matters is the lack of downclocking/GPU-chipset powerdown capabilities of the radeon and radeonhd drivers. Without the fglrx downclocking, many laptops will literally burn themselves up. I did temperature testing for the radeonhd list (ongoing) and, for example, there is a 25 deg. F difference in my laptop exhaust temperature between the fglrx driver and the radeonhd driver. (147 Deg. F with the radeonhd will fry your leg if you are resting your "laptop" on your lap) The radeonhd folks (Matthias Hopf, Rafal Milecki, Yang Zaho, etc..) are doing fantastic work with the driver, but coding the GPU-chipset powerdown/downclocking routines will take time. Further, performance, performance, performance. The radeonhd driver doesn't provide near the performance that the fglrx driver has. The driver works great for 2D, compiz works fine, but for anything beyond that, there is no comparison. (I know glxgears is not a speed test, but just for comparison sake, my laptop with the fglrx driver give 960 FPS, with the radeonhd driver 183 FPS) You can see the dramatic difference. Given the "heat" + "performance" issues currently associated with the radeonhd driver, the fglrx driver is a must for laptop users. (Desktop users are OK on the heat issue, it is just the cramped space and limited cooling of laptops that expose this significant issue) Now for openSuSE, currently there is no upgrade path beyond 11.0 for users effected by the 8-10 to 9-3 driver issues, because the 8-9 driver does NOT support xorg 7.4. The only fglrx driver offering that opensuse has is for the 2400+ Series cards. (Guess how many laptops have 2400+ Series GPUs -- very, very few) The radeonhd driver will eventually be a great replacement for fglrx, but that is in the distant future, not for 11.2. Stefan has done a great job in the past working fglrx driver issues. But the ATI current/Legacy split has really brought about serious usability issues for opensuse (as well as all other Linux distros) The bottom line is, some entity with the clout of Novell, RedHad, Gentoo, Ubuntu or the combination of all of the above will need to approach AMD/ATI and find a workable solution to either: (1) Negotiate the release of "Legacy Card" driver code to the downclocking and performance can be maintained by the Linux community while ATI retains the 2400+ series code proprietary; or (2) Negotiate the setup and maintenance of a 3rd party driver repository for ATI driver, that maintains working ATI drivers for current linux releases for both ATI "current" and "legacy" cards. The alternative is where we are today. A majority of boxes with ATI cards have no driver support in Linux from ATI, and while the open-source radeonhd driver is getting much better, the lack of downclocking/GPU-chipset powerdown on laptops will literally burn a hole in your leg and fry your palms even with the options: Option "ForceLowPowerMode" Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "100000" set in xorg.conf Serious issues that need serious attention before the dvds are pressed for 11.2 final. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org