Last Chrome Dev breaks WebGL with ATI fglrx users

[evolution]

Hello again!

I'm here to tell Phoronix readers that if you're using fglrx + latest chrome/chromium dev from yesterday (11.0.696.14), you'll notice that you won't have WebGL acceleration anymore with your ATI card (both with fglrx or xf86-ati drivers).

Because of this commit:

"about:gpu can still launch GPU process even though GPU is blocked by software rendering list (Issue 76115)."

if you upgrade to the latest dev chrome/chromium release, you'll notice you don't have the option to enable "GPU Accelerated Compositing" with your ATI card anymore. It simply disappeared.

Checking in "about:gpu", it will tell you a message similar to "ATI cards are not supported on Linux"... (What the Hell?! (sorry for the swearing))

With Catalyst 10.7 + HD2600 I can use WebGL in almost all apps without too much problems.

With Catalyst 10.1 + HD4650AGP I also have WebGL acceleration working properly.

Are they assuming the default ATi driver now is the MESA one? If so, I think is a bad decision from Google, because ATI fglrx (and also xf86-ati-git) users are going to be "in the dark" if nobody tells Google about this possible "bug". (I don't have a google account, so I can't report this problem... )

Workaround: don't update Chrome/Chromium dev to 11.0.696.14.

Cheers

[evolution]

Problem (partially) solved!

Well, after some "googling", I found a way to workaround this problem (no webgl for fglrx / xf86-ati-git users).

When launching Chrome, type in a terminal/console "google-chrome --ignore-gpu-blacklist" or "chromium --ignore-gpu-blacklist" (these commands without the quotes, OC).

As an alternative, create a shortcut with the parameter (--ignore-gpu-blacklist) above mentioned...

Cheers and I hope this can helps some people that are having problems with ATI cards + WebGL on Linux...!