Sauerbraten, ATI fglrx, and xgl
November 29th, 2007
My main computer is a laptop. It has a built in ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card. There’s nothing I can do about that. For the most part it works well. I am using the fglrx driver from the Ubuntu repos (8.37.6). Using metacity they work quite well and I can play my favorite games when I have a few minutes to spare. I especially enjoy Sauerbraten.
I wanted to play around with compiz, but the version of the fglrx driver that I am using does not support aiglx. I know the newest driver is supposed to do so, but I’ve been following the reports in the forums and I’m not yet convinced. Without any other recourse, I installed xgl, also from the Ubuntu repos. This was quick and easy. One reboot and all was set up. Compiz and all the flashy effects are working perfectly.
Here’s where the problem comes in. Some of my 3D games are fine, Planet Penguin Racer for example. Sauerbraten, however, is giving me problems. Shaders don’t work, the monsters don’t appear (but they still can kill!). It seems that this game is not compatible with xgl, because if I remove that, all is fine.
I’m running out of ideas…I don’t want to choose between using compiz and wobbly windows, or being able to play the occasional game. Hmm.
Scylla and Charybdis anyone?
Entry Filed under: Linux / Ubuntu
11 Comments Add your own
1. jdong | November 29th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Matthew, if it’s a fullscreen game run it as DISPLAY=:0 game_name
This will entirely bypass the Xgl server and give you the full acceleration of your fglrx card.
Alternatively you can consider using the latest catalyst 7-11 drivers with AIGLX but I honestly don’t recommend it — there are plenty of regressions.
2. neil | November 29th, 2007 at 9:57 am
change the file $HOME/.config/enable to be called disable and then restart metacity or kwin with –replace to get rid of the XGL, and then run the game. Long winded but a wee script in the systemtray is how I did it. I moved to the newer drivers, but am not convinced on them yet.
3. matthew | November 29th, 2007 at 10:47 am
neil: thank you for the idea! I appreciate it.
jdong, FTW. Thanks!
I just added the display to my sauerbraten startup script and it works beautifully. Woo hoo!
4. Marius Gedminas | November 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am
How does the free driver fare on your hardware? 9700 is pretty old, the ‘radeon’ driver should support 3D on it.
5. matthew | November 29th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Marius: the free driver works well, but it is a lot slower, especially with games and such. Compiz works well with it, though. If I were only using this laptop for work and flashy desktop effects, I would definitely stick with the free driver. For any real game play, FPS ratings in almost all games are 3 to 4 times faster with the fglrx driver.
6. Cyrus Jones | November 29th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I have an ATI Radeon X800, and use the free driver. The free driver has improved a lot (from having no 2D support -> 2D support -> 3D support -> better 3D support). Still, the FPS in many games are not as high as I’d like (and maybe 1/3-1/2 that of fglrx). But the fglrx driver drives you crazy with its issues (including the XGL in the old driver and the problems with the new driver). But the killing point that let me choose the free driver (besides freedom), was that fglrx would overheat my card (my computer would be extremely loud and hot- enough to threaten my hard drive). Shame on ATI/AMD for not fixing the overheating issue.
7. James | November 29th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Have you tried the latest ATI proprietary driver? Admittedly it’s proprietary, but I’ve got a Radeon XPRESS 200M in my laptop (I hate it) and I can run Compiz on that, and it’s a lot more stable than my experiences with xgl. Envy does a wonderful job of installing it, too :). Actually speaking of which, I *have* to have the ATI driver since upgrading to Gutsy, as the fglrx just won’t work… *shrugs*
8. Kelly Clowers | November 29th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Matthew, Re: the free driver being slower - is that a major issue? Not disagreeing, just curious/surprised. I use the free drivers for my 9550 and it has no trouble playing Quake 3 which is the heaviest game I play. Is Sauerbraten that intensive?
9. tinin | November 29th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Hey man, come on! just try the envy driver installer from Alberto Milone. It SHOULD be the default 3d driver installer for prop drivers, it just works, and if not, it has awesome forums to ask Milone to correct bugs.
10. matthew | November 30th, 2007 at 3:40 am
I know Alberto and have used Envy in the past. I’ve been keeping up on the developments with the latest ATI proprietary offering and I’m not convinced it is ready for use on a computer that I need consistently accessible for work…now, if it was my backup computer, you can be certain I would have the latest beta (alpha, even) installed and be playing. I am hopeful that December’s ATI driver release will be more stable and so I’ll be watching the reports as they come, once the next driver version is released.
The free driver works okay for most games, but it is not only measurably slower, it is perceptively slower as well. Telling a difference in the performance between the two is easy, so for the moment, I’m not interested in using the free driver. I’m more of a pragmatist than a purist with this anyway. All things being equal, I’ll choose the open driver. Since the performance is not yet equal in ways that matter to me, I’ll pick what works best for me.
I played Sauerbraten for about 30 minutes last night, just to test things out, running as jdong suggested. I had some annoying 1-2 second freezes occasionally that never happened before…so, I’m still looking for a good solution. That solution may simply be to wait until the next driver is released and hope for the best. Sigh.
11. beerfan | December 1st, 2007 at 1:07 pm
@neil:
For games and other apps which don’t behave with compiz I use the following formula.
——————–
metacity –replace &
sleep 2
program &&
sleep 2
compiz –replace &
——————–
What is the purpose of ~/.config/disable ? In fact, what owns ~/.config? I have yet to figure that out. Most apps use a directory with a name which makes it obvious.
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