Yep! The ATI video-cards works fine today with (Slackware) Linux. ;-)

ATI FTW! :-D

Yes, but some extra work might be needed for an older ATI card.

I have a RADEON 7000 (chipset RV100) and with -current dated 2nd March, KMS and OpenGL were not working properly.

As suggested by rworkman in his post #11, I upgraded to xf86-video-ati 6.12.191 (I used -current SlackBuild script).

I also had to recompile Mesa 7.7 without gallium to ensure proper OpenGL support.

And now I have KMS and I use an OpenGL screensaver :)

By the way, the instability of gallium seems to have been acknowledged in the lastest update in -current.

Yes, because my old T30 doesn't work at all with it. :-)

Well gallium is still disabled by default in the the Mesa build system, right? I guess someone wanted to give gallium a shot? :-)

Adam

More a case of "I didn't fully understand the implications of enabling it" :-)

I do not wholly understand the videos drivers and their implications, but I bought this laptop two years ago and have always triple booted with Unbuntu, Fedora and Slackware. Last year, ATI discontinued any support for the chipset in machine (X1250), and the performance with the open source radeon drivers has been terrible----until now. With this last upgrade on Slackware current, the performance I am getting in Slackware is equal to that that I used to get with the prop. ATI drivers. Slackware sensationally out performs the video output in Ubuntu and particularly in Fedora (both using open source dirvers for radeon).

So, I might not totally understand why, but I am happy as a lark with the video in Slackware now.

Thank you Slack team. It's the best yet.

Bob

You might be interested in the following article:

linux-graphics-driver-stack-explained/

Right. I have been testing Mesa 7.8-rc and I still can't use gallium on my r600. I believe gallium only benefits some r300 users and nouveau users. So better stick with classic Mesa that works for everyone. I don't think I will be trying it again until Mesa 7.9, if there is progress made.

Thank you. That is, indeed, a very interesting article. At least now I understand the different components that control and drive the video and desktop graphics. Still, even though I am aware that the prop. drivers are closed source, reverse engineering is something linux coders have always had to do, and do quite well, because there is still such sparse hardware support for linux from manufacturers themselves, I am surprised that linux still lags so far behind the closed source drivers in performance for these modern chips.

As just a normal user and not a programmer, I can only comment on what observe. Fedora is a cutting edge distro that is usually first to include the latest drivers and I am sure I am correct that Fedora uses a more current version of Mesa than even Slackware -current. So, I am confused as to why the performance is so much better now in Slack than in any of the "cutting-edge" distros that I have used.

Bob

The xf86-video-ati-6.12.5-i486-1 crashes Xorg here. I have an old NVidia card and when I try run 'X -configure' with xf86-video-ati-6.12.5-i486-1 installed I get:

Backtrace:
0: X (xorg_backtrace+0x3b) [0x80a1c6b]
1: X (0x8048000+0x57975) [0x809f975]
2: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0xffffe410]
3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/ati_drv.so (0xb6fd7000+0x6ed) [0xb6fd76ed]
4: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/ati_drv.so (0xb6fd7000+0xb21) [0xb6fd7b21]
5: X (0x8048000+0x114071) [0x815c071]
6: X (xf86LoadModules+0xe8) [0x80ad548]
7: X (DoShowOptions+0x33) [0x80c02a3]
8: X (InitOutput+0x1bb) [0x80af37b]
9: X (0x8048000+0x1b1f0) [0x80631f0]
10: /lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xe6) [0xb73e2b86]
11: X (0x8048000+0x1af91) [0x8062f91]
Segmentation fault at address (nil)

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting

I can run 'X -configure' well after removing xf86-video-ati. I do not use this driver but perhaps this can help anyone.

Pardon me but I don't get it. If you are using a nvidia card, you should not use the ATI driver. You should instead install package xf86-video-nv-2.1.16-i486-1.txz.

Do you have a full and up-to-date install of Slackware current?

His point, I'm sure, was that 'Xorg -configure' should not fail just because the -ati driver is installed. It's an open source driver, part of Xorg, and running 'Xorg -configure' should generate a proper xorg.conf file no matter which Xorg drivers are installed. Nowhere does Grobsch suggest he was trying to use the -ati driver on an nvidia card. Indeed, he even says he does not use the -ati driver.

Adam

You're probably right. It looks not ready yet.

As Adam says, the problem is just I cannot configure X with xf86-video-ati installed, after removing this driver the X -configure worked well and selected nv driver for my xorg.conf. But seems I'm the single one who has this issue, allthough I found another user with the same problem using Ubuntu.