AMD Drivers

[dycide]

Thanks, I will try that

But as I said earlier, everything seems to be working (haven't tested any 3D games though), I can play HD movies and KDE works quite well too if I disable certain effects. However some effects cannot be activated, such as exploding windows (not that I would need it, but I assume not being able to use an effect means there is some problem). But in the other hand I'm not sure the PC would struggle without the driver when playing HD movies so maybe there is something messed up in the driver installation after all

[please_try_again]

There is a bug in the driver installation that atiupgrade tries to work around afterwards. But it doesn't affect all models of ATI cards. That's why one click install, installing the "hardway" or installing from the (non official) repo - forget about the official repo! - work for some people and not for some others. This bug is described here: No acceleration with ATI proprietary driver - Opensuse 12.1. However this bug prevents hardware acceleration from working in some cases, it has nothing to do withe the artifacts you get under Gnome3. The first bug is an installation bug (in the postinstall script of the rpm package). The package maintainer could fix it. The artifacts is a driver bug. Only ATI can fix it ... if they want.

On KDE, you might want to enable compositing for full screen Windows in somes cases - as I explained earlier in this thread.

* But I'm neither a KDE nor a special effects guy. So I don't know about exploding windows. I thought Windows was capable of exploding on its own.

[please_try_again]

Also notice that atiupgrade stores the rpm it creates in the the directory /usr/share/atiupgrade. It is safe to delete this file (as well as the ATI .run file also in this directory) if you don't need them. Normally you won't need them unless you want to install the rpm on another machine without using atiupgrade. It works too ... but... you would need to install the kernel sources and the compiler on the other machine BEFORE installing the rpm, since the module is compiled at installation time. It's probably easier to run atiupgrade on each machine, even if it takes a couple more minutes, because if you don't know what you are doing, it will take significantly longer. You can also copy the ati .run file in the directory /usr/share/atiupgrade on the other machine to avoid downloading it again from the ATI website, if you want to save 2 minutes or the ATI site becomes unavailable for some reason.

[dycide]

I reinstalled the system this morning and everything is the same. I guess the driver is bugged then. I did everything as you instructed, and everything works fine apart from certain KDE effects. Anything related to thumbnails will crash KWin, such as alt + tabbing or just hovering a program on the taskbar. If I disable thumbnails it works fine. Thanks for all the help nevertheless

[Gikoskos]

Hi me again, im thinking of downgrading the fglrx driver through the atiupgrade script,
which is the best working version to have?

[6tr6tr]

Hi me again, im thinking of downgrading the fglrx driver through the atiupgrade script,
which is the best working version to have?

Hey, I believe we're having the same issue ( How do I install the proprietary Radeon Catalyst driver? ). Maybe we could combine efforts to figure this out?

Can you verify that direct rendering is not working on your install as well?

glxinfo | grep direct

I also added a bug report at AMD ( Bug 383 – Using proprietary driver and opengl desktop effects crashes kwin )

also, I think these are all the same issue we're seeing:
Bug 286 – Glxinfo/fglrxinfo: Segmentation fault (I also get segmentation fault with opengl and kwin/desktop effects)
Bug 379 – openSUSE 12.1: Direct rendering disabled

Maybe related:
Bug 290 – Window Initialization with KDE Plasma Effects and/or Compiz Restarts X Server
Bug 355 – OpenGL does not work well on Acer Aspire 1551 - Radeon HD 4225
Bug 252 – Program crases on run. Screen Saver, Google Earth, etc. All programs with glibc.so.1 Linux X64

What's weird to me is that I can run 3D stuff at 400+ fps at full screen (this command runs at 480fps at full screen: fgl_glxgears )but yet simple desktop effects cannot be run with opengl and crash kwin!

[please_try_again]

Yes guys, look at the thread started by @6tr6tr. It's about the same bug... that we're trying to solve.

[please_try_again]

Hi me again, im thinking of downgrading the fglrx driver through the atiupgrade script,
which is the best working version to have?

Don't! But you should refresh my repo and update atiupgrade, because I just added a workaround to this bug.
Right now, you don't need to reinstall the driver though, neither does @dycide, but you can do this (as root) :

• copy/paste the following code and save as /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ati-fglrx.conf
  
  On a 64bit system:
  

  # created by atiupgrade - Tue Jan  3 13:36:31 PST 2012
  # delete this file when it's not needed anymmore
  /usr/X11R6/lib64
  /usr/X11R6/lib

  On a 32bit system:
  

  # created by atiupgrade - Tue Jan  3 13:36:31 PST 2012
  # delete this file when it's not needed anymmore
  /usr/X11R6/lib

• run these commands:
  
  on a 64bit system:
  

  /sbin/ldconfig
  /usr/lib64/fglrx/switchlibglx amd
  /usr/lib64/fglrx/switchlibGL amd

  on a 32bit system:
  

  /sbin/ldconfig
  /usr/lib/fglrx/switchlibglx amd
  /usr/lib/fglrx/switchlibGL amd

• reboot

[Gikoskos]

Hi, i tried 6tr6tr 's command and it said that i didn't have direct rendering.
After that i followed please_try_again 's instructions and when i rebooted
the command showed this:
direct rendering: Yes
GL_EXT_copy_buffer, GL_EXT_copy_texture, GL_EXT_direct_state_access,
and it looks like it worked because the KDE desktop looks and runs better and faster now.
Also Google Earth opens normally; before it showed a fuzzy earth and exited.
Great work please_try_again.
Glad to see that skilled people still support and help linux noobs like us.

Now if there's a way to fix flash full-screen delays...

[please_try_again]

Now if there's a way to fix flash full-screen delays...

I thought you did solve that already with compositor. (?)