[fixed] Re: about firefox ... / dont understand anything [radeon]

LarryT guess.who at freesurf.fr
Thu Mar 16 07:46:04 UTC 2006


Well, all seem to perfectly work back now :)
After the hell in this world, comes heaven :-p

Seems that switching to radeon driver got the issue....

LarryT wrote:
> Thank you Mike :)
> Well, after i read what you wrote, i realize that i could have a look on 
> the driver used by other os i have on my pc (centos 4 and 4.2 and fc4) !
> Centos  uses radeon driver. So i have just swith to radeon driver. So 
> far so good !
> Gonna see what happens , now :)
> 
> thx anyway
> 
> larry
> 
> Mike A. Harris wrote:
>> LarryT wrote:
>>
>>>> A. Which graphics card are you using?
>>>
>>>
>>> ATI Radeon 7000 RV6DL 32mo
>>>
>>>> B. Which drivers for the graphics card are you using?
>>>
>>>
>>> Not sur to kown how to get this info :!
>>> going through system/admin/display :
>>> "ati - ATI Mach8, Mach32, Mach64 ad Rage XL card"
>>> Here is the pout put of xorg.conf :
>>> Section "Device"
>>>         Identifier  "Videocard0"
>>>         Driver      "ati"
>>
>>                        ^^^
>>
>> The "ati" driver wrapper module is a problem which should be avoided.
>>
>> Ideally, in the perfect world, you should be able to use the "ati"
>> wrapper module regardless of what ATI chip family and revision you
>> have, and it should automatically load the proper actual driver for
>> you, as all the "ati" module does, is scan your system and determine
>> what (if any) ATI hardware is present, PCI, AGP, ISA, etc., and if it
>> finds any, it looks up the device in a list which tells it which
>> "real" driver to use.  The "real" drivers are "atimisc", "r128", and
>> "radeon".  It then loads the proper driver, and unloads itself.
>>
>> Or at least that is the intention of "ati".
>>
>> Unfortunately, the real world doesn't quite line up with this ideal
>> situation very well, and there are often PCI IDs which have been added
>> to the "radeon" driver by one of the many upstream Radeon driver
>> developers, which were not added to the "ati" wrapper's detection
>> routines at the same time, resulting in the "ati" wrapper being
>> unaware of a given chip, when in fact the chip is supported by the
>> "radeon" driver.
>>
>> The result is that the "ati" wrapper will be unable to detect some
>> hardware and reroute it to the "radeon" driver, but if you use the
>> "radeon" driver directly you avoid the middle man, and avoid that
>> problem path entirely.
>>
>> As such, it is very highly recommended to _never_ use the "ati"
>> wrapper for Radeon hardware, as it is very highly likely to not
>> be in perfect sync with the actual current Radeon hardware
>> support.  There are other bugs/problems which have come up in
>> the "ati" wrapper over time as well, and while they get fixed
>> eventually, something else inevitably breaks.  It's just an extra
>> layer of code which can cause unnecessary grief over just using
>> the proper driver module to begin with:  radeon
>>
>> If you use "radeon" as the driver, and your video card doesn't work,
>> don't even bother trying to use "ati", because as I stated above, all
>> "ati" does, is say "oh, you have a Radeon" and load the "radeon"
>> driver.  Instead, if the "radeon" driver does not work, file a bug
>> report in X.Org bugzilla and describe the problem in detail, and
>> attach your X server log and config file.
>>
>> Currently, our video detection should detect all supported Radeon
>> hardware and automatically assign them to the "radeon" driver, all
>> Rage 128 hardware and automatically assign it to the "r128" driver,
>> and all Mach64, Rage, RageXL, and older hardware and assign it to
>> the "ati" wrapper (although I suppose in light of what I said
>> above, 'atimisc' might be more appropriate, but the problem case
>> with "ati" has been Radeon hardware, rather than Mach64, so it's
>> a moot point in practice).
>>
>> On a final note, I should state that if you ask around, you will get
>> very different advice about this from some other people perhaps.  Some
>> people recommend using the "ati" wrapper for all hardware, and that
>> conflicts with what I am recommending.  People who suggest to use
>> the "ati" wrapper for all ATI hardware unfortunately have not had
>> the pleasure of maintaining XFree86 and X.Org X11 in 12 operating
>> system releases over a period of 5.5 years and discovering just how
>> unreliable the "ati" wrapper is in the real world.  My advice comes
>> from experience in action, rather than ideological best-case
>> wishful thinking of those who recommend the wrapper.  ;o)
>>
>>
>>
> 




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