Installing free drivers on Ubuntu 9.04

[risotto77]

I have a card based on r600 (hd3450) and would like to use free driver. In fact that was why I bought the card almost a year ago. Now I understand there are free drivers capable doing 3d acceleration. So, is there an easy way to install the free driver for my card?



Additional questions:
Will Ubuntu 9.10 have these drivers by default?

I am looking for a new card (for better handling sculpting/hair-manipulation in Blender 3d software). I want to use good free drivers as soon as possible. Will there soon be free drivers for the 5xxx family? (I really want the 5870, but I rather go for a 4xxx card if I'll get free drivers much sooner)

[Veerappan]

I think there should be working 3D for your card, but I'm not one of the developers, so I'm not exactly a definitive resource. For reference, I've got an HD3200 (780G) and an HD 4770 running open source 3D right now, and I used to have an HD4850 as well which ran just fine.

There's a PPA (maintained by Tormod Volden) that includes pretty much everything except the kernel at: https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

In order to get stuff working, I think you'll need to also build your own kernel. I pull my copy off of Linus' 2.6 git tree:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=summary

NOTE: I believe that the kernel update is required for 3D, but I'm not sure if that's the case. I do it just as a precaution, but updating libdrm and the other packages might be enough... Someone else might be able to clarify this.

You can use this to check out the sources, if you have git-core installed:
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git

Usually, for a start for the kernel config, I copy /boot/config-`uname -r` into the checked out kernel source as the .config file.

If you want to use kernel mode setting as well, you'll probably want to go into the drivers/staging tree and enable modesetting on radeon by default. Otherwise, you can enable it at boot time by adding the radeon.modeset=1 parameter to the kernel parameters.

Other than that, enable the radeon drm driver, build DRM as a module, and disable the other framebuffer devices (vesafb,radeonfb,etc).

Then just save the config, run make && make modules && make install && make modules_install, run update-grub, and reboot and pray.

If you've installed the PPA packages correctly (add the PPA to your system, and then update), you should at least get working 3D. If your kernel is configured correctly, you'll also get kernel mode setting.

If you have problems with this, or succeed using these directions, I'm sure there's plenty of people here who can try to help, and I'd love to hear if I actually got it right

[agd5f]

Howto for various radeon things:

http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo

[DanL]

So, is there an easy way to install the free driver for my card?

On Jaunty: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1257453
On Karmic, you can either follow the above procedure, or use the edgers PPA https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa and grab the kernel image and headers package from: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...e/v2.6.32-rc4/

Additional questions:
Will Ubuntu 9.10 have these drivers by default?

No.

[risotto77]

Thanks for anwers all

On Jaunty: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1257453
On Karmic, you can either follow the above procedure, or use the edgers PPA https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa and grab the kernel image and headers package from: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...e/v2.6.32-rc4/


No.

I first tried the Jaunty method with no luck. Then I upgraded to Karmic and after much troubles I finally got hardware accelerated 3d with free driver. wohoo :-)

(Nvm I mentioned "easy way" (basterds )

So far I think the Desktop is very snappy, and feels much better with compiz effects than the old fglrx. But it is no good for 3d intensive apps. Nexuiz is not playable, and Blender 2.5 (experimental) is no good. Those was working fine with fglrx. Blender 2.49 is good though and can comb hair paticles and sculpt-editing almost asgood as fglrx (I belive).

I hope there are some settings for better performance. So please help.

$ glxgears
IRQ's not enabled, falling back to busy waits: 2 0
5872 frames in 5.0 seconds
5896 frames in 5.0 seconds
5901 frames in 5.0 seconds
5899 frames in 5.0 seconds

Any better tools to benchmark the gpu?

[monraaf]

Blender 2.5 (experimental) is no good. Those was working fine with fglrx. Blender 2.49 is good though and can comb hair paticles and sculpt-editing almost asgood as fglrx (I belive).

I hope there are some settings for better performance.

With Blender 2.5 if the whole thing feels sluggish you might want to change the 'Window Draw Method' from 'Triple Buffer' to 'Overlap'. You can find it in User Preferences -> System. It worked for me.

[risotto77]

With Blender 2.5 if the whole thing feels sluggish you might want to change the 'Window Draw Method' from 'Triple Buffer' to 'Overlap'. You can find it in User Preferences -> System. It worked for me.

Thanks a lot. It worked

[nhaehnle]

Any better tools to benchmark the gpu?

I hate to point out the obvious, but given that we're on the Phoronix website: What about the Phoronix Test Suite?

[risotto77]

I hate to point out the obvious, but given that we're on the Phoronix website: What about the Phoronix Test Suite?

:-) Thanks. Have PTS installed now. Anyway. As I have nothing to compare with I see less reason testing. I have no idea of what to expect of card/driver(hd3450/radeon).

Should I do something to enable or disable kms?

[risotto77]

:-) Thanks. Have PTS installed now. Anyway. As I have nothing to compare with I see less reason testing. I have no idea of what to expect of card/driver(hd3450/radeon).

Ok. Why did I not guess PTS had its own site for references?...

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/

If there are more obvius stuff around here I would like to know. I am slow

Anyway. GLMark gives:
IRQ's not enabled, falling back to busy waits: 2 0
Segmentation fault

Thats no good. Any tricks?