I'm having an issue and I'm trying to figure out if the proprietary driver from ATI is actually getting installed correctly or if I'm on the open source driver still. ...and whether or not there's an advantage to one over the other...

I'm on a Sager NP3790 with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card. I've got a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 and the basic 2d functions all seem fine, but any games I try to run with OpenGL simplt fail and "glxinfo" yields:

Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

lspci -k yields:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer Device 0471
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb

I have downloaded the latest legacy driver from ATI (ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run) and I've not had any success running that directly. It appears to not knowingly support anything newer than Ubuntu 9.04. I have tried forcing that driver to build itself targeting 9.04 and I've tried installing the .deb packages that it produces, but with no luck there either.

If I recall this laptop's former lives, it has in the past run Eternal Lands without issue back when it was Ubuntu 8.x, but somewhere between a client update from them, some update from ATI or Ubuntu I seem to have lost my OpenGL capabilities. Anyone have any thoughts? (other than buying a mac)

Ati is not world famous for its Linux support. If possible replace your graphics card with one from nVidia. All nVidia graphics cards work great with Linux.

You can not use the legacy proprietary driver on any modern distribution. Stick with the open source radeon driver. If you have problems with the open source driver, pastebin your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and give us the link.

Adam

after trying 9.04, 8.04 with bundled proprietary driver, and 8.04 with freshly downloaded proprietary drivers (all failing in various ways), I've decided that's enough for one day. PCBSD surprisingly worked out of the box-ish. I had to manually try three driver options before one worked, but it's all working now. Somewhat annoying outcome, but better than buying a new laptop.

There is no reason for the card not to work out of the box on any new linux distribution, either.

Adam

Replacing the video card is only an option on a small number of laptops, and I dont think that the Sager NP3790 is one of them.

nVidia cards that use the 71.XX drivers wont work with the proprietary drivers on newer linux versions. 96.XX might be losing support soon as well.

BTW, generally, the ATI drivers havent been the best in the past. ATI/AMD is changing, the newer proprietary drivers seem to be getting a lot better from all the reports I've seen. As far as open sources drivers go, they have developers working on the open source drivers, and have opened at least some of the needed technical specifications needed for other 3rd party developers to make better drivers. nVidia isnt doing that, they wont help nouveau at all.....Then there is the whole nVidia optimus problem, lots of people have been caught out badly by that.

IMO if ATI/AMD and nVidia keep going like this, 'nVidia is best for linux' will be a thing of the past.

True, but I know I've seen a lot of ubuntu users having problems with the open-source ATI/AMD drivers.

You could try the xorg-edgers PPA to get the newest drivers, it seems to help some people at least.

Add this to your software sources-

ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Then update, that should get you the newest free radeon driver.

Gallium3D is worthing looking at as well.