Not using radeon drivers

[hoggsoft]

I cannot see how to make Mint 18.3 use the radeon driver for the screen. I have tried Ubuntu 16.04 and that does use the radeon driver and therefore I can set the correct screen resolution but for some reason when I try Mint which I believe is based on the same 16.04 version of Ubuntu it stubbornly sticks to fbdev.

Output from inxi -G
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kaveri [Radeon R5 Graphics]
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: fbdev,ati (unloaded: vesa,radeon)
Resolution: 1024x768@76.00hz
GLX Renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 5.0, 128 bits) GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.2.4

As you can see radeon is unloaded and I can see this happen in the X logs but I don't know why.

What do I need to do to force it to use the radeon drivers? I have tried adding radeon.modeset=1 in grub but that had no effect.

Thanks
Rob.

[vicium artis]

the similar output is in my situation and i would love that there is a solution :

Code: Select all

inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8240 / R3 Series]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1366x768@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: AMD KABINI (DRM 2.49.0 / 4.10.0-38-generic, LLVM 5.0.0)
           GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.2.4

[ShadowMessiah]

AMD Radeon GCN Generation 1 cards aren't supported by the AMD Drivers on Mint 18. I'm pretty sure both of you have Gen 1 or older cards. You're options are to use the X.org Server generic drivers,return to Mint 17.3, or use another OS.

[hoggsoft]

AMD Radeon GCN Generation 1 cards aren't supported by the AMD Drivers on Mint 18. I'm pretty sure both of you have Gen 1 or older cards. You're options are to use the X.org Server generic drivers,return to Mint 17.3, or use another OS.

I would like to use the generic drivers but I don't know how to. As I stated in my original post the radeon driver is used when I boot up in Ubuntu 16.04 but not in Mint 18.x.

Rob.

[ShadowMessiah]

Basically what I mean is you can't use Radeon drivers on Mint 18 with GCN Gen 1 cards, and what you're getting right now is probably all you're going to able to get with Mint 18, without using a different graphics card. Ubuntu had some patches made for it for some Gen 1 cards, but that patch has never been accessible for Mint 18.

This is maybe an option, but I've had no luck with this method, and reverted to 17.3 myself because of the same issue:
https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/877
--Note: It's an extremely old guide, with references to Mint 12 and 13.

[hoggsoft]

Yes I have tried changing the resolution but without the right driver I get the following
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 1024 x 768, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 768
default connected 1024x768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1024x768 76.00*

Rob.

[vicium artis]

AMD Radeon GCN Generation 1 cards aren't supported by the AMD Drivers on Mint 18. I'm pretty sure both of you have Gen 1 or older cards. You're options are to use the X.org Server generic drivers,return to Mint 17.3, or use another OS.

Returning is not an option because battery drainage is present, and on my laptop compared to latest LM is not usable..i tried from "qiana" to "rebecca" and ubuntu is not an option also because 17.10 is gnome cpu/ram eater and 16.04 lts does not seem to provide better solution