Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Monday February 2 2009, David C. Rankin wrote:
Randall R Schulz wrote:
The driver I'm running is from the ATI / AMD repository (http://www2.ati.com/suse/11.1/) and the full version string is "8.561_2.6.27.7_9.1-1.1". Is that the 9.1 driver you refer to? It kind of looks like it is.
No, 8.561 is the 8-12 driver with the know broken 3D issue. If you want 9-1, (which is the 8.573-1 version) you need to download the package installer. The link to the driver download is: https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver... The download is the same for i586 and x86_64. I have a quick step by step howto at: http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/ati/ati_quick-reference That is just a text file that contains the information. The install takes about 10 minutes. (the driver download takes longer for me 82M) After you build the driver with: ati-driver-installer-9-1-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE111-AMD64 (or SuSE/SUSE111-IA32 for 32-bit), it will produce an openSuSE rpm like this: fglrx64_7_1_0_SUSE110-8.573-1.x86_64.rpm I have a script that will automate the rest of the install http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/ati/atidrv-install It is no thing of beauty, not a publish product, but it gets the job done. Just be in runlevel 3 (it will prompt you) and MAKE SURE YOU GIVE THE FULL PATH TO THE RPM. I don't know why, but rpm chokes unless it gets the full path like: ./atidrv-install /home/david/linux/ati-compiz/rpms/fglrx64_7_1_0_SUSE110-8.573-1.x86_64.rpm and not ./atidrv-install ../rpms/fglrx64_7_1_0_SUSE110-8.573-1.x86_64.rpm I know it shouldn't make any difference, but it does??? You can read through the script easily and see what it does. (basically just removes any existing fglrx driver, does a prep of the kernel source, then installs the rpm which has a post-install script that compiles the kernel module against the source) If you install from the ATI package DISABLE THE ATI REPOSITORY IN YAST OR ZYPPER. Otherwise you will pull the 8-12 driver back in on every update and there is no way to deselect the older driver from being installed in yast.
Actually, I removed the compiz packages in an attempt to recover good performance, since I don't use its capabilities, but it made not difference.
Is the Radeon driver in the standard distribution? The only packages
The radeon driver is part of the openSuSE release and in 11.1 Beta5 testing a change was made to install the radeon driver by default for ATI cards instead of that God Awful frame-buffer driver. In you xorg.conf, the only difference is changing the Driver line from 'fglrx' to 'radeon' and rmmod the fglrx driver and modprobe the radeon driver and then do a depmod -a so the radeon driver is loaded at boot.
The question remains though, Why the crappy performance out of every ATI Linux driver release since 8-10? As mentioned, I have submitted trouble tickets with ATI for every release since 8-9. Maybe if more of us did it, we would get some help with the issue.
It is perplexing an disappointing. Does Novell's Bugzilla have a voting system? If so, I'll vote for you tickets if you point me to them.
I don't think so. Some of the helpful folks on the list scoff and belittle you for filing against the fglrx driver. However, we have had several bugs related to the driver worked thanks to Stefan. Any more, they just close all ATI driver bugs as 'INVA' and then belittle you for filing them to begin with. Give the 9-1 driver a try, it should have corrected the broken 3D stuff for 11.1. However, on 11.0 I still see the system slowness that was introduced last October and hasn't been fixed yet. If I was running 11.1 for a working machine, I'd seriously check the difference between the radeon and fglrx driver and I'd probably end up running the radeon driver if the normal day to day tasks were quicker. You not using compiz, and is long as your not a big gamer, the radeon driver is great. -- 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+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org