Slowroll with the Xfce desktop was installed to a thumbdrive to see how it runs and I find it runs well. Relating to my X11 Intel thread, I noticed Slowroll (with an AMD Radeon RS780L (Radeon 3000) on the motherboard) is also using ‘modesetting’ as the driver.
However, with Tumbleweed on the same physcial hardware, but installed to the internal HDD, it is using ‘radeon’ instead. At the time (late 2023), I installed Tumbleweed with KDE, but have since installed and now use Xfce.
In an attempt to get Tumbleweed to also use ‘modesetting’, I uninstalled ‘xf86-video-ati’ and rebooted, to an error ‘no screens found’. Upon reinstalling ‘xf86-video-ati’, it successfully booted into SDDM. Xfce uses LightDM.
Why would Slowroll use ‘modesetting’ and Tumbleweed use ‘radeon’, on the same hardware? I looked for a package with ‘modesetting’ or ‘modeset’ in the name and found nothing, so I don’t know what is providing ‘modesetting’ on Slowroll.
Those using X11 should have a log file with clues when things go wrong, Xorg.0.log, in either /var/log/ or in ~/.local/share/xorg/. If you don’t see anything obvious in yours after trying without xf86-video-ati installed, you can upload it using susepaste command, or paste it at either https://paste.opensuse.org/ or elsewhere.
Possibly the installer may have put optional file(s) in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ that expressly direct use of radeon driver (contains ‘Driver “radeon”’ line). If so, either remove the file, or comment the driver line, or replace ‘radeon’ with ‘modesetting’, or change the filename name to not end in .conf, then restart X.
It’s impossible for the modesetting driver to not be available as long as you have a working X. It’s bundled in the xorg-x11-server rpm. Upstream, it’s the default for most non-antique AMD/ATI, Intel, & NVidia GPUs.
I have old Radeons both older and newer than your rv610 running TW, Slowroll & Leap, including a Mac with an RV610. Only much older ones refuse to use the modesetting driver.
Inxi produces better graphics troubleshooting info thus: inxi -GSaz. Yours show more differences between SR and TW than I would expect. There could be some change in TW I haven’t encountered yet with any of my old Radeons, or a bug. If the above doesn’t help you, I’ll give my RV620 with TW a looksee later or tomorrow.
All good with RV620, so yours surely must have something interfering, or forcing radeon driver. Or, there could be an issue with the RS780 renderer yours uses that mine does not, hard to tell, because your inxi output is a short version. Also it looks like you’re tagging your pastes with something other than PRE (</> icon above input window) or ``` (on line before and line after), and losing your output’s formatting.
I just figured out how to display the info, using the Preformatted option.
I added a 20-radeon.conf file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d to turn on the TearFree option, but that is all it does. Prior to adding that, it was still using the radeon driver.
modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu is in the boot, because the Plymouth bootsplash originally would not display at bootup, due to the amdgpu driver being so large. Plymouth ran out of time to display. It appears that the system was loading in both amdgpu and radeon, at the time. This was also a reported issue with another Linux distro and adding that command at boot corrected the issue.
The desktop was purchased in 2011, so I question the built: 2005-13 information for the GPU, assuming that is actually a year/week.
Did you see the lsmod output from mine? Apparently the radeon and amdgpu kernel modules may have some kind of synergy applicable to Terascale GPUs. Do you have both kernel-firmware-amdgpu and kernel-firmware-radeon installed?
Discussion of which display driver to use sort of needs some kind of yardstick to determine which may be the better of the two, assuming switching between them isn’t an unreasonable ordeal, and both are functional. Performance difference may be difficult to perceive otherwise. I use glmark2 from OSS repo for simple benchmarking.
That page shows your GPU seems to produce a bargain basement performance level.
Yes, both of those packages are installed. In addition, xf86-video-ati is installed, while xf86-video-amdgpu is not.
Removing modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu from the boot, displays three small green blocks for a bootsplash, instead of Plymouth. Blacklisting amdgpu doesn’t seem to be harming anything though.
This particular desktop model only came with two closed PCI Express x1 ports and the only x1 video card I could find, didn’t work, as the current power supply doesn’t provide enough wattage, so it’s limited to that on-board GPU.
If you wish to use the modesetting display driver without removing xf86-video-ati, you’ll almost certainly need a ‘Driver “modesetting”’ line in a valid /etc/X11/xorg.conf file or in a valid .conf file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ to force its use.
Given the limited capability of your GPU, I strongly recommend avoiding all forms of graphical bloat and bling to give it less to do. This includes Plymouth removal.
Perhaps that old PSU needs cleaning and/or inspection. When PSU caps go bad, they lose capability and either cap replacement, or PSU replacement, is needed to enable additional components, such as a discrete GPU, to work.
The power supply in the case is a 250-watt. At the time I tried the x1 video card, I did not know that it required a power supply with a minimum of 350 watts.
The video display defaults to 1920x1080 (16:9) with this monitor and the GPU. I have changed it to 1680x1050 (16:10), which is the next-smallest resolution down in the list. The X11 driver remains radeon.
You still haven’t shown any response to the first two paragraphs of comment #2:
Did you look for a line containing “Driver” in /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf?
Did you not find an Xorg.0.log file, from running without xf86-video-ati installed, to share?
Wouldn’t boot, or wouldn’t show the expected login screen? When login screen fails to appear, does Ctrl-Alt-F4 produce a login prompt?
Does disabling or uninstalling plymouth while xf86-video-ati is not installed allow the login screen to appear, or produce messages indicating errors? Have you removed the blacklisting from your Grub stanzas (/etc/default/grub’s ‘GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=’ line), and ensured absence of blacklisting in /etc/modprobe.d/? Have you tried forcing use of modesetting via some valid file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ containing 'Driver “modesetting”’, e.g. 50-device.conf:
There is no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11. Aside from the 20-radeon.conf file previously mentioned that turns on the TearFree option in radeon, there is only one other .conf file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d, relating to the keyboard.
I did not look at Xorg.0.log, but once xf86-video-ati was removed and the system was rebooted, there was an on-screen message from X, “no screens found” and the boot stopped at that point. I rebooted into runlevel 3 and reinstalled the package, then on that reboot, the boot went straight through to SDDM and was able to login again.
If the system should otherwise have used modesetting, absent the xf86-video-ati package, it clearly didn’t, as (is the case with Slowroll) it should have successfully booted to the login screen.
Although I still think there is/was something in the TW image at the time, forcing radeon to be used.
I will add the suggested 50- .conf file and reboot.
There used to be a directory xorg_pci_ids in /etc/X11/ that could be used for overrides applicable to specific PCI Device IDs. I haven’t seen it in quite some time. It could be that somewhere in the bowels of /usr/ your 1002:9616 was explicitly directed to use radeon instead of modesetting. Xorg.0.log may have reported what was going on to cause use of radeon instead of modesetting.
Anyway, glad we found you a fix. Please mark thread solved.
