ATI Driver 8.33.06 seems very good

Time to take down all my anti-ATI posters AMD's buyout of ATI seems to have trickled through to their Linux support

I finally managed to get the latest ATI drivers installed on my Debian box (the installer can still be a bit of a pig) and it is a breath of fresh air. The number of SL crashes is WAY down (and the remaining occasional crashes appear to not be directly graphics related for the most part) and the when-not-running-SL crashes are cleared up too as a bonus.

Performance seems to be up about 20% on my system as well.

I have gone from resenting a likely forced hardware upgrade to thinking an upgrade is not really needed until 2008

Below is the shell script I adapted from something I found on that old 2D-web thingy to get it installed on my Debian box (filename: installthebloodydriver.sh ;-D):


# create a directory, rename the .RUN file to "ati-driver" and make it executable in the directory along with this script
./ati-driver --buildpkg Debian/testing
dpkg -i fglrx-*.deb
m-a prepare,update
m-a build,install fglrx


You need module-assist et.al. installed, of course. And sudo/root access.

Keep us updated, LaeMi! If AMD is slapping sence into ATI, we're all be happy.

maybe you post your download source and the exact name of the driver

The latest driver was downloaded strait from AMD/ATI's driver download site.

the bash script I use to compile was found in a Google search and slightly commented as I don't automate to the extreme the origional writer does

--------

# mkdir ati; cd ati
# wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-8.33.06.run
# mv ati-driver-installer-8.29.6.run ati-driver
# chmod 755 ati-driver

## ^ in otherwords,
## create a directory, rename the .RUN file to "ati-driver" and make it executable in the directory along with this script

./ati-driver --buildpkg Debian/testing
dpkg -i fglrx-*.deb
m-a prepare,update
m-a build,install fglrx

--------

This is on a Debian system withe module assistant, and other kernal-module-build stuff installed via apt-get.

while all the hard crashes were largely down to the ATI driver, it turns out my general mouse-freeze-in-X problem was actually a mechanically fatigued usb cable where the cable enters the mouse chassis - fixed by dis-assembling the mouse, cutting the cable 10cm shorter and re-soldering it to the board plug ;-P

Looking forward to another 3 years of mousing before the next snip. I guess in 20-30 years I will run short on USB cable ;-P

(Yes, I'm old-skool: I like a physical wire to my peripherals)

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse"
InputDevice "Pedal"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
# FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
# # path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "dbe"
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection
Load "extmod"
Load "record"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# foot-pedal from old mouse
# Option "ProductID" "0x1205"
# Option "Name" "USB Mouse"
Identifier "Pedal"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse1"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
# Option "Button1" "page_up" # if ONLY it was THIS easy
# Option "Button2" "page_down"
# Option "Button3" "home"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Gamma 2
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI X1300"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "no_accel" "FALSE"
Option "no_dri" "FALSE"
Option "mtrr" "OFF" # disable DRI mtrr mapper, driver has its own code for mtrr
Option "AGPMask" "0x00000003" # force disable 1x and 2x AGP modes
Option "VideoOverlay" "OFF" # must be off for OpenGLOverlay to be on
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "OFF" # passing the video render thru openGL seems to work fine
Option "PseudoColorVisuals" "OFF"
Option "FSAAEnable" "FALSE" # may cause serious SL problems when TRUE
Option "FSAAScale" "2"
Option "FSAADisableGamma" "FALSE"
Option "FSAACustomizeMSPos" "FALSE"
Option "UseFastTLS" "2"
Option "BlockSignalsOnLock" "TRUE"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "FALSE" # stability issues when TRUE
Option "ForceGenericCPU" "FALSE"
Option "KernelModuleParm" "agplock=0" # AGP locked user pages: disabled

BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI X1300"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection