Video drivers on laptop with ATI card.

[Dotan Cohen]

On 14/12/06, Phil Meyer <pmeyer at themeyerfarm.com> wrote:
> The vesa driver cannot do the wide screen resolutions as mentioned, ie:
> 1920x1200, 1920,1080, 1600x1200, 1600x1080, or 1280x800.

Gotcha. I really hate pixel dithering, so I'll avoid that driver.

> Not knowing what specific display you ordered, we can only guess what
> will happen.  My guess it that you will get 1280x1024, or 1024x768, and
> that it will look 'funny' but usable.  That is what vesa is for -- it
> just works when nothing else will.

But, that'll be enough (temporarily) for me to find something better. Good.

> > The laptop should arive any day now, and I'd like to have it going as
> > soon as possible, naturally. Thanks.
> It will work with FC6 out of the box.  Only issues are:
>
> Which wireless card did they install?
> Any wireless card that Dell sells by default will work, but may need
> ndiswrappers to make it work.

I specifically got the Intel card, by recommendation from this list,
because it is reputed to work without the ndiswrappers.

> The ATI X1400 based laptops simply cannot run AIGLX right now.  The
> radeon driver does not yet know that card, and the ATI drivers do not
> support the new Xorg extension.  Both of those things may change in the
> next few weeks.  The newest ATI drivers are expected any time, but it is
> unknown yet if they will include the new Xorg extension.
>
> You will want to download the latest drivers from ATI for 32bit Linux
> and install them.  That way you can at least get proper resolution from
> your laptop display.  The guys at phoronix.com maintain a blog about
> these very issues.  Please, check it out.  Its called the redblog.

I'm not so interested in running 3D effects. I will probably run some
light video, but I mostly use Open Office/Koffice, Kmail, Firefox, and
other not-too-graphics-heavy programs.

> My office buys Dell laptops, and many run Linux.  Guess who's job it is
> to  make that happen?

Good to know. What beer do you drink? :)

> My Inspiron 9400 is among them.  It never even got the chance to run
> MSWindows.  I powered it on, opened the CDROM and inserted my Fedora
> install disk before it finished post. :)

You should've declined the Windows license and photographed the
non-effort. Dell would have refunded your $50 (at least, they did to
some other guy not so long ago).

Thanks for the tips.

Dotan Cohen

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