FC5, Another unhappy camper

[Paul Michael Reilly]

Lyvim Xaphir <knightmerc at yahoo.com> writes:

 > On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 02:22 -0400, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
 > > Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> writes:
 > > 
 > >  > On Sat, 2006-05-13 at 16:11 -0400, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
 > >  > > I have submitted enough bug reports to know that one that deals with
 > >  > > non-FOSS software (ATI and nVidia drivers) will not elicit any useful
 > >  > > response from Fedora.  This is the crux of my rant.  Fedora simply has
 > >  > > a policy that for non FOSS software, move on. 
 > >  > 
 > >  > But really, how can they do something about someone else's software?
 > >  > They're in the same boat as you, in that situation, use it or something
 > >  > else.
 > > 
 > > I must be missing something incredibly simple here.  If I'm the
 > > "project lead" for Fedora, I find somebody who just knows and cares so
 > > much about X and anoint him or her to be the "X project lead".  This
 > > person cares so much to have a kick-ass X set of RPMs that they
 > > collect or build FOSS X software, drivers in this case, and build when
 > > it comes to ATI or nVidia.  So the first ATI or nVidia FOSS drivers
 > > suck dead moose balls, but more people want to scratch that itch,
 > > people using Suse or Ubuntu or Debian or whatever.
 > 
 > Is the problem that you can't get dual heads going?  Or what is the
 > problem exactly?  Have you tried the factory drivers?  What about the
 > livna drivers? 

I first tried with a stock FC5 installation.  When that didn't work
(did absolutely nothing as I recall) I tried the livna drivers.  With
the livna ATI driver configured for dual head, X failed complaining
that it could not detect any devices.

I have pretty much reached the decision to approach this problem on
two fronts: first I will attempt to get the standard FC5 ATI X code
working with dual head and report the results to this list and as a
bug report.  When that path gets blocked (no more progress is likely
and I've done everything useful that I can think of) I'll switch to
the livna driver and repeat the process.

FWIW, the configuration is: IBM Thinkpad A31p (ATI Mobility FireGL
7800) LCD panel is the primary screen and a Samsung SyncMaster 213T is
the secondary screen.  Both are configured for 1600x1200.

-pmr