Running 2.6.36.6-0.7 kernel on an old Compaq nc6000 laptop with ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 (aka MV350) graphics.
I recently did an upgrade from 11.3 to 11.4 and now the KDE desktop display is distorted (the login screen is ok). I think
the problem has something to do with the radeon driver. I also tried upgrading to “Tumbleweed” and the 3.0 kernel. That has it’s own set of
problems (virtually no drivers!) but the display was ok. But it was using a generic vesafb driver i think.
Anyone experiences this and know how to fix it?
I tried attaching a picture I took of my laptop screen using my phone that shows what I am talking about. It didn’t seem to work.
Find it here - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1860948/0824111228a.jpg
Running 2.6.36.6-0.7 kernel on an old Compaq nc6000 laptop with ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 (aka MV350) graphics.
I recently did an upgrade from 11.3 to 11.4 and now the KDE desktop display is distorted (the login screen is ok).
Can you expand on your ‘distorted’ desktop display description? Cropping? Artifacts? Resolution? Stretched desktop? Just an idea: Since you upgraded from 11.3, this may just be a problem with a KDE4 config file (in /home/dean/.kde4/share/config/). If you’re prepared to rename this directory, then restarting the desktop will result in default settings again. At least you can retsore it again if you don’t get an improvement.
See the URL in my first post that is a picture I took with my phone of my laptop screen.
About your KDE config file idea: I forgot to mention, I had tried that already. It didn’t help, which is one of the reasons that makes me suspect a radeon driver issue. Good idea, but it didn’t help.
Your symptoms are similar to that described here:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=678264
Looks like you’ve run into a regression with the radeon driver. FWIW, there are some workarounds described (often specific to particular chipsets), but it’s not clear (to me at least) how relevant they are to your situation. Read the posted comments and feedback carefully before trying any potential solutions. (I’d stay with openSUSE 11.3 for now). No more suggestions from me. Good luck.
Thanks for the bugzilla pointer. I’ll check it out. It’s a lead anyway. If I find a solution or workaround, I’ll post back here.
Once again, thanks for the bugzilla pointer. After reading through the bug comments in detail, I tried booting with “nomodeset” (which I thought I had tried earlier without success) and it appears to fix the display corruption for the most part. When using that, sometimes when you log out, the kdm screen seems to be in the wrong display mode but I can handle that by restarting kdm if needed. Problem sufficiently solved (with the 2.6.37.6-0.7 kernel).
That’s good to know. Thanks for the update. It may be useful to others searching for help on this issue.
