Did my hardware get dropped?
My main computer is an aging laptop from early 2004 with an ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card. The computer still works well for most things I need to do (write, email, etc.), but once I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 I discovered that the new ATi fglrx drivers do not seem to support my card any longer…at least it does not show up in System->Administration->Hardware Drivers as a restricted driver available for me to download and install.
The open source driver is working well for typical things I do, including Compiz and the flashy effects, but I can’t play 3-D games like Sauerbraten with them. They just aren’t up to it the way the proprietary drivers are. I know this is a nearly five year old laptop that I am planning to give to my kids and replace sometime soon, but I’m still hopeful.
Anyone know the story on this?
Hey,
release notes of 8.10:
ATI “fglrx” video support
The ATI video driver in 8.10 drops support for video cards with r300 based chips (the Radeon 9500 – X600 Series of cards). If you have such a card, please use “Hardware Drivers” at System/Administration to disable it before the upgrade. Please see bug 284408 for more information
could be that you are one candidate…
Regards,
\sh
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/284408
Yep, that looks like the problem. Thank you for the insight.
Yeah, Matthew, it’s an unfortunate situation. The way it worked out is:
(1) ATI/AMD dropped support for your card in the latest Catalyst drivers.
(2) Only this latest driver supports the Xorg server 1.5.0 in Intrepid. Earlier versions of fglrx won’t even run in Intrepid.
So yeah, it puts people like you in a tough spot, and is one of the reasons that the FOSS world doesn’t like the idea of proprietary drivers — it puts the users and developers out of control of situations like this.
So yeah, you’re left with the choices of going back to Hardy, dual-booting, or surviving with Intrepid and poorer graphics drivers.
Unfortunately, nvidia does the same thing and has done possibly worse historically with their current vs legacy drivers and how quickly hardware that was once good is now “legacy” and not bug-fixed.
Starting at Hardy, my ATI X1300 no longer worked with anything 3D, but prior to that it worked fine playing 3D games
My 4 years old XP machine with an r200 card runs just fine, with full 3D acceleration.
I guess everyone chooses their own punishment.
No Problem
You’re welcome
When you tested the 3D games, did you do the test with Compiz. I’ve repeatedly had various problems with Compiz + games on various different cards.
I have tested games using Compiz as well as with Metacity, and they just aren’t playable using the open drivers. That is sad, because I really want to support FOSS above proprietary drivers…I’ll do so with my checkbook when I buy this computer’s replacement. I had planned to do so anyway, but this makes the decision even more firm.
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
Wow… that really sucks. So if we want fglrx, we have to go back to Hardy. Thats just great.
Yeah, ATi/AMD has decided our hardware isn’t worthwhile for them to support anymore.
On the positive side, the hardware does work well with the FOSS drivers for everything else.
Matthew, perhaps something worth noting is that for the latest generation of ATI cards, ATI/AMD has been an exemplary FOSS citizen by releasing most of the specs involved in the card (note that’s something that not even Intel has done — drivers, no specs) and funding the Novell effort to implement the free RadeonHD driver that is currently just simply a development frenzy.
I think there’s hope for the future, but right now the Linux graphics market is a bit touchy and at times feels lose-lose to the consumer.
Besides that video and flash are too flacky with fglrx, even on supported card the open source driver is better.
I agree with you guys, there is hope, and I certainly appreciate the efforts ATI/AMD is making. I have watched the events of the last year with interest and been pleased overall with the direction.
My wife’s last two computers have had on board Intel graphics processors, and there has never been the slightest issue with them. That is wonderful! I haven’t tried playing FPS intensive or 3D games on her hardware, though.
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Well Matthew I’m an owner of two Intel graphics cards and I can’t say they’re a smooth ride either. Yeah, overall I think they work better than AMD’s stuff — 3D effects are snappier. However, EXA is a bit slower at fullscreen video playback than the old XAA system, sometimes switching between a console and X results in a hard hang. When running fast user switching sessions, if the original session had 3D effects running the next session will have no 3D at all, not even accelerated video playback. Also, sometimes when switching back I just get a black screen that responds to input but doesn’t redraw the screen.
So, as I said in my original post, sometimes this market feels lose-lose for the consumer — You can have a card that sucks less at $something for various conflicting values of something.
So is there anyway of fooling the graphics drivers like I used to do in Windows (with Omega drivers)? Is anyone up to deconstructing the drivers to have them recognize other hardware codes?