I'm havig a problem getting Debian Etch to run with accelerated OpenGL on my Dell C640 laptop. The laptop has an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 chipset (no ATI driver support, open source drivers only).

I'm primarily a SuSE user, so it's been years since I hack-edited a XF86Config file...

Are there any easy tools available (such as SuSE' SAX2, which they've screwed up in 10.1,... by the way)??? Command line is fine... but one of the problems is properly sellecting the driver for the thing... It should be using the open source, reverse engineered ATI driver, but it seems that it is not. I also can't see if it's using AGPgart or not... I don't even know if AGPgart is available to the system...

I've seen that the Radeon 7500 is a chipset that allows you to set up XGL if you have OpenGL properly set up and the right packages installed...

I was wondering if anyone knew where to start???

Thanks in advance.

In the (2006) July issue of Linux-magazine (http://www.linux-magazine.com) are e few articles on this subject. One of the links in there relates to Suse, try http://en.opensuse.org/Xgl

Thanks Dutch,... I've seen SuSE's page,... and also have read other Articles on XGL and AIGL... But I'm looking for more nuts and bolts kind of things...

What I'd like, ideally, is whether anyone knew of a video chipset setup tool similar to SuSE's SAX2 (graphical or non-graphical) that can be grafted onto Debian to ease driver and setup whoa's. I've tried the stuff referenced in the Xorg links from Debian's site,... but the tools are too crude to yield a decent result. Or should I think about dusting off my X11 configuration editing skills???

At this point I'm not even sure that the driver being selected is correct, or whether AGPgart is installed/required or whether the problem is a Mesa vs. DRI thing or what?...

I barely know what a modern X11 config file is supposed to look like any more...

That's the problem with Etch and this kind of 'state-of-the-art' software: the application works, but a decent configuration tool is not yet (fully) developed. I guess you'd have to do it the hard way, so dust off your editor of choice and start hacking

Also Etch is using xorg not x86free

Yes, I know,... Most distros are switching to Xorg now...

Does anyone have a sample config file that I could look at...
The structure is subtley different and I want to make sure that I can get it right.

If anyone has a config file that shows a Radeon 7500 chipset or similar (not supported by proprietary ATI drivers, just the open source ATI driver) for a laptop, could you post from it??? That would help immensely.

Ok,...

Well I've gotten OpenGL working properly now...

Next project is XGL...

Has anyone had success getting XGL working with KDE in Debian Etch.

Every time I try running even just the transparency enhancement in non-XGL KDE, I get error messages...

I'd rather run KDE than Gnome.

Do you know how you got OpenGL working? I'm having difficulty with my Ati cards--a Radeon 7200 and a Radeon 9250 (both AGP). They worked out-of-box with OpenGL using the open source "ati" driver when I was using Debian Sarge and XFree. But my new computers use on-board ethernet which isn't recognized by Sarge's installer so I've switched to Etch (where it works out-of-box).

My only problem is that OpenGL acceleration doesn't work. Agpgart looks like it's loading just fine and DRI seems to be enabled, but no OpenGL hardware acceleration...

(Note, I've never even tried to install Ati's official drivers. I'm not opposed to doing so, though, if that's what it takes.)