As usual, ATI cards seem to suffer under linux distros sigh
It was extremely laggy to do everything, opening windows etc. As i disabled desktop effects opensuse ran beautifully.
What can be done to change this? ATI uses with HD cards may as well use the opensource drivers if they can. ATI seems terrible at making their own 
Iāve given up on them
HD 4870
I did some digging cuz the Ubuntu/Mint drivers always work with desktop flawlessly, so digging throught the package manager i found that xserver-xorg-video-radeon 6.13 drivers are the ones taht work for my card.
Apparently the drivers that come installed with Opensuse an X11 Xorg driver donāt work well and the proprietary works, but slow 2d acceleration. Soooo for those who want their ATI card to work, should find a way to get those xserver xorg radeon drivers, cuz they are the only ones that work without issues.
BY teh way these drivers are build from xf86-video-ati soooo, what that means to the pros, iām not sure but it might help noobs like me
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati
My understanding is the ATI open source driver versions with openSUSE are as listed here:
radeon driver and also *radeon driver information here *
radeonhd driver and also radeonhd information here
I doubt that openSUSE-11.3 GM version will have the 6.13.1 radeon driver, as it is too new having only been released within the past few days, ā¦ but I donāt know that for certain.
There is a cutting edge repository for openSUSE video drivers that one can add to get rpms of some of the latest cutting edge open source graphic drivers, but my experience is it completely breaks ones graphics as often as it helps improve oneās graphics. Repository is here:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.3/
My recommendation is to NOT add the above repos.
openSUSE-11.3 will also come with the 2.6.34 kernel and the 1.8.0 version of Xorg where the kernel has some radeon driver patches (although not as many recent patches as fedora-13 has)
oldcpu:
I think i agree with you. The radeonhd 1.3 drivers though are responsible for the horrible performance iāve been having. Iām almost positive the radeon 6.13 should work, but iām scared to go through that installation process again and fail hahaha, and have to revert my system all over again 
iāll get the stones soon enough though.
I donāt care if itās 6.13.1 or 6.13.0 as long as it works properly haha. Radeonhd most likely will break for me so iāll follow your recommendation of not adding that repo. Is there a radeon repo i can add so that i can download the radeon 6.13 drivers? Also how do i completely remove existing drivers to replace it with the ones i downloaded. So as to avoid conflicts
The radeon driver comes in openSUSE in the rpm xorg-x11-driver-video. One can search on software.opensuse.org for that rpm to see if there is a newer version.
But in truth the best place to find that driver is the repos I do not recommend:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.3/
There is a risk with any opensource graphic driver update that has not been thoroughly tested on a repos.
hmmm strange, iām not at my pc right now, but i browsed that repo and only see radeonhd stuff. Will give it a check again. Patiently waiting for 11.3 so i can tinker with it. I really hope i can finally get this working properly.
Just wait a bit. It will take a while for it to be populated. ā¦ for example, take a look at the 11.2 directory in that same repos to get a flavour as to what will eventually be populated.
Is there any way i can tinker with different drivers on the liveCD version without having to reboot the system? IN other words kinda like refresh the desktop to see if the drivers i installed work or not
It depends on the driver and when it is to be loaded nominally.
Seems like i have no need to ātryā I downloaded RC2 and the drivers that came with it works flawlessly with compiz. I am now VERY confused, the xorg drivers seem to be teh same version of the RC1, but yet one works, and one doesnāt. Iām curious now. Iāll have to dive into both livecds and compare notes or something sigh
Iām having issues getting multimediaā¦is there like a codec PACK, that i can just download and have my mp3s vids and all my vids up and running?
Donāt forget RC2 is NOT the GM version. If you want superior multimedia you will be better off waiting for the GM version.
Still, this can be made to work. I recommend you read our new users area, ā¦ in particular the multimedia faq/guide in there:
New User How To/FAQ (read only)
It looks to me that there are 6.13 driver implemenations and there are 6.13 driver implementations and they are NOT the same.
I tested a recent Sidux (2010.01) with 2.6.32.14 kernel and xorg-1.7.7. It has the radeon 6.13 driver which does NOT work with Special desktop effects (ie NO 3D) on my wifeās ATI Radeon 9200 PRO legacy graphics. I then tested it on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop with an ATI Radeon HD3450 and the laptopās screen simply froze upon boot with weird colours.
I tested a Fedoara-13 with 2.6.33 kernel and the radeon 6.13 driver and it worked superbly with Special Desktop effects (ie great 3D) on my wifeās ATI Radeon 9200 PRO legacy graphics. I then tested it on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop with an ATI Radeon HD3450 and that also works superbly.
I tested Linux Mint 9 and Kubuntu-10.0.4 (both with 2.6.32 kernel and radeon 6.13 driver and Xorg-1.7.6) and they both worked superbly with Special Desktop effects (ie great 3D) on my wifeās ATI Radeon 9200 PRO legacy graphics. I then tested them both on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop with an ATI Radeon HD3450 and that also works superbly. (but their wireless support is poor relative to openSUSE on same hardware).
I tested openSUSE-11.3 RC2 (with 2.6.34 kernel and xorg-1.8.0 and the radeon 6.13 driver) and noted Special desktop effects do NOT work (ie NO 3D) on my wifeās ATI Radeon 9200 PRO legacy graphics. I then tested it on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop with an ATI Radeon HD3450 and the special desktop effects work great.
So my assessment is while openSUSE-11.3 will be a BIG step up in ATI radeon driver functionality (compared to openSUSE 11.2 which had problems) it still, for legacy hardware, will be lacking that of Fedora and Ubuntu based derivatives. Hence I am anticipating a lot of disgruntled ATI graphic card users with legacy cards will be making posts complaining ā¦ 
ā¦ my guess here is Ubuntu, or Fedora, or both, have a fix/patch to the Radeon legacy graphics but their patch has NOT made it upstream yet to the Radeon driver (or to the Kernel or to libdrm) and hence it has not yet made it back down stream to benefit openSUSE.
I am anxiously awaiting the release of 11.3. I attempted to install 11.2, but could not with my Radeon x200 video card. The 11.3 RC2 runs fine on my machine without desktop effects enabled. I donāt think that is a big deal, but should I be worried about any other video problems (flash, cd, etc.)? I have tested almost every other distro and my card works fine with the effects turned on. I just enjoy openSUSE and want to get away from the āinnovationā found in my current distro. Desktop effects are swell, but I can live without them.
I recommend you write a bug report on openSUSE-11.3 on special desktop effects NOT working with 11.3 RC2 ā¦
I wrote a bug report here: Access Denied ā¦ and I think additional bug reports like this for hardware other than mine may help in providing the motivation for the packager to fix this in openSUSE (or at least following things up when the patch (?) being usd by Fedora and Ubuntu finally makes it upstream).
Thanks for the informative post oldcpu, iāll have to give it a few rereads to grasp exactly everything youāre saying though God i wanna love opensuse soooo bad, but these niggles make me sway to mint/ubuntu. I donāt want to do that at all, but they make it so effortless lol. More so Mint than Ubuntu. IMO, these issues with drivers for radeon are an ATI issue. How come Nvidians are fine now and Atians suffer
3 more days for opensuse
Another issue arose. I installed opensuse 11.2 on my sisterās Asus eeepC 100HE, and i get no sound
And everything seemed to be going so well lol, now what
Also, thereās a botched 400MB partition (previous Meego install) that refuses to be removed i donāt even know how to go about that one, itās just there like a blood sucking tick
Start a new thread on that and we should be able to sort that problem. Note the information needed as defined here in 2nd half of that stickie post: Welcome to multimedia sub-area
Every distro has them.
I did not mention above, sound did NOT work in Linux Mint 9 Gnome (although 3D graphics worked). ā¦ sound works GREAT with openSUSE on same PC ā¦ ] So every distro has its glitches.
That is true. I tried out fedora 13 and the 3d and 2d effects were awesome out of teh box. But itās so bare, iām afraid to hard install it and get caught with my pants down. Seems very polished.
Iām still in love wit Opensuse, sheās like that very hot naughty girl, that mom says stay away from hahaha, but you just canāt. Ill open a thread on sound eventually, iām waiting for 11.3 to come out and iāll try that one first. IN the meanwhile iām reading up about the linux filesystem
Side question. Would rpm packages i download that were āgearedā for Fedora work on Opensuse the same way? or is there THAT much difference between them. NOT referring to critical stuff like drivers, just certain software etc.
It depends, but many times it will not work. ā¦ and even if it does work, it could cause other complexities.
You are far better looking for an openSUSE version, and most of the time there is such a version. Note the two openSUSE rpm search engines
Note these search engines search different places for rpms.
Also, if you find an rpm on Fedora that you really really want to run on openSUSE but you can not find an openSUSE rpm (despite looking for an rpm) IMHO a far better course of action is to
simply installing an rpm from another distro is fraught with risks and while it might work, it migh really really mess things up on your openSUSE which will not be apparent until later, and when it does impact later you may have no idea as to the cause (of the problem - not realizing it was due to the fedora rpm on openSUSE).
You may wish to take a look at this software installation hints/tips guide I wrote.
heeey webpin is really nice, i usually just use the software search one. Not bad at all. Question about your commands for su.
Iām accustomed to Ubuntuās sudo for root privileges. Iāve read that it is āsu -ā? whatās the point of the hyphen? I was under the impression hyphens are for arguments. Opensuse superuser confuses me