Re: ATI Radeon 9250 256MB PCI

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Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:09:26 +0200

Vladimir Florinski <vflorins@ucr.edu> wrote:
> It installs the libraries in /usr/lib/nvidia, so the original X libs
> remain intact.

That was a nice solution!

> It then places a file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d containing the path to the
> new libraries. The ld.so loader looks there first and the Nvidia libs
> get loaded instead of the xorg stuff.

Slackware does not have that directory. It only has the file
/etc/ld.so.conf and the environment variables LD_LIBRARY_PATH and
LD_PRELOAD. Setting the LD_PRELOAD variable should do the trick.

> This way the driver and X can be updated independently, so it's again
> quite easy.

Once you know the solution it is simple and easy.

> Could you recreate this behavior in Slackware? It used to be my
> impression that "package management" and "Slackware" don't belong in the
> same sentence, but if things have changed, then good luck to you.

It is true that Slackware package management might not be what people used
with other distributions would call a package management. This is mostly
because slackware package management does not handle any dependencies. A
Slackware package simply consists of a bunch of files that will be
extracted and optionally, one of those files can be a script that is run
at package installation.

This simplicity could be called a weakness, but it is also one of the
strengths with Slackware. Creating a Slackware package yourself is almost
as simple as doing "cd /var/tmp/program; tar -czvf .". The only difference
is that in Slackware you use a command called "makepkg" which basically
does the same as "tar -czvf".

So, the nVidia package I have today has now in one way broken the machines
which have it installed. Changing that package to place the OpenGL
libraries in another directory and adding a startup script that sets
LD_PRELOAD will make that package much nicer.

> I don't have any recent links to Linux benchmarks, but this somewhat old
> one will show you how badly is ATI trounced by NVidia:
>
> http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2302

That is a benchmark comparing cards which was high-end then and I think
that the results are still true for the high-end cards using the binary
drivers. However, If I don't need more than a low-end card I still prefer
a card with opensource drivers.

There is another benchmark comparing opensource drivers with binary
drivers for ATI at
http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/atilinux_oct03/ati_linux_comp_oct03.html
Unfortunately, that one is also an old benchmark.

regards Henrik

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• Previous message: Turner: "Webcams and linux"
• In reply to: Vladimir Florinski: "Re: ATI Radeon 9250 256MB PCI"
• Next in thread: David Hoyt Adams: "Re: ATI Radeon 9250 256MB PCI"
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