New to the open source drivers - please help

[gloscherrybomb]

Hi,

I ahve actively followed fglrx development over the last couple of years, but have needed to upgrade to ubuntu 9.04 so am now looking to use the open source drivers and follow their development.

I have a X1650 pro (R500). I've just installed jaunty and on the default settings leaving things as they were before compiz is unusually slow.

What are my next steps? Where do I get the latest driver, and what is the most appropriate for my card?

Thanks

[suokko]

You probably can get more out of opensource driver without upgrading if you enable or performance settings. Of course it is possible that you don't have dri working after removing fglrx which might have left some problematic files.

So think to do:
Check that dri works with glxinfo. For reference here is x1400 card output from important sections:

 $ glxinfo |grep direct
direct rendering: Yes
 $ glxinfo |grep "OpenGL"
OpenGL vendor string: DRI R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 20060815 TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 7.4.1
OpenGL extensions:

Then you can do some configuration changes to optimize everything:
1. create default /etc/X11/xorg.conf with command:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
2. Edit the section of your video card

Section "Device"
Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "smart"
EndSection

3. You can experiment with driconf tool to tune your graphics settings for performance/quality.

[gloscherrybomb]

Thanks for your reply.

I put the commands in to the terminal and they all output the same response as yours. I also did your steps for xorg.conf.

With no desktop effects its seems to run quite nicely (but then it did 3 years ago) however, as soon as I enable any desktop effects (even ubuntus 'normal' setting) the system slows right down, barely being able to drag a window, let alone using the full custom compiz settings I had before.

How do I get this working again?

[gloscherrybomb]

Should I install the radeonHD driver?

[Zhick]

You could try it, but there's no reason it should be faster...
Did you do a clean install of 9.04 or did you upgrade a previous version of ubuntun? If it's the later, you might want to try if the desktop-effects are more usable on the live-cd. If so, I guess something went wrong during the update.

You should also post you /var/log/Xorg.0.log .

[adamk]

radeonhd is just a 2D driver. It will not improve your 3D performance at all.

If you bring up a terminal and run 'compiz' what output do you get?

Adam

[suokko]

RAdeonHD doesn't provide anything opengl related so that won't help. Only way to gain better performance is to wait for current development version (radeon-rewrite) to mature and provide some important opengl performance improvements.

But for compiz runs smootly with r200 based card (if not enabling extension that require shadows or fragment shaders.

Of course 3D apps don't work well so I don't use compiz in day to day use.

[agd5f]

try turning off some compiz plugins. It's possible you are using one that's not well accelerated under the open driver, but was well accelerated under fglrx.

[gloscherrybomb]

Thanks for the help

I seem to have some sort of conflict, where the drivers aren't working purely from the xorg.conf?

I did a clean upgrade but kept my separate home partition.

Now I cant even enable desktop effects, even though my xorg.conf is clean.

james@james-desktop:~$ compiz
Checking for Xgl: not present. 
xset q doesn't reveal the location of the log file. Using fallback /var/log/Xorg.0.log 
No whitelisted driver found
aborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity 
/home/james/.themes/Dust/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:80: Murrine configuration option "highlight_ratio" will be deprecated in future releases. Please use "highlight_shade" instead.
/home/james/.themes/Dust/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:81: Murrine configuration option "lightborder_ratio" will be deprecated in future releases. Please use "lightborder_shade" instead.
/home/james/.themes/Dust/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:96: Murrine configuration option "style" is not supported and will be ignored.
/home/james/.themes/Dust/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:228: Murrine configuration option "style" is not supported and will be ignored.
/home/james/.themes/Dust/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:337: Murrine configuration option "style" is not supported and will be ignored.
/home/james/.themes/Dust/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:371: Murrine configuration option "style" is not supported and will be ignored.
Window manager warning: "<Super>" found in configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding "show_desktop"

post is too long.... follow up below.....

[gloscherrybomb]

my xorg.conf:

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

more to come.....