OSS Radeon Drivers in Debian Testing are a letdown

[Tillin9]

Finally got around to testing out the OSS Radeon drivers. I started with the defaults in Debian Testing (Squeeze) with kernel 2.6.30 and radeon 6.12.3.1 and my Radeon HD4600.

While it did worked out of the box (mode setting, video), 3D was non-existent and 2D was rather slow.

I see there is 6.12.4 ddx driver release, but it didn't seem to express any big changes for 2D or anything for 3D.

I went back to fglrx for now, since it has been working great for me for a few releases, but wanted to know if this was me (Debian is known to be a little conservative) or things just aren't there yet.

P.S. - I had to reboot after installing fglrx, something was preventing the module from loading properly. I didn't see anything else drm related via lsmod and was also under the impression that fglrx and the OSS drm could be loaded at the same time now. While this was marginally annoying (kwin4 has more dependencies and needs more of the video stack working) it may suggest a bigger issue.

[agd5f]

You need kernel 2.6.32 for 3D on r6xx/r7xx hardware. You need to completely remove fglrx to use acceleration on the open source driver.

[chithanh]

Debian testing is probably not the best choice if you want bleeding edge drivers.

If you use Fedora 12, installing mesa-dri-drivers-experimental will give you instant 3D acceleration on that card.

Other distros will work too, but require a bit more effort to get 3D, such as installing pre-release kernels and packages from external repositories.

[Tillin9]

Yep, thought that could be the case. I'm downloading the Fedora 12 Live cd now to give that a whirl.

[panda84]

Yep, thought that could be the case. I'm downloading the Fedora 12 Live cd now to give that a whirl.

The Live CD will not give you 3D as mesa-dri-drivers-experimental is not installed by default. Also mind that "experimental" indeed means experimental.
When Mesa 7.7 will be out (probably by the end of the year) the situation will start to get better. Not without bugs of course, but will start to get usable somehow.
BTW, if you like living-on-the-edge take a look at the latest Mesa builds in koji:

http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=184

[Panix]

The Live CD will not give you 3D as mesa-dri-drivers-experimental is not installed by default. Also mind that "experimental" indeed means experimental.
When Mesa 7.7 will be out (probably by the end of the year) the situation will start to get better. Not without bugs of course, but will start to get usable somehow.
BTW, if you like living-on-the-edge take a look at the latest Mesa builds in koji:
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/p...?packageID=184

What does that mean? How are you supposed to enable the support then?

I have a different card than the OP but I think there is a problem with older ATI hardware that uses the open source driver. I couldn't get Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic to work with 3D effects without it crashing my laptop and needing a hard restart. Trying the latest sidux DVD, a similar situation but with a black screen freeze and white mouse cursor. No keystrokes released the freeze. Aren't those recent enough distros? Also, Fedora 12 (release) was usable but I had what I call pixelation issues or some screen artifacts. But, at least I could enable 3D.

Only Mandriva 2010 had what one could call a 'smooth experience' after enabling 3D desktop effects. I don't know if anyone has had a similar overall experience but there seems to be a pattern of similarity in some cases. Just speculating though.

Sorry to interrupt the thread. I'm just interested in the solution and no matter what I tried in xorg.conf, I couldn't find a solution.

[Tillin9]

I read the article here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._r600_3d&num=1 there is an experimental package in the repository. I assume I install Fedora to a partition, then update to the experimental support.

Note: This is to just feel it out easily. I know I can build everything myself on Debian, I just don't want to spend days doing this if it only gives me a system useful for driver development. I really appreciate the work you guys do, but can't really contribute anything useful and want a working system.

P.S. What card do you have Panix? I've had a lot of success with the r300 OSS driver on my older cards. I'm surprised to hear about your issues.

[Panix]

P.S. What card do you have Panix? I've had a lot of success with the r300 OSS driver on my older cards. I'm surprised to hear about your issues.

It's in a laptop, a Radeon Mobility 9000, RV250 card.

Experiences with distros and trying 3D effects:
Ubuntu* - boots in default mode and then crashes after starting Firefox, Synaptic etc.
Kubuntu - goes to black screen and freezes/crashes
sidux - Momos - same
OpenSUSE 11.2 - OpenGL 3D setting will not enable (a msg states so) - XRender works
Mandriva 2010 - 3D desktop effects works
Fedora 12 - desktop effects can be enabled but there is 'pixellation', flickering and screen artifacts

*attempts at editing/configuring xorg.conf in Ubuntu have been met with failure. Various crashes, flickering and corrupted screen/windows has provoked me to abandon any further experimentation until I find some evidence or info of what to put there

I suppose the point of this post is pure speculation on my part but imho, it does seem like the Debian-based distros are not as successful in implementing or utilizing the Radeon OSS driver?

[bridgman]

AGP is still a challenge for the driver devs, since chipset and non-graphics drivers can have a big impact on the reliability of the graphics subsystem.

If you are getting corruption with an AGP card the first thing to try is usually disabling accelerated block transfers, eg turning off AccelDFS. If you are getting crashes as well, then first thing to try is reducing AGP bus speed as low as possible or forcing to PCI mode.

[Kano]

Yes, maybe you should send the devs a HD 2600 AGP too, this card does not work too...