I am using the kernel radeon video module with my AMD Series A-Series APU with Integrated Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6550D but my
screen flickers during the boot process. After the KDE Desktop is loaded, my video is fine. Does anyone know how to fix this?

NOTE: By flicker, I mean white bars appear on on the text console & black bars appear on the gui screen.

The only fix I can think of is to install an AMD catalyst priority driver that supports kernel-3.7.1 & my X.Org X Server 1.12.3
if & when they release a suitable new installer. However, the problem with using tha catalyst priority driver is it can stop
working without warning if you upgrade your kernel or Xorg server.

The amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86.x86_64.zip worked for me with kernel-3.6.1 but it doesn't support kernel-3.7.1.
It also refused to work when I updated my xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.12.3-2.fc17.x86_64 to xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.12.4-1.fc17.x86_64.

Thank you for reading this post & I hope someone can offer a solution.

Linux doesn't play nice with radeon graphics cards. If you have a desktop with an open pci express slot, obtain and insert a nvidia type graphics card of your choice. Otherwise, you may be stuck using vesa mode.

If you install the fglrx/nvidia driver downloaded from the net and AFTER that you upgrade xorg or the kernel, the driver WILL stop working.

Why? Because the installation procedure consists of:
1. Installing the kernel module that will load the driver components - this is done only for the current kernel by default.
2. Installing/replacing certain xorg components that are needed in order to make the link with the driver to enable its features.

So 1+2= any modification to xorg or installing a new kernel subsequent to the driver installation will mess up the driver.

Solution: reinstall the driver after any of the 1 or 2 modifications. Command line for reinstalling the fglrx driver is:
drivername= the install script with full path


NOTE: you need to have the headers installed for the kernel you are using.

P.S. This is true for both fglrx (AMD proprietary) and nvidia (nvidia proprietary) drivers if those are installed from the generic installation scripts available on their respective sites.
Certain distros include these drivers in their repositories and implement workarounds for issues 1 (adding the kernel module to the dkms tree) and 2 (doing some hokey-pokey with xorg's files via symlinks).

Here is a workarond for the 3.7 kernel:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410...8351042544038/

And here is the link to the 12.12 driver:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTI1MDI

Try adding something like this to boot options:

Thank you all for replying to my post.

I got the fglrx proprietary driver working with kernel-3.7.1 & xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.12.4-2.fc17.x86_64 after I found the arch-fglrx-3.7.patch on the web.
It seems that kernel-3.7.1 changed the source location of its "version.h" file & the amd-installer couldn't find it.

#################################################################################################### ##
Patching & installing the fglrx (amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.run) source:
boot init 3
ln -s /src/linux-3.7.1/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /src/linux-3.7.1/include/linux/version.h
mkdir /tmp/catalyst
cp amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.zip /tmp/catalyst
cp arch-fglrx-3.7.patch /tmp/catalyst
cd /tmp/catalyst
unzip amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.zip ..This extracts the fglrx catalyst installer program from its (.zip) container
./amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.run --extract src ..This creates directory "src" & extracts the fglrx installer source files to it
cd src
patch-Np1 --verbose < ../arch-fglrx-3.7.patch
ati-installer.sh 9.002 --install .. This starts the install program for fglrx driver version 9.002

Note: The ati-installer.sh [fglrx-version] --install command is run from the /tmp/catalyst/src directory.
It mimics the normal (./amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.run) install


Here is the patch tree:
/tmp ..directory on rootfs
catalyst ..sub-directory
amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.zip ..installer container
arch-fglrx-3.3.patch /tmp/catalyst ..patch file
amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86-x86_64.run ..installer application

src
#################################################################################################### #####
Getting back to the radeon opensource driver, I couldn't get it to boot my APU embedded video without flickering.
However, I works pretty good (after boot) on this Asus board & even better on my wife's Asus board with onboard video.
She doesn't get any flickering during the boot process.

The vesa driver works without flickering with my APU imbedded video but the kernel defaults to 800x600 resolution &
desktop icons are too big. Guess I'd have to disable KMS & create a xorg.conf with modelines to fix this.

Thanks again for your reply's & thanks to everyone working on opensource drivers.

Well glad to hear that. Anyway, the open source drivers are way behind the proprietary ones right now, especially for the newer cards.
I have a A8-5500 (FM2 socket) apu and i did try the opensource drivers and got 14 fps in Urban Terror (a very low-requiremet FPS). With fglrx i have 125 (as this is the max i could set it in the preferences, probably the card is able to do much more).
Also, with fglrx i have working video hardware acceleration+decoding (xvba) with XBMC.