About Ati Radeon not working on opensuse 11.2 and compiz

English Hardware
#1

Hello everyone, My name is Mark and I’m new in this community, the reason I write is to help those who had the same problem like me with an ATI Direct X9 video card and 3D Acceleration.

I used to have openSuse 11.1 since January and got no problems at all. then I got excited about the new release of Suse and I decided to download it and try. My surprise? … mmm w8 why the Ati homepage only provides me 9.3 catalyst driver which I already have and throw me errors?

Then I discovered something that made me really hate ATI and not buying anything again with their chips:

Catalyst 9.4
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ATI Catalyst Linux 9.4 driver
Release date: April 17, 2009

The following products have been moved to the legacy software support structure (including Mobile and All-in-Wonder Variants):

* ATI Radeon 9500 Series
* ATI Radeon 9550 Series
* ATI Radeon 9600 Series
* ATI Radeon 9700 Series
* ATI Radeon 9800 Series
* ATI Radeon X300 Series
* ATI Radeon X550 Series
* ATI Radeon X600 Series
* ATI Radeon X700 Series
* ATI Radeon X800 Series
* ATI Radeon X850 Series
* ATI Radeon X1050 Series
* ATI Radeon X1200 Series
* ATI Radeon X1250 Series
* ATI Radeon X1300 Series
* ATI Radeon X1400 Series
* ATI Radeon X1550 Series
* ATI Radeon X1600 Series
* ATI Radeon X1650 Series
* ATI Radeon X1800 Series
* ATI Radeon X1900 Series
* ATI Radeon Xpress Series
* ATI Radeon X2100 Series

source: Catalyst 9.4 - cchtml.com

In few words: If you have a DirectX9 video card you are screwed up >.<…

So basically If any of you have a video card listed there like me ATI will no longer provide you a new driver for your 3d opensuse 11.2 desktop.

And my point is: When I was most desperate I realized the dumbest thing on earth (really :shame:) I had already installed and configured a version of RadeonHD driver with 3D support LOL (Before trying to download 80mb from ATI homepage check if you have it in my description below). Thanks for the great work of novell programmers and “collaboration of ati (still hate them because I love my x1300pro 512mb card and it’s not old or slow >:( )” we have access to the lastest “RADEON HD” free driver in the opensuse 11.2 distro, you can check that you really have 3D support in many cards by simply entering in a console and writing:

if you use glxinfo on console too you will see something like this:

**OpenGL vendor string: DRI R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 (RV515 7142) 20090101 TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.5 Mesa 7.6 **

then type the following command to prove you have 3D acceleration (Even if simple-cssm says that you don’t):

glxgears

and

You will see the basic 3D engines and therefore can use Compiz Fusion and “some” 3D games.

So basically if you were as desperate as me trying to get the **** ATI 9.10 driver like I was Don’t, you can try compiz and all their effects with the RadeonHD driver.

OK Finally (sorry for wall-text) my latests recommendations to make compiz work smooth as usual is to download fusion-icon from XGL repositories (which are listed on community repositories and on web-page right here) and emerald + themes from wherever you can grab them (I couldn’t find them via suse repositories so I used zypper and some extra repositories but I’m not sure if they aren’t already in suse repositories xD, later I’ll tell you which) and make it an autostart application as usual, Fusion-icon will load compiz and emerald very quick and fail proof at the beginning of the session, here it’s my desktop working:

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/281/97720551.th.png](http://img190.imageshack.us/i/97720551.png/)

As you can see I have a virtualbox with XP and compiz effects and have no problems at all (I can use photoshop without problems), also the RadeonHD drivers really supports compiz fusion video playbacks without the crashes that the ATI driver used to give me all time, and also I noticed a HUGE performance with those drivers too, so basically don’t go panic and try to buy a new card if you don’t have the cash or the need like I did, just try RadeonHD driver and see if it fits as good as it did on my desktop :wink:

Sorry for the looooong post but all I wanted to do was to help as I saw a lot of new users like me asking the same question here on forum.

PS I don’t know the performance of such driver on games but I really don’t play games for a while in my pc, I’m basically a java programmer and learning website development so I don’t need games and won’t try them in my pc, sorry xD. However I can really assure you that the Video performance is WAY TOO FAST AND STABLE (not compared at all with the ugly 9.3 Ati driver which crashed all the time I had compiz and videos at the same time).

#2

Hello :slight_smile: I have x1600 Mobility Radeon with RadeonHD driver (I think). But when i’m trying to use 3D system stall completly after one ore two seconds of 3D work.
Example running glxgears i DO see gears moving for 2 seconds, then mashine is not responding to anything, only power off.
Maybe you know what is the problem?
ThanX.

#3

Sorry for the delay in the answer, well as your video card is mobility serie and mine is a desktop one, I’m not sure if there are differences or something, however here it’s the link where I found a lot of information of this driver and bugs:

X.Org Wiki - radeonhd

also this link provided me a lot of information (although they did tests on Fedora and not suse), perhaps it can be useful for you:

[Phoronix] Introducing The RadeonHD Linux Driver (xf86-video-radeonhd)](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=842&num=1)

have you tried the glxinfo command on console first? are you sure you do have mesa driver plus radeonhd? why don’t you try to reinstall from yast the radeonhd driver (because if you tried to install the fgrlx ati driver maybe the xorg conf was changed).

I hope you can solve your problem soon :wink:

EDIT: forgot to mention, the last radeonhd driver available is version 1.3 (the one I have) which is the major update since april and was released in october i think, that version is available from suse repositories, have you tried to update your communities repositories first? because if you have somehow the 1.2 it didn’t provide 3D acceleration, the 1.3 does as I proved in my screenshot. Maybe a little more of information would be useful to find a solution for you :wink:

#4

I have the same problems with ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 boarded on my laptop >:(

My recomendation: DO NOT USE ANY ATI PRODUCTS

I`m always have fun with NVidia under Linux. :slight_smile:

#5

I tried this too. For Compiz the open source driver is all good. But I’m also a World of Warcraft player and that didn’t work. So I’m back on 11.1 but I really really really want to go back to 11.2. I guess it will take a (long) while before the open source driver can run WoW…

#6

Hi Gents

ATI Released 9.11 last night 17/11/2009. Will give it a bash on 11.2

#7

These are hand typed extracts (by yours truly) from the latest posting of AMD’s Proprietary Linux driver. Any typographical or other mistakes in retyping are mine. This particular driver updates the software version to 8.671. It is also known as revision 9.11.

This release of ATI Catalyst Linux introduces support for the following new operating system:
• RHEL 5.4 support
• openSUSE 11.2 early look support

Resolved Issues

The following section provides a brief description of resolved issues with the latest version of the ATI Catalyst Linux software suite. These include:
• [Ubuntu 9.04] Animated busy mouse cursor no longer disappears or flickers in Clone mode
• Corruption no longer occurs after hot plugging a display and doing a Virtual Terminal switch
• With CrossFire enabled, system no longer becomes unresponsive when switching to DC (battery) mode with full-screen applications running
• [SUSE 11.1] Unplugging the secondary display and terminating the X server (Ctrl + Alt + Backspace) does not cause the primary display to become blank and display corruption
• Playing full screen Flash video on a secondary display no longer causes screen corruption
• Screen corruption no longer occurs when open GL screen saver is enabled with Desktop effects

Known Issues

The following section provides a brief description of known issues associated with the latest version of ATI Catalyst Linux software suite. These issues include:
• Segmentation fault may occur or system may display error during boot up if X is stopped in Dual-Head mode
• System may be unresponsive after executing specific combination of Xrandr reflections and rotations
• X server may fail to start GUI Desktop Manager after enabling secondary adapter using Catalyst Control Center
• Desktop resolution changes through Catalyst Control Center might not be applied after restarting X
• [Ubuntu 9.04] Some video cards may stop video output signal when monitor has been powered off.

Note: On Novell’s openSUSE, SLED, and SLES operating systems running “sax2” or “sax2 –r” on the console overwrites the X.Org configuration file xorg.conf, reverting changes made by running “aticonfig –initial” . As a result subsequent X session may start up using the open source Radeon on X-Vesa graphic drivers instead of the proprietary ATI Linux Graphics Driver.

Solution: Do not use Sax2 when the proprietary Linux Graphics Driver is installed. Instead configure all display parameters using the Catalyst Control Center – Linux Editon or the aticonfig command line interface.

#8

Hi,
The same happened for me, I have a laptop Dell Inspiron 6000 which was running 11.1 pretty good and last week I did install 11.2 and found the next:
Using the factory driver (mesa), when I activate the Desktop effects, they work but all over the screen start seeing lines where windows were before.
When switching between desktop using the cube, after some time the screen goes black and no way to get it back, just restarting the laptop.
The VLC Player works with sound but no image when playing DVDs.
I did try to add the www2.ati.com/suse/11.2 repository and every time I try, I got an error.
Opensuse 11.2 great but not really happy with ATI because until now, haven’t been able to enjoy the 3D effects. Not even imagine to install compiz instead of the default effects from KDE.
I would like to know where I can download/get the new ATI driver cubed_za mention in his replay.
Thanks for all your help!

#9

Hi,
The same happened for me, I have a laptop Dell Inspiron 6000 which was running 11.1 pretty good and last week I did install 11.2 and found the next:
Using the factory driver (mesa), when I activate the Desktop effects, they work but all over the screen start seeing lines where windows were before.
When switching between desktop using the cube, after some time the screen goes black and no way to get it back, just restarting the laptop.
The VLC Player works with sound but no image when playing DVDs.
I did try to add the www2.ati.com/suse/11.2 repository and every time I try, I got an error.
Opensuse 11.2 great but not really happy with ATI because until now, haven’t been able to enjoy the 3D effects. Not even imagine to install compiz instead of the default effects from KDE.
I did check out the release notes for the new driver and Mobility Radeon x300 is not part of it, GeeZ! I’m dead
Thanks for all your help!

#10

Opensuse 11.2 great but not really happy with ATI because until now, haven’t been able to enjoy the 3D effects. Not even imagine to install compiz instead of the default effects from KDE.
I did check out the release notes for the new driver and Mobility Radeon x300 is not part of it, GeeZ! I’m dead
Thanks for all your help!

A significant number of us are in the same boat. We’ve been relegated to zero support from ATI with relatively young hardware. We can only hope that the radeon driver 3D development improves soon.

#11

ATI Radeon 9000 cards doesn’t seem to work properly with 3D enabled either. So, it doesn’t just start at 9500 series cards, I think. Trying OpenGL results in the screen going black and a lockup. Trying XRender results in a message that desktop effects can’t be enabled.