I would like to downgrade back to Xorg 1.17 and AMD catalyst...
 

I gave the FOSS driver a fair chance. It works great for everything, except modern 3D games. It performs badly with my video card(R7 250X). When using Catalyst everything runs great. So if possible I would like to downgrade and use Catalyst for the time being.

But, I can't find these packages or source(except xorg-server itself) anywhere:
xorg-server-1.17.4
xorg-server-xephyr-1.17.4
xorg-server-xnest-1.17.4
xorg-server-xvfb-1.17.4

The last time I did this I also had to rebuild these:
xf86-video-ati
xf86-video-vesa
xf86-input-evdev

Then I found some patches for catalyst to build on kernel 4.4..

So I guess I need to know where to get those packages and the patches for catalyst. If anyone could help me out that'd be great. As always I very much appreciate the help I get from you guys.

What about grabbing 1.14.3 from slackware-14.1, or is it to old? :(

ftp.slackware.no:/slackware/slackware-14.1/patches/source/xorg-server
ftp.slackware.no:/slackware/slackware-14.1/source/x/x11

hope this can help you

If your dealing with current I would slow down a tad Pat has been doing serious xorg updates lately and we are on the 4.4.5 kernel now.
you may want to google amd and the kernel 4.4.5 . point people to where you found the patches they may be able to edit them for the latest xorg.

The patches I used were linked in the description of this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-tBdO7KUlo

The instructions were a bit confusing but somehow I managed. Here is the actual link to the patches: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.g...st-test.tar.gz

What exactly are you having issues with using the FOSS driver?

Here are the xorg-server packages you'll need:

xorg-server
xorg-server-xephyr
xorg-server-xnest
xorg-server-xvfb

I have attached the patchset for 4.4, but be aware that I have not personally tested these, and you may run into some compilation errors, as I no longer own the hardware necessary. I encourage you to play around with not applying some patches, and see if you get better results.

If you don't remember the steps necessary to patch, I will refer you to a previous post of mine; follow the general guidelines, substituting 4.4 for 4.2 when necessary.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Matt

Like I said, it just does not perform well in games. Lots of stuttering as if loading textures. I do have libtxc 64-bit and compat32 installed. I have Oblivion and Fallout 3 installed with wine and textures are all distorted, solid colors, or missing. With catalyst these games run smooth and look great.

Also, right now after upgrading current, I'm seeing these weird red shadows around elements like buttons in web pages: http://i.imgur.com/hxohjIA.png

And honestly, my biggest problem is with Team Fortress 2. It seems to me, after lots of googling, that the FOSS driver generally performs horribly with this game. For me it is like a slideshow up until my system freezes and becomes unresponsive, forcing me to do a hard reboot. Here is the output from steam last time it crashed: http://pastebin.ca/3402996 and for what it's worth, here are the xorg errors after the crash: http://pastebin.com/EcgH2Dx4

Thanks! I remembered the old topic but the links you posted had expired. I will give this a try but I will have to put it off until tomorrow.

You're welcome. Yeah, the links I had in the linked post are from a copy.com account which I have since deleted, hence the new links. I look forward to hearing how things go with your downgrade.

@ahc_fan: Do you always download binary files from just anywhere without being able to verify them?

Amazing! Crazy!

If this is the same as his previous versions, Matt went and created new packages based on the updated libraries in -current (however, it's been a while since he's had radeon hardware, so these could be somewhat out of date, although, probably not as bad as the original, stock packages). Do you really think it is better to install a package that is 4 months old while the rest of -current has been humming along?

The best way to deal with this would be to get the SlackBuild and the source and build the required packages yourself...

That was my original plan but I could not find the source for those four packages. Slackware mirrors only have 1.18, X.org website only has xorg-server-1.17.4 and not the other three. Perhaps I just didn't look hard enough.

I believe they are all generated from the xserver source. Grab the 1.17.4 source and then replace the 1.18.2 source in the x11 directory and then rebuild the packages yourself.

The packages should reside in /tmp/x11-build/, however, by default, the script will install them as they finish (since when building X, some components rely on other components being installed, so it installs them as it completes building individual packages), so, you should be able to reboot (or restart X) and have it be the older version. However, if you want to check, you can run ls -la /var/log/packages/xorg-server* and verify you now have 1.17.4 installed. If you don't, you can manually "upgrade" (downgrade) your packages by running upgradepkg /tmp/x11-build/xorg-server*.txz

If you need to end up rebuilding those additional packages, you can just run the following (as root) within the x11 directory after you build and install xserver. You'll likely need to export "UPGRADE_PACKAGES=always" before running the script since, by default, the script won't "upgrade" packages that are the same version. Or you could just upgrade them manually after you've completed the builds. I put both options below, but you only need to pick one.

NOTE: This is off the top of my head, so there might be a few minor corrections that need to be done. But I'm pretty sure it's accurate.

EDIT: I just noticed I missed the closing quote for the reject argument in the first wget line. I have fixed it.

Alright, I'm back on Xorg 1.17.4 with catalyst (again).

Downgrading was a smooth process. Patching the driver took a small bit of trial and error. In the end I just said "No" whenever it prompted to "patch anyway", the rest of the patches went through and the driver installed without errors.

Thanks to all who helped!

For others who may need to do this and find this thread, did you end up recompiling the xf86-video-ati, xf86-video-vesa, and xf86-input-evdev packages? If so, did you try loading up X without replacing them or did you just do it without testing (not that there's anything wrong with that).