ATI radeon graphics

[swift_lee]

Hello all,

I'm new to Linux, just started using Mint 10 and I love it. The one problem I have is I can't get extended desktop to work at all. Dual desktop is fine but extended not at all. It's a feature I use all day every day so it would be great to get it working, it seems to make sense to post this here rather than start a new thread?

Laptop is Thinkpad T43 and graphics card is Radeon X300.

Dual desktop only works from reboot, if I plug in the second monitor whilst already booted both screens go garbled. From dual desktop if I go to 'configure display settings' & uncheck 'same image in all monitors' then apply it goes garbled again.

Searching the forums and google hasn't got me any close to an answer, any advice is welcome.

The 'before you post' post says you want to see this

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Mobility Radeon X300]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)
0b:00.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 8d)
0b:00.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 13)
0b:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2915ABG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)


And this

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Mobility Radeon X300] [1002:5460] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: IBM Device [1014:056e]
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx+
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 43
Region 0: Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Region 1: I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
Region 2: Memory at b0100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at b0120000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb

Thanks in advance!

[gabranth]

Since the open-source 3D driver came into the newer kernels the need for the proprietary FGLRX driver went down. Running compiz, playing high-def movies etc works just as well with the open-source driver as it does with the proprietary one. If you find that your desktop/laptop work sufficient with the open-source driver there is no reason to change it. To get maximum performance the proprietary driver till offer some extra punch but it can be quite hard and time consuming to setup. AIGLX + FGLRX + OPENGL acceleration options and so on. If you're on a older non-HD card you're more or less stuck with the open-source driver.

Im running mint on my laptop where its as good as it can get, but on my stationary i boght last year and which i use 95% of the time, im stuck with windows 7 and probably will be until i need to reformat.

It has a ati radeon 5870 graphics card, and it runs much slower than my old laptop under linux. Feels sluggish and i cant get HD movies to play smootly, and flash just plain sucks, last one i tried was mint 10. Couldnt even boot and get an image so i had to install it trough windows SAFE MODE (because i couldnt boot into the reg win, thats why i gave it up and tried mint on it, after all, atleast last year, 5870 was state of the art and could run all new games on max, so windows was a natural choise). Let me add mint was the ONLY one out of 5 different linux distros i even could install on this machine. Now im on mint trough vmware under windows 7 and it runs MUCH better. I tried both open source and propietary, but it made no difference.

I dont know with others here, same experience?

This has to be solved before i even consider running linux bare again.

But... besides the hardware issues on this machine, i love linux mint and its been the OS of my heart since i first tried it 4-5 years back.

I'm having the same issue with my 5870 card. The lag is driving me nuts.

Does anyone have a solution yet? I would hate to switch back to windows.

i haven't found any currently my hd4350 in windows outperforms my hd5850 in linux i think the only fix will be getting a nvidia card or maybe someone can hack amd and steal there drivers source code

[AlbertP]

In my opinion the NVidia driver is much worse than ATI's Catalyst.

In fact both drivers are bad. There are many people disappointed with ATI switching to NVidia, and the other way round. And with the other manufacturer, they're still disappointed. This happens often at Linux. Only Intel doesn't have this problems with proprietary and open-source drivers; it only has an official and an unofficial 3D driver but the official driver's quality is much better than ATI's or NVidia's, and it's open-source and preinstalled.
The Intel driver always just works. This cannot be said of GeForce or Radeon HD on Linux. (Any pre-GeForce or Radeon pre-HD cards should work well with open-source).