[ltp] Confusion about Xorg drivers

[Alex Deucher]

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:53:29 -0800, John Locke <mail@freelock.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a T41, with a Radeon Mobility 9000 card. I'm running Mandrake
> 10.1 (actually still on the Community version). By running glxgears, I'm
> getting 140 fps.
> 
> I've made tweaks in my XF86config file in the past, on my old Toshiba,
> and managed to get XFree86 to work dual head, but I really get lost in
> these configurations. At that time, I learned a bit about Nvidia
> drivers, enough to get it going, but now with ATI I'm totally lost. I
> don't care much about 3d performance or anything, but here's what I want
> to be able to do:
> 
> * Run multimonitor, preferably being able to use xrandr and being able
> to turn the external monitor on and off without restarting X. Right now,
> my LCD is 1400x1050, but my external monitor is a 1024x768 flat panel.
> 
> * I would like to be able to stretch my desktop across to the other
> screen, side by side, as well as hook up an external projector for
> presentations.
> 
> * I would also like to be able to plug my TV into the S-Video port and
> output media to my TV.
> 
> * Finally, I'd like to enable the DRI extension so that I can get
> full-screen out of VMWare.
> 
> I've seen lots of pages with different How-tos to do much of this, but
> I'm stuck with choosing a driver and getting the proper modelines--there
> appear to be at least 3 different drivers for this card available in my
> distribution, and I really haven't had time to dig through all these issues.
> 
> Is there any quick summary of the available drivers for this card
> somewhere that can get me going? Anybody happen to have an xorg.conf
> file that matches my needs?
> 
> Thanks for your help!
> 

The most full-featured driver available for radeon is the xorg radeon
driver in cvs.  the xorg 6.8.x radeon driver is pretty good as well,
but is missing some of the latest tweaks.  TV out is not currently
supported on radeon (although there are some hacks available). pretty
much everything else you are looking to accomplish can be handled by
the current xorg radeon driver.

Alex

> Cheers,
> 
> --
> John Locke
> "Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems"
> published by Charles River Media, June 2004
> http://www.freelock.com
>