Dynamic Displays

One of the unadvertised features that had worked its way into the 8.25.18 fglrx drivers was dynamic display management options. These options (--query-monitor and --enable-monitor) allow the currently active display devices to be printed, as well as enabling/disabling any of the connected monitors. As was shared in the 8.25.18 Phoronix review, the feature still is being stabilized thus it's not yet mentioned in the official release notes. Using aticonfig --query-monitor had worked accordingly in the Big Desktop configuration for listing crt1 and crt2 as being both connected and enabled.

However, the problem I had run into with the dynamic display management options and Big Desktop, is when using --enable-monitor. When attempting to throw the system out of Big Desktop mode, or simply trying to disable/enable any monitor, an error was simply outputted: ati_dm: FGLRX_EnableDisplays failed when try to enable display: 1. Asking ATI about the issue, the original feature found in fglrx 8.25.18 is designed to only work in clone mode, but in the coming months these problems should be addressed. For now, the dynamic display management options are limited in this respect.

Also, this morning the kernel-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5 package was released into the stable Fedora Core 5 repository. When upgrading to the 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5 (SMP x86_64) kernel from 2.6.16-1.2122_FC5, I didn't run into any new FC5 + ATI problems. As of right now after building the module for this newer kernel, the drivers are still working fine.