Fedora 11 and ATI: No love? [Archive]

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Reznik Akime

10-01-2009, 07:51 PM

So I decided once more to dabble with Linux since I have free time again. Flavor of choice is Fed11. I would -like- to take the whole "Linux over Windoze lol" bullcrap challenge, but so far it don't seem like it's off to a good start. Sure, I can figure out yum and how to install RPM files. All of that is child's play. What I can't seem to get past is after installing the latest ATI drivers in F11, the next boot has nothing but a smeared screen that looks like wicked artifacting after it loads to the log in screen. I've followed a guide on how to makes things play more nice with this driver install, but all attempts seem to end up with this garbled mess after the install and I can't figure out for the life of me how to roll back things.

I would like to give you more information, but I'm kinda just diving in head first and wouldn't know what info to give you. Yes, I update everything before I even attempt a driver install and the instructions provided seem fool proof, but I can't help but think I'm over looking something small here.

-Addendum-

I should mention that I'm trying to get it to work with a 4850. :shrug:

acidpython

10-02-2009, 01:59 AM

Reznik Akime

10-04-2009, 11:04 AM

Fedora hey, haven't had any experience with that distro. 4850 should be fairly easy the linux drivers are supposed to be very good for that card. I would have personally recommended ubuntu myself. However no worry.

Have you tried manually downloading the drivers via the AMD/ATI website?
Try following this guide;
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=155503&pp=10

You may need to do some terminal work but that's the way it is with GNU/Linux

That's where I got the drivers and the installation guide from. Right from the horse's mouth. I've already moved on though. The drive I was using for a Fedora test bed is now in a three drive raid with Openfiler. Thanks for the response though.

acidpython

10-04-2009, 12:31 PM

Fedora is usually hit and miss on certain hardware for new comers.

I would suggest trying out ubuntu if you want to give linux a go sometime in the future, 9.04 is pretty impressive out of the box.

MentholMoose

10-04-2009, 06:27 PM

Most of my experience with ATI on Linux is on a laptop with a FireGL T2 (9800 pro equivalent). I've had it for four years, and it's always been problematic. The trouble is that the official ATI drivers are extremely sensitive to kernel changes, so any time you change the kernel, it's nearly guaranteed that the ATI drivers you are using will no longer function. The symptoms are various system crashes with graphical corruption like the OP describes.

It's very annoying. Luckily, the open source ATI drivers are coming along, and 3D actually works for a lot of cards. I'm currently using the open source drivers because the official drivers actually don't work at all with any recent on my laptop, though 2D has some problems (bad flashplayer performance, for example).

So, the trick is to find a version of ATI drivers that actually work with the kernel you want to use, or vice versa. I wish the release notes just said what kernel versions were known to work. Unfortunately they don't (last I checked), so whenever I upgraded kernels (or reformatted), I would just go through the available ATI drivers one by one until one works. For now I'm living with the open source drivers, but when I replace this laptop I am going to look for something with nvidia. All of my Linux desktops are using nvidia cards, and I've literally never had a single problem caused by the drivers!

acidpython

10-05-2009, 05:29 PM

It's very annoying. Luckily, the open source ATI drivers are coming along, and 3D actually works for a lot of cards. I'm currently using the open source drivers because the official drivers actually don't work at all with any recent on my laptop, though 2D has some problems (bad flashplayer performance, for example).

You shouldn't be running proprietary software anyway
http://www.fsf.org/photos/rms-sign.jpg

MentholMoose

10-05-2009, 08:32 PM

You shouldn't be running proprietary software anyway
http://www.fsf.org/photos/rms-sign.jpg

Well I do go out of my way to use mostly FOSS, but unfortunately the open source ATI drivers barely started supporting 3D with the FireGL T2, so there was no option until recently. Now if only the open source drivers would improve 2D support...

acidpython

10-05-2009, 09:54 PM

Well I do go out of my way to use mostly FOSS, but unfortunately the open source ATI drivers barely started supporting 3D with the FireGL T2, so there was no option until recently. Now if only the open source drivers would improve 2D support...

Heh i'm kidding, I've been watching richard stallman videos on youtube and that stuff sticks into your head.

I ran the open source ATI drivers a few years back and i know how much of a pain ATI drivers can get, i'm glad to hear the open source drivers now have 3d. 2 years back i used them on my 3870x2 to find 1 gpu enabled with 2D acceleration :( hung on too long for ATI to support crossfire in linux only to find they were skipping 3870x2 support.

Now i'm using nvidia under linux and things are defiantly much smoother :yepp:

Reznik Akime

10-07-2009, 08:38 PM

Fedora is usually hit and miss on certain hardware for new comers.

I would suggest trying out ubuntu if you want to give linux a go sometime in the future, 9.04 is pretty impressive out of the box.

I already have Ubuntu running on a netbook. That's why I don't want to try it on my PC. Either way, I got a good nas going with Freenas. Openfiler was waaaayyyy too complex with how it handled the permissions with that LDAS server. Or whatever it was called. Freenas didn't take but 20 minutes and I already had it running with permissions set and everything. Just a bit of FYI in cause you have extra hardware laying around and decide to make a NAS with it.