Which Linux Graphics Driver Bugs Do You Hate?

[Wyatt]

I think my anger for the week is squarely directed at fglrx.ko, though that's more because it's more fresh than what I hold for nvidia.ko (which is easier on the kernel, but has other problems).

fglrx.ko has some annoying kernel requirements.
fglrx is not compatible with CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU.
fglrx requires CONFIG_UNUSED_SYMBOLS.
fglrx requires CONFIG_PCI_LEGACY (c'mon, guys, pci_find_slot() was deprecated two years ago at this point...).
fglrx is not compatible with CONFIG_PARAVIRT.
And then, even after I got it installed, I was getting "BUG: using smp_processor_id() in preemptible [00000000] code: X/26646" in my dmesg and the system would restart. It would be nice if we could get a performant driver that isn't in danger of being deprecated into inoperability.

With an FX5200, nvidia.ko was giving me strange green corruptions and would cause a crash in the app or an oops if I was unlucky. Highly uncool. Before that, with the 8800 I was borrowing, it was very bad at doing multiple monitors: Twinview is an ugly, ugly hack and nVidia should be ashamed of themselves.

radeon.ko on my r300 chipsets has performed swimmingly. Suspend on my laptop is faster and more reliable, now.

If I can offer any real complaint, it's that the documentation for the whole open stack could really use some amount of cleanup, pruning, updating, etc.

For example...well, I guess the X.org wiki is the "official" documentation for radeon and radeonhd. Is it? I would never be able to tell from the main page. Were it not for Google, I don't know that I would ever have made it to the radeonhd page. And were it not for radeonhd, I'd never be able to find the radeon page for the place. Ahh. this gem caught my eye, too:
"I have an ATI graphics card, which driver should I use ?
The GATOS project..."
Yes, the same GATOS that hasn't seen a commit in four years or so. This is straight from the VideoDriverFAQ at the X.org wiki. If you don't just stop reading after three words, it also states that r300 and up is still highly experimental and doesn't even mention radeonhd.

So I think something definitely needs to be done about documentation management for the open drivers and acceleration: clearly leaving it under the banner of X.org is not working out so well and I feel it ends up being misleading to the end user.

[deanjo]

@deanjo



Windows has even problems with current hardware. I had xp and GF2 MX and I had to replace my card, because xp refused to install (sp1 fixed this after long time waiting). An only reason why windows 'supports' many devices is third party members which provide drivers for it.

I had the EXACT same card when XP came out and it installed fine.

[szczerb]

You could have had the a card based on the same exact model of GPU but you have no idea what card he had.

[deanjo]

Pretty fair comparison as windows vista would require the same amount of hardware messing. Every package I set up with xp i would have had to set up with vista. I didn't even count having to set up firewall and spyware blockers and everything.

Have to check it again but think Furmark was reporting GL 2.1 on lastest driver under windows.

And how well did Fedora 5 install your dmraid, tvcard, free video, printer, soundcard etc on that? On both those systems a firewall would have been enabled by default. If your going to compare linux to windows at least use the same generation of OS. As I said before Windows 7 has improved a lot of your concerns and slipstreaming a updated disk is childs play now days.

And where does furmark report GL level?

[deanjo]

You could have had the a card based on the same exact model of GPU but you have no idea what card he had.

Every card manufacturer of that era followed the reference design. Even hard mods like doing the Quadro mod was universal on the GF mx2 (which I did later on and worked on XP as well).

[szczerb]

Every card manufacturer of that era followed the reference design. Even hard mods like doing the Quadro mod was universal on the GF mx2 (which I did later on and worked on XP as well).

ok, then - my bad ;] I don't really remember, so I assumed

[deanjo]

ok, then - my bad ;] I don't really remember, so I assumed

No worries, because they all followed the reference design the Quadro mod was a piece of cake to do. Did many of them back in the day for friends and family. Even the resistor numbers were consistent across brands.

PS: Just for FYI in that era Leadtek was the designer of the reference boards.

[kraftman]

I had the EXACT same card when XP came out and it installed fine.

