Just a quick little update not related to any ongoing projects (more on the projects later).
I’ve created a profile on Ohloh.net and imported several projects into it. I’m still trying to hunt down my old subversion repositories for Cymbeline and PyAudioPlay, but I’ve done something with them and can’t seem to find them. But on the flipside, Ohloh seems to think IRM is worth $2million dollars, or about $2.50 Canadian.
So, long story short. I have a ThinkPad T60P, non-widescreen edition. I run Ubuntu 7.10 Gustry on it (after Windows did a suicide on its self).
It features a Mobility Radeon FireGL V5200 (the Widescreen models may use a V5250 - you’ve been warned) . Out of the box, the last fglrx driver to support this card is 8.35. Yes, the FireGL driver doesn’t support FireGL cards anymore, so says the top-notch driver division at ATI.
The 8.35 driver has some important breakages:
- Can’t suspend or resume (on Kernels with a SLUB allocator, like Ubuntu)
- Can’t hibernate (ditto)
- Weird things happen when you’re dual monitored and start X without a monitor connected.
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But, perhaps the 8.42.3 driver, hot off the presses, fixes some of that right? I sought to find out.
The biggest hurdle is 8.42.3 doesn’t support FireGL cards. Ooops. But thanks to these forum posts and mini-patch, it is possible to use the card. For the record, I’m using the provided defaults for CARDIDs.
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5203
Next up, you have to grab a 8.35 installer packet, extract it (–extract), and then copy common/ati/control over /etc/ati/control, or you’re forever running around with a fantastic watermark in the right corner (whoever thought that was a great idea at ATI deserves to get shot).
So, after mucking with it for an hour, I’ve concluded
- Suspend works, but resume does not, when in multiple monitor mode (wtf)
- Ditto for hibernate
- Compiz runs, but doesn’t really work well at all.
This is in stark contrast to the NVidia-GLX driver, which I use on my desktop, and is a fantastic piece of work, never breaks, and delivers outstanding performance.
Maybe 8.42.4… Or RadeonHD. Or just buy a new laptop with n Nvidia card.
Hoax maybe, but it is funny. I present you with a good example of how not to ask a question.
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=499980&start=0&tstart=0
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