Re: Problems with video card driver with ATI
- From: James Kanze <james.kanze@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 14:35:18 -0800 (PST)
On Jan 6, 1:07 am, ebenZERO...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Hactar) wrote:
In article
<b5d7259e-2001-4d88-a2d2-f7be35378...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
James Kanze <james.ka...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
First the context: I'm running Mandriva Linux Spring 2007 (Linux
kernal 2.6.17-13mdv) on a Siemens Fujitsu Scaleo with an AMD
Athlon 64 X2 5200+ processor. According to Windows (checked
before installing Linux---I replaced Windows entirely), my
graphics card is a Radeon X1700 FSC. I don't know how to find
out the version of XFree (which is really my first question).
xdpyinfo. Look for the line like
X.Org version: 6.8.2
OK. That works. (It says 7.2.0 with the version I've
currently got installed.)
My monitor is an LG L1900E. The only way to modify the
brightness of the monitor is via DDC---there are no other
controls.
That bites. Are there no controls on the monitor, or is it
that they don't work?
There are none on the monitor. And the brightness is definitely
more than I want. As you say, it bites.
With the stock installation from Mandriva, I was unable to get
ddccontrol to work---it said that there were no monitors
supporting DDC. In addition, color rendition was very poor;
according to Mandriva, it was 16 bits (rather than the 24
supported by the card), and couldn't be changed.
Mandriva also said that the video card was unknown, so I
reconfigured, forcing it to ATI. At that point, Mandriva said
that there was a vendor specific driver available, and did I
want to use it. I said yes. After reboot, all I got was a
blank screen, so I rebooted in safe mode, reinstalled the old
/etc/X11/xorg.conf, and rebooted. Discussion in the ddccontrol
mail list also indicated that I needed the proprietary driver,
so...
I went to the ATI site, downloaded the proprietary driver, and
installed it. The color rendition is definitly improved (and my
/etc/X11/xorg.conf says that I use 24 bits, and only 24 bits),
but ddccontrol still doesn't work. In addition, as soon as I
log out, the screen goes black, and I need to reboot. After a
reboot, I get the usual login screen---KDE, I think, but its a
Mandriva adaptation---, and can log in normally. It's only
after logging out that everything goes black.
Non-X display doesn't work. Your computer is still running,
even though you can't see anything. Probably. Does it seem
to work? Might be the console font selection, or maybe
something's messed up in the kernel config. Don't exit X and
you should be fine. Heh.
Logging out exits X, and the rest of the family use the machine
as well. (And yes, I've got even the computer illiterates using
Linux.)
For the moment, I'm going to reinstall the original
configuration, but does anyone have any ideas as to what can be
causing the login problem, and how I can correct it? I'd
rather keep the improved rendering. (Once that's solved, I'll
go back to the ddccontrol mailing list and try to find out how
to solve that. Unless someone here has a good idea about that
as well.)
Unless you have your heart set on Mandriva, try a different distro.
Ubuntu's quite popular these days and works for me.
Well. I'd used Suse when I was in Germany, and it seemed pretty
good, so I've installed it. The video driver now at least lets
me set the color depth to 24 bits, and the color rendering has
improved. But Suse doesn't seem to have as many skins, etc., as
Mandriva---I can't find the smaller icons I used with KDE
before. And xine doesn't find the XDiv codec, and I can't
figure out where to install it. (Or maybe the problem is that
I'm running a 64 bit AMD, the version of the XDiv codex I have
is 32 bits. If I can find the time, I'll download a 32 bit
xine, and use that---it's what I did for firefox under
Mandriva.)
And ddccontrol still doesn't work (but I haven't yet had time to
install the proprietary driver from ATI).
In the end, my choice of distribution was based on what CD's the
local distributor had handy; I'm quite open to any of them. But
I will purchase a CD (since I can't contribute otherwise). The
next problem is time---the important things (bash, vim and g++)
are working, and there are always so many things I have to do
that are more important.
--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@xxxxxxxxx
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