many games won't run or run slowly on Mint 9 RC

[gnopak]

I'm evaluating Mint 9 Isadora RC.

bzflag fails to run with this message
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 129 (XFree86-VidModeExtension)
Minor opcode of failed request: 10 (XF86VidModeSwitchToMode)
Value in failed request: 0x10d
Serial number of failed request: 150
Current serial number in output stream: 152

warzone2100 runs but blanks the screen so that X.org must be killed.

supertux2 and neverball runs slowly on current kernel 2.6.32-22, but well on older 2.6.32-21.

I do not know if these problems are related, but they affect current Mint 9 RC. Hardware is Thinkpad T42, video adapter is ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility.

Any tips how to fix this, especially bzflag for my kids?

[Jay514]

Welcome To Linux Mint
Have you installed the Restricted Driver for the Radeon Video
If not go to Menu, System & run the Driver tool, Select the Radeon Driver, allow it to download & install, Then Reboot.
I hope this Helps, Have a Good Day.

[windywoo]

I don't believe the restricted driver works with older adapters. It doesn't work with my x1200 which is later than his 9600m.

I am having problems with games too that run fine in Windows like Nexuiz and Quake Live. On the same hardware in Linux I get rotten performance on the default ATI drivers. I can't seem to get radeonhd to work despite adding lines to my xorg.conf.

[gnopak]

If not go to Menu, System & run the Driver tool, Select the Radeon Driver, allow it to download & install, Then Reboot.
I hope this Helps, Have a Good Day.

Did you mean Menu / Control Center / Hardware Drivers? Do you mean Jockey? I tried to open Control Center / Hardware Drivers. It shows a big empty window with a text "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system" on top of the window. Nothing else is displayed in that window. The window is empty. It does not let me select Radeon.

[windywoo]

If your hardware is not supported by the proprietary driver, nothing will show in the hardware drivers section.

[gnopak]

If your hardware is not supported by the proprietary driver, nothing will show in the hardware drivers section.

Understood. When you say proprietary driver, do you mean proprietary driver supplied by Mint, as opposed to proprietary driver directly from ATI?

The ATI driver download website says "AMD has moved a number of DX9 ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators products to a legacy driver support structure. .... The following products have been moved to the legacy software support structure (including Mobile and All-in-Wonder Variants): ... ATI Radeon 9600 Series.

Should I try to install this driver provided directly by ATI website?

[gnopak]

If your hardware is not supported by the proprietary driver, nothing will show in the hardware drivers section.

I tried to run ATI driver downloaded directly from ATI, and it stops with error message
Error: ./default_policy.sh does not support version
default:v2:i686:lib::none:2.6.32-21-generic; make sure that the version is being
correctly set by --iscurrentdistro

I googled and concluded that ATI binary driver simply will not support Radeon 9600 on kernel 2.6.32 used in Mint. I hate ATI graphics because their Linux support is notoriously poor and I would never buy it but I had no choice for the Thinkpad laptop.

Yet I assume the open source ATI drivers should work on Radeon 9600. For instance the World of Goo game runs fullscreen. Supertux2 runs fullscreen. Compiz runs fine. But many games won't run fullscreen. Freetennis game runs in a window but not fullscreen. bzflag also runs in a window but not fullscreen.

Any tips please?

[gnopak]

Freetennis game runs in a window but not fullscreen. bzflag also runs in a window but not fullscreen.

Games which run fulscreen:
Chromium-bsu
ri-li
supertux2
neverball
worldofgoodemo

Games which do not run fulscreen
freetennis
bzflag
frozen-bubble
lbreakout2
warzone2100

Why?