openSuse 11.2 radeonhd lockups

[Pickle]

It appears that fglrx legacy driver (x1400 R5XX) doesnt support recent kernels, like which has been included in the latest openSuse release.
So I have no choice but to use an open source driver.

Right now im using radeonhd, since thats what is installed by default. 2D and composite effects have worked fine. Any apps that use opengl although lock up machine within a minute or 2. Sound will continue to play, so it seems something in the system is running. But all keyboard commands are not responsive, i.e ctrl alt del, ctrl alt F1.

It looks like the older 'radeon' driver might support my chip, so i may give that a try. Can anyone confirm?

[bridgman]

Both radeon and radeonhd support your chip. That said, 3D is mostly handled by the mesa and drm (kernel) drivers so the problem may not be in your X driver anyways.

A good troubleshooting sequence would be :

1. Make sure you have an up to date version of radeonhd (latest is 1.3.0) and update if necessary

2. Try a current version of radeon to see if behaviour is different, that's a great clue for the devs

3. Update mesa to latest

4. Update drm to latest (this is a bit trickier than updating mesa)

[Pickle]

Originally Posted by bridgman

Both radeon and radeonhd support your chip. That said, 3D is mostly handled by the mesa and drm (kernel) drivers so the problem may not be in your X driver anyways.

Thanks so the the radeon driver is worth a try, also using it may confirm your second statement.

[rjwaldren]

FWIW, I have a similar experience. Using the Ubuntu PPA and a the latest 2.6.32 daily - KMS, Xv, GL worked fine under the RADEON driver. Under RADEONHD, GL did just as you described. I just switched back to radeon and haven't troubleshot any further. I plan on doing that in the next day or so. It may have just been timing on the PPA update.

Hopefully radeon and radeonhd will sync up feature-wise soon, it looks like the recent radeon plus HDMI audio would be a useable solution for me. GL works well as does Xv (with a bit of artifacting as described in another thread).

[Pickle]

cool, thats what I want to hear :-) I hope its out the same for me.

Update: Indeed the 'radeon' driver works better, no lockups (yet)

[crumja]

This is one of the things Novell tends to do. Instead of supporting the established or consensus project, they start new ones that duplicate function or differ in minute details. Many of these seem to be done just to have control over parts of the stack or to be different.

I'm thinking of XGL, radeonhd, mono, fspot, banshee, beagle, and tomboy. Does any other distro choose all of these programs as defaults?

[libv]

Originally Posted by crumja

This is one of the things Novell tends to do. Instead of supporting the established or consensus project, they start new ones that duplicate function or differ in minute details. Many of these seem to be done just to have control over parts of the stack or to be different.

I'm thinking of XGL, radeonhd, mono, fspot, banshee, beagle, and tomboy. Does any other distro choose all of these programs as defaults?

Except that, radeonhd was the first project.

We were the ones that proposed a free driver with free docs to AMD, ATI also had a proposal, and ours won, and then Mr Bridgman was forced to work with us.

RadeonHD was done initially in secrecy as AMD/ATI didn't allow us to talk about it, this while mister bridgman here was running his mouth everywhere already.

Then when we did almost make the deadline we at SUSE were never told about (thank you for that too), and the free driver was a fact, Mr Bridgman turned his table and started working with Redhat and he hired a guy to "help him with documentation" who is called Alex Deucher, to be able to still kill radeonhd.

Now there are no docs being made free anymore, and Alex is still working on the radeon driver a bit to be able to provide an excuse: "look, we're still doing free software", and Bridgman is pushing fglrx on these forums quite a lot. Doesn't this remind of you one of ATIs main competitors?

Get your facts straight, or at least try to look at the history.

[libv]

Originally Posted by crumja

This is one of the things Novell tends to do. Instead of supporting the established or consensus project, they start new ones that duplicate function or differ in minute details. Many of these seem to be done just to have control over parts of the stack or to be different.

I'm thinking of XGL, radeonhd, mono, fspot, banshee, beagle, and tomboy. Does any other distro choose all of these programs as defaults?

Oh, and distribution wise... Pulseaudio, networkmanager... Those two are pieces of shit that i can immediately name that made many peoples lives worse than before. We got those rammed through our throats by companies other SUSE, but in a similar way.

So do not just bash suse for this, bash the red hatters as well, especially since they still claim that they do not care for the linux desktop.

[Pickle]

politics aside,

I spent some more time testing and the radeon driver is working better. Ive been able to run many opengl apps only with some blanking out the screen upon exit. But i can still get to a prompt to restart X.
As i mentioned before the radeonhd will lock up the machine completely, with the only recourse left is to power off and power back on.

[crumja]

Originally Posted by libv

Except that, radeonhd was the first project.

We were the ones that proposed a free driver with free docs to AMD, ATI also had a proposal, and ours won, and then Mr Bridgman was forced to work with us.

RadeonHD was done initially in secrecy as AMD/ATI didn't allow us to talk about it, this while mister bridgman here was running his mouth everywhere already.

Then when we did almost make the deadline we at SUSE were never told about (thank you for that too), and the free driver was a fact, Mr Bridgman turned his table and started working with Redhat and he hired a guy to "help him with documentation" who is called Alex Deucher, to be able to still kill radeonhd.

Now there are no docs being made free anymore, and Alex is still working on the radeon driver a bit to be able to provide an excuse: "look, we're still doing free software", and Bridgman is pushing fglrx on these forums quite a lot. Doesn't this remind of you one of ATIs main competitors?

Get your facts straight, or at least try to look at the history.

Does it matter that you were first? Xen was all the rage with their paravirtualization scheme but was then overtaken by KVM. Red Hat made the sensible switch to a more accepted (by the community) technology. XGL was likely done before AIGLX, but since it was flawed in its design or not as easy to maintain, the "community" decided on the better implementation. The same applies to XvMC and VDPAU.

I'm saying that Novell hampers its users and distro using nonconsensus technology that often (e.g. in this case with radeonhd) provides an inferior user experience.

In addition, I doubt that Alex Deucher is trying to kill radeonhd. Your project is still included in the git tree, right? It's your fault that development on it has stalled. Alex is only working hard on a competitor that has won out. You either acknowledge that or revamp your efforts to try to be better.

Bridgman also has not pushed fglrx. He's consistently advocated fglrx and the oss stack for different user bases.