Strange, because my friend had the same problem. I had Inno 3D Geforce 2mx 200 and xp without sp1 just hung when I tried to install it. I had to replace my card, install xp and then replace card again. As I said windows has rather good hardware support just, because third party members. The same problem here:

http://www.techimo.com/forum/graphics-cards-displays/26385-video-card-causes-system-freeze-wont-install-xp.html

Hey Deanjo! I don't believe you:

There is a known problem with installing WinXP on a system with a GeForce 2 MX video card. Borrow another type of video card from another PC if you can. Install WinXP and then you'll be able to put your GeForce 2 MX video card back in the system after the operating system is installed.

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=3&FCat=15

What I noticed is you trying to 'whitewash' proprietary crap.

Oh, and I had to find some exotic patch, because xp hanged after few minutes playing in some games. It looks patch was needed to proper support Abit KT7A motherboard. That's windows hardware 'support'.

And how well did Fedora 5 install your dmraid, tvcard, free video, printer, soundcard etc on that?

Why Fedora? I ran Aurox 9 as far as I remember (distro based probably on red hat 7; xp times) and my hardware was fully supported. It installed without problems 'even' with gf2 mx.

@szczerb

ok, then - my bad ;] I don't really remember, so I assumed

No, not your bad, because sp1 fixed my and my friend issue. I bet you can find something about this problem on ms site (if they don't hide some issues...).

[deanjo]

Strange, because my friend had the same problem. I had Inno 3D Geforce 2mx 200 and xp without sp1 just hung when I tried to install it. I had to replace my card, install xp and then replace card again. As I said windows has rather good hardware support just, because third party members. The same problem here:

http://www.techimo.com/forum/graphics-cards-displays/26385-video-card-causes-system-freeze-wont-install-xp.html

Hey Deanjo! I don't believe you:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=3&FCat=15

What I noticed is you trying to 'whitewash' proprietary crap.

Oh, and I had to find some exotic patch, because xp hanged after few minutes playing in some games. It looks patch was needed to proper support Abit KT7A motherboard. That's windows hardware 'support'.

LOL, again exact same hardware, The system that I was using at the time was a KT7A-Raid and a Inno3d card. It was a board with a chipset riddled with bugs (KT133A) and had nothing to do with the OS. That chipset was riddle with bugs and if you knew your Abit history you would also know that the solution to the issue was to increase the AGP driving strength as boards were way out of spec when a more power hungry card was put in due to the bad cap issue ( which by the way Abit at the time would warranty your board even though it may have been expired and send you a new one). Abit later increased the default AGP driving strength to compensate for it with a BIOS update. It had NOTHING to do with SP1. The same exact issues plagued other boards of that era as well, but the KT133a is one of the worst. If you slapped that card in any other chipset with good caps it would have ran fine. The same issues were seen with linux as well.

[kraftman]

LOL, again exact same hardware, The system that I was using at the time was a KT7A-Raid and a Inno3d card. It was a board with a chipset riddled with bugs (KT133A) and had nothing to do with the OS. That chipset was riddle with bugs and if you knew your Abit history you would also know that the solution to the issue was to increase the AGP driving strength as boards were way out of spec when a more power hungry card was put in due to the bad cap issue ( which by the way Abit at the time would warranty your board even though it may have been expired and send you a new one). Abit later increased the default AGP driving strength to compensate for it with a BIOS update. It had NOTHING to do with SP1. The same exact issues plagued other boards of that era as well, but the KT133a is one of the worst. If you slapped that card in any other chipset with good caps it would have ran fine. The same issues were seen with linux as well.

Ok, I believe you The difference is Linux wasn't affected in my case (maybe they implemented some workaround in my distro). And sp1 solved my issue with gf2. I updated bios, but it didn't help with hanging games - I still had to use patch which I found on some forum (the funny thing is I forgot to backup it and I didn't find mentioned patch second time ^^). Yeah, KT133a is a nightmare.


Btw.

Which Linux Graphic Driver Bugs Do You Hate?

I hate Catalyst bugs like: problems with video playback when using compiz, black screen bug and others Catalyst related.