Just installed OpenSuSE 11.0 on my ThinkPad T41 and everything seems to be working fine… except for a printing issue which is kind of an internal problem, the other problem is the Desktop Effects.
Problem:
Everything seems to be working just fine, the installation has chosen ATI RV250 Lf as my graphics card. It works but according to Lenovo/IBM my laptop is using a ATI Radeon 9000 card/chip. Well I have no problem with the driver if I where able to turn on Desktop Effects - but this function/feature is not working. When I turn on the Desktop Effects - the screen gets all mixed up, it seems that only a very small part of the screen it displayed correctly - the rest are white and are not updated correct, when a window is moved in and out of this area.
Solution/P.D.:
I have tried to add the ATI Repo and installed according to the How To on ATI from the Wiki, but nothing happens… When trying the ‘aticonfig --initial’ I get an error - file not found (something)…
So am I doing something wrong, or is it the OpenSuSE 11.0 and ATI… or can I just tune some settings in the Sax2/X configuration so that I will be able to use Desktop Effects.
Hope that someone will be able to help me out, I will be happy to provide more details on my HW and CFGs if requested.
You should google around a bit to find out whether the driver is right for your card. Sure there are other people who own the exact same model so you may find some useful hints. Then check out to see what driver is installed on your system: the open-source or the ATI proprietary driver. !!!Only the latter supports 3D acceleration!!! (but I assume you already know that) Then enable the ATI repository, if it’s not enabled yet. Then go to YaST/Hardware/VideoCard and Monitor and check that 3D acceleration is enabled. Then exit from your desktop environment to the console and type sax2 -r; that’ll reset your xorg settings. If everything is OK, load your desktop again and launch glxgears to see how many FPS you can get.
I have a Radeon 9250 card and was dismayed to find that ATI dropped Linux support for everything older than the 9500 series. My card was only bought about two years ago and it’s already unsupported (in Linux at least).
You may be able to get some limited 3d support from the stock radeon driver though. If you type su in the terminal, enter root password and enter this command
init 3
log in as root and run this command:
sax2 -r
you may be able to go into sax2 and check the “enable 3d acceleration” box and then save your settings and type
I have now verified, and the 3D Support is already checked (on) - but my Desktop Effects are still not working as expected :-S
Anyways - I think you are right, that the problem lies with the missing support by AMD for Radeon 9000 in the Linux driver - it seems that I will have to go a long way back, in old driver packs, for support for the 9000…
But but now that my Sax2 control panel have 3D support active, could the problems with the Desktop Effects be a problem with DE more than a problem with my driver? anyone
I have provided a screen shot, to show how the problem ‘looks like’…
Sorry for my bad english. I can help.
I have laptop with rv250 (ATI Radeon Mobility M9) videochip on board, and resolved this problem.
Compiz Fusion or Kwin compositing in SUSE 11.1 on my laptop now worked so-so. There are problems with perfomance.
Using open source driver ati or radeon (default installed)
In Xorg.conf delete all strings with keyword “virtual”, or change value of this parametre on the smaller (for example: Virtual 2048 1536 change to Virtual 1280 1024)
and reload Xserver.
