After almost a month, ATI has come up with a new version 10.2 of its Catalyst (fglrx) drivers. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 10.2 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As AMD is famous for doing nothing but just incrementing versions of there software, even this version doesn’t support xorg-1.7.4. But if you still want to give it a try, you can download and try installing the driver. Otherwise mesa-experimental drivers are your friend. Checkout the post Fedora 12 and ATI Drivers and save yourself from frustration

And yes, lets wait for next version of ATI Drivers

Related Posts

• News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!
• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?
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• Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers
• News : ATI Catalyst Graphics Drivers 9.11 Released

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

After a long, really long wait, AMD has released the next version 10.1 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers (fglrx) for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 10.1 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As previous version turned out to be a big turn off for Fedora community