So, since I've been waiting like crazy for this release, I'll post a short summary of my experiences in a new thread. Please reply with your own experiences if you feel like it.. Perhaps in the same form as below:
Hardware: ...
Software: ...
Experiences: Working/not working, better/worse than previous version, problems, etc. As concrete/detailed and non-ranting as possible (well, ranting must be tolerated when it comes to fglrx).
Hardware:
Lenovo Z61m laptop with an ATI X1400 Radeon mobility (128MB), Core Duo T2500 2GHz, 2GiB RAM.
Software:
Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 x86 32bit, with all the latest updates applied (as of now).
I've been using fglrx 8.42.3 for a couple of hours, installed using standard "--buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy", manually purging the old debs (8.40.4) before installing the new driver (just to be sure). I had no problems with the installation; libs, DRI-init and everything else worked.
So the driver is working, but it's still a disappointment. But I'll focus on the positive side of things first:
That's about it.. Now for the negative stuff:
That's about it for now, happy waiting for 8.43.X . Bye.
Hardware: ...
Software: ...
Experiences: Working/not working, better/worse than previous version, problems, etc. As concrete/detailed and non-ranting as possible (well, ranting must be tolerated when it comes to fglrx).
Hardware:
Lenovo Z61m laptop with an ATI X1400 Radeon mobility (128MB), Core Duo T2500 2GHz, 2GiB RAM.
Software:
Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 x86 32bit, with all the latest updates applied (as of now).
I've been using fglrx 8.42.3 for a couple of hours, installed using standard "--buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy", manually purging the old debs (8.40.4) before installing the new driver (just to be sure). I had no problems with the installation; libs, DRI-init and everything else worked.
So the driver is working, but it's still a disappointment. But I'll focus on the positive side of things first:
- Yup, it's now possible to start compiz, and AIGLX is present, at least.
- OpenGL performance (_without_ running compiz) is improved !
- Works better than 8.41.7, which I could not use on my hardware (that's OK, it wasn't officially supported on R500-class hardware, anyway).
- AIGLX support isn't perfect yet, but it's the first release supporting it, so I'm having hopes that it will be vastly improved in later releases.
That's about it.. Now for the negative stuff:
- No working XVideo (!). If I enable any overlay type, I get screen corruption in the upper left corner, consistently, it's a couple of lines, about 25% of the screen width. Video tears diagonally and flickers badly. Disabling video-overlay and opengl-overlay removes the corruption. "TexturedVideo" "true" the same, no help there.
- I can no longer use MPlayer with OpenGL output, it's remarkably slow, VSYNC settings have no effect on this (might be mplayer-specific problem, vlc and xine works fine w/ogl).
- 2D is dog slow without the XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps option. However, this is only when all video-overlay options are disabled. If any video-overlay is enabled, I don't need XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps for decent 2D speed, but the corruption makes that config unusable (*sigh*).
- Suspend is still not working, the symptoms are very much like those I had with 8.40.4. But this is rumoured to be because Ubuntu Gutsy uses a kernel with the new SLUB-allocator (replaced older SLAB-allocator), which apparently doesn't play well with fglrx on suspend (on my hardware, at least). Hoping this will get fixed in the next release..
- Compiz is definitely accelerated, but too laggy to be usable. Scrolling in gnome-terminal or Firefox is a real PITA. Enabling any kind of video-overlay makes compiz hard-crash on load. Trying to display any video using plain OpenGL output (Xine, vlc) is just a flickering mess, video frame always on-top, with compiz enabled. MPlayer w/gl-output freezes X, if compiz is enabled (SysRQ possible). Tweaking OpenGL VSYNC in AMD control panel does not help in this case. fgl_glxgears segfaults with compiz, glxgears works.
- I've observed the ancient/dreaded "[fglrx:firegl_lock] *ERROR* Process 7913 is using illegal context 0x00000005" error messages in the kernel log (but only once). Man, one would think they could get rid of these at some point ??
- Still need to use AlwaysRestartServer=true in gdm.conf for stability.
- Will have to complete yet another waiting cycle for 8.43, in hope that compiz and/or XVideo might some day work properly on this darned ATI-based lappy of mine, which is otherwise a very nice piece of hardware.
That's about it for now, happy waiting for 8.43.X . Bye.
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