Installing ATI drivers for Radeon Xpress 200m on slackware 13..

shadyboy · 09-15-2009, 08:08 PM

Hello.

I have a Asus F5 Entertainment System with Slackware 13 installed.
Was talking to a good friend of mine, and he kinda told me that I was better without the official ATI drivers..

And I have been searching for a while on the net for drivers for my Radeon Xpress 200m card.

I have found something from the ATI site, but I could not get it installed.

The Error I got

Quote:

bash-3.1# sh ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run
Created directory fglrx-install.blaEqu
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing ATI Proprietary Linux Driver-8.593............................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ............................................................................................
==================================================
ATI Technologies Linux Driver Installer/Packager
==================================================
which: no XFree86 in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/java/bin:/usr/lib/kde4/libexec:/usr/lib/qt/bin:/usr/share/texmf/bin:/root/.local/bin:/root/.local/bin)

Error: ./default_policy.sh does not support version
default:v2:i686:lib::none:2.6.29.6-smp; make sure that the version is being
correctly set by --iscurrentdistro

Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.blaEqu

And since I am a n00b, I have no clue on what that means :S

Have also found something on the homepage to X.

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo

Is this the open source driver? And is it in fact better then the one I tried to install?

larryhaja · 09-15-2009, 08:21 PM

You're using a card that is no longer supported by ATI/AMD. That in addition to the version you're trying to use is not compatible with the default Slackware kernel or with xorg 1.6. Best just to use the open source driver which should be auto detected at startup.

forum1793 · 09-15-2009, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadyboy

Have also found something on the homepage to X.

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo

Is this the open source driver? And is it in fact better then the one I tried to install?

Yes, this is the open source radeon driver.

Be a little careful. You need to ensure the catalyst drivers are removed (I think). If you installed those you can run the uninstall script in /usr/share/ati. You may not have installed these.

drm consists of the drm kernel modules as well as libdrm. Slackware has libdrm package. For your hardware you may need to rebuild the radeon.ko and drm.ko modules. I don't think that happens automatically. It's quite possible you will not to rebuild these.

For all of the gits, read up and see which branch is the best for your card. Most likely today it is master and not branch 7-5 although I can't speak for your hardware.

I remember slackware 13.0 having fairly up to date mesa. If your xpress200 is a bit old you might have good luck using what slackware comes with. Try starting x (startx) with no xorg.conf in /etc/X11. If it's there temporarily rename it (as root: cd /etc/X11 mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.org).