Fedora 11, KMS/Radeon/3D xpress 200m mini review

[nanonyme]

I do hope that Fedora 11 will bring me 3D support on my PPC and AMD-64 systems with Radeon x800 and x700 chips, respectively. It seems like Fedora has been next to useless in terms of 3D since that Xorg update in Fedora 8 or so.

And actually, no old Linux distro has had support for the Radeon x800 on PPC from what I've seen. I couldn't even get to the installer on my G5. So.. will Fedora 11 finally bring these machines to life?

Well, I just installed Fedora 11 a few days ago on my iBook (G4) and updated it to release later on. Seems to me that it can do KMS just fine. Though after I decided I want to try the newest code from glisse's post, I found out (glisse told me) that the memory management doesn't yet work on PPC. It's being worked on though. I suspect most of the initial testing was done on x86 targets anyway. That's not to say it couldn't do 3D. That it can do fine. Just might want to disable compositing since seems glxinfo doesn't seem to report DRI2. (The exact device I have on my laptop appears to have a chip from the original r300)

[ewood]

Well, I just installed Fedora 11 a few days ago on my iBook (G4) and updated it to release later on. Seems to me that it can do KMS just fine. Though after I decided I want to try the newest code from glisse's post, I found out (glisse told me) that the memory management doesn't yet work on PPC. It's being worked on though. I suspect most of the initial testing was done on x86 targets anyway. That's not to say it couldn't do 3D. That it can do fine. Just might want to disable compositing since seems glxinfo doesn't seem to report DRI2. (The exact device I have on my laptop appears to have a chip from the original r300)

Well well, I happen to have an iBook G4 as well! Is the r300 the 9200? I believe that's what mine has. I have Fedora 11 release downloading as I type, so before long I will have an answer before me. I am hoping to find out whether I can run things like Tux Racer and other 3D amusements before I actually try installing this beast, however. I hope x86_64 is at least on par with x86, though, as my Radeon x700-equipped AMD machine has been waiting a long time for 3D as well.

The news sounds exciting so far. Fedora is at least poised to get multimedia working properly for me. Right now, GNU/Linux OSes remain a power users' solution which leave me wanting for an alternative to Mac OS and Windows that even I can use. Each Fedora release inches nearer to something I can really use on my various non-Intel platforms, but still it brings some show-stopping bugs. I do hope that 11 will work "well enough" at least!