Does the X1550 work with Linux yet?

[dav7]

I see.

How long should it take for this stuff to become mainstream for most distros? If it's less than 6 months, I might wait until then.

-dav7

[bridgman]

Ubuntu 8.10 seems to have a pretty decent set of driver versions already for someone with a 5xx card.

I haven't tried it on an X1550 but it works well out of the box on the 5xx cards I do have.

[jeffro-tull]

I don't know what Milyardo's smoking. I also have an R500 (X1300), and it NEVER worked well with fglrx. Under any distro, with any version of Xorg, with any release of fglrx. Something was always busted.

Anyways, I have an R500. Until about a month ago, I was running Arch Linux. R500's work with FOSS stuff. You need Mesa 7.2, Xorg 7.4, Xserver 1.5, and kernel 2.6.26 (or better, for all three). Last I used it, the stuff was in the "testing" repo, but it was all there, supplied by Arch, a mere "pacman -S" away.

This gave me hardware 3D and basic ACPI (screen dimming on my laptop, etc.). I haven't used Compiz, but Kwin's composite effects worked fine with OpenGL and render.

It wasn't perfect, though. I run dual head (xrandr foo --left-of bar). the right edge of foo occasionally gets some horizontal "flicker" or "static" when scrolling (it stops when the scrolling stops). Every once in a great while, the cursor would get seriously messed up - it would look like the silhouette of the top half, copied and placed below the original, with about a dozen repetitions. Couldn't figure out what triggered it, and it didn't happen often, only happened with dual-head, but it was there.

Other than that, there is some occasional horizontal tearing in full-screen video playback (not nearly as bad as the diagonal tearing I always had with fglrx), and, unlike some cards out there, you need your xorg.conf to get it to work. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, but it did need at least a couple things declared. Still have my xorg.conf from my arch install, if you want it as a starting point.

But yeah, good luck. And remember - the card isn't a lost cause. It's in good shape now, and it's best days on Linux are still ahead of it!

[dav7]

bridgman: I see.

jeffro-tull: Ooh, thanks for your very interesting reply.

So... hm. I'll wait for the video tearing and dual-head issues to get fixed up and then put the X1550 in! :P

-dav7

[Extreme Coder]

dav7, you're on Arch Linux, right?
The packages in the main repos already DO support 3D, Xv, and all that pretty well.
Just do: (as root)

pacman -Rd catalyst catalyst-utils
pacman -S libgl libdrm xf86-video-ati

and here is the xorg.conf I use for my X1650:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "xtrap"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "freetype"
	Load  "synaptics"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Option     "EnablePageFlip"     	"on"
        Option     "AccelDFS"           	"on"
        Option     "DisplayPriority"    	"high"
        Option     "ColorTiling"        	"on"
        Option     "AccelMethod"        	"EXA"
        Option     "DRI"                	"on"
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "radeon"
	VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
	BoardName   "RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200M]"
	BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     1
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     4
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     15
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Modify as you see fit for your needs
and I can change resolution just fine, with the KRandr applet in KDEmod 4. I'm sure there's something out there for GNOME users

Let us know how it goes.

[agd5f]

It wasn't perfect, though. I run dual head (xrandr foo --left-of bar). the right edge of foo occasionally gets some horizontal "flicker" or "static" when scrolling (it stops when the scrolling stops). Every once in a great while, the cursor would get seriously messed up - it would look like the silhouette of the top half, copied and placed below the original, with about a dozen repetitions. Couldn't figure out what triggered it, and it didn't happen often, only happened with dual-head, but it was there.

The display watermark setup needs some work on some setups. In your case the following option may help:
Option "DisplayPriority" "HIGH"

Other than that, there is some occasional horizontal tearing in full-screen video playback (not nearly as bad as the diagonal tearing I always had with fglrx), and, unlike some cards out there, you need your xorg.conf to get it to work. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, but it did need at least a couple things declared. Still have my xorg.conf from my arch install, if you want it as a starting point.

But yeah, good luck. And remember - the card isn't a lost cause. It's in good shape now, and it's best days on Linux are still ahead of it!

This tearing should mostly be fixed with the lastest code in xf86-video-ati git (at least for the non-composited case).