I don’t quite understand how to disable the loading of the free radeon driver while installing fglrx. Here’s how it’s described in SDB:ATI_drivers
Before trying to install the fglrx package it is really recommended to get ride of free radeon driver. On the boot line add : nomodeset blacklist=radeon 3 So you will boot without xorg launched. At that time it is recommended to recreate an initrd without the radeon loaded simply launch as root mkinitrd Then proceed with one of the two method GUI or command line.
My question is: in which field to add the line ‘nomodeset blacklist=radeon 3’? The field ‘Optional Kernel Command Line Parameter’?
What driver are you trying to load? The typical drivers that will function for AMD graphic hardware are:
fbdev - this is a very slow but also highly compatible graphic driver - comes with openSUSE in the xorg-x11-driver-video rpm
vesa - this is a bit faster than fbdev and reasonable compatible graphic driver (but still pretty slow) - comes with openSUSE in the xorg-x11-driver-video rpm
radeonhd - this driver works for older AMD-radeon hardware, but development on it has mostly stopped and hence won’t work with newer hardware - comes with openSUSE in the xorg-x11-driver-video-radeonhd rpm
radeon - this is the most common open source driver for radeon hardware, typically with the best performance amongst the open source drivers and works with most but the newest hardware (but it may have some glitches with older hardware) - comes with openSUSE in the xorg-x11-driver-video rpm
fglrx - this is the proprietary AMD graphic driver - it has the best performance and works with newer hardware but not the older legacy AMD/ATI hardware - this needs to be downloaded from either the AMD site and installed/built manually (which is not difficult) or installed via an rpm which does NOT come with openSUSE
to force the loading of the different drivers in cases where the auto config chooses the wrong driver, sometimes one can edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf file.
I tried to load any driver which would allow the GUI method as described in the guide. I don’t know which is better for this purpose.
Finally I chose a bit different method. Instead of loading GUI I installed fglrx with text mode YaST. The only difficulty for me was to start the pppoe internet connection. I hope that this method isn’t worse.
There’re a few different methods of installing the fglrx driver in the guide. I wonder which method is best for getting a least fragile driver?
There isn’t much difference in the ways mentioned in the guide.
First of all The Easy Way (GUI) using YaST is actually the same as The Easy Way (CLI).
And the last method is** Building FGLRX Manually **which can be seen as the “most unstable” driver since it’s the latest driver AMD published.
Then again the latest driver may contain some bugfixes.
I hope it is working now, but I don’t understand that comment. One does NOT need a pppoe internet connection to install the fglrx driver the manual way (which was once called 'the hardway(that is not hard) ’ ) So I have no idea as to what you attempted as a pppoe is not required if one is building/installing the driver the manual way.
One does in many cases need to :
IN ADVANCE download the appropriate fglrx (catalyst proprietary driver/script) from the AMD site
remove any previous rpms with fglrx in the rpm file name
remove any custom edits from the 50-device.conf and xorg.conf files (if any such files)
disable KMS in the kernel
blacklist the radeon driver
reboot to run level 3 with the boot code ‘nomodeset 3’
and then log in as a regular user, switch to root permissions
build the rpm with the appropriate fglrx (catalyst) driver/script that one downloaded above with an appropriate bash shell command
install the newly built rpm with the zypper or rpm command
reboot
IMHO the only tricky part is getting the correct/appropriate bash shell command.
I take it you tried a completely different method ?
Hello Edward,
following The (modified) Easy Way I got the working driver. It works well, though the Flurry screensaver doesn’t run smoothly anymore. I think it’s because of some software installed later.
Concerning its version, according to the Catalyst Control Center, the Catalyst version is 11.10 and the Driver Packaging Version is 8.902-1. So it seems to be a newer version than the one available on the AMD website for Radeon HD 3200. Where version 11.9 is available.
There in the Russian SDB, it’s said that The Easy Way has one advantage. Literally: “You won’t need to recompile the package upon every update of the kernel”. I wonder what it means.
There’s also the 1-click install method in the guide, btw.
Oh, it was mostly The Easy Way (GUI), with the exception that I had to use text mode YaST as I couldn’t figure out how to use the GUI mode YaST with the radeon driver being blacklisted. So the internet connection was needed to download packages.
On 2011-11-08 15:56, Wayra wrote:
> There in the ‘Russian SDB’
> (http://ru.opensuse.org/SDB:ATI_драйверы), it’s said that The
> Easy Way has one advantage. Literally: “You won’t need to recompile the
> package upon every update of the kernel”. I wonder what it means.
Exactly what it says. The hard way you do have to recompile on every kernel
update.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Well, if simple re-installation of the driver is needed, it’s nothing to worry about Thanks.
But how do I know that the kernel was updated? won’t I miss this update? :shame:
> But how do I know that the kernel was updated? won’t I miss this
> update? :shame:
By reading the list of what is going to be updated - unless you do
automated updates, which I do not recommend; or that you press enter
without reading, which is worse.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Thanks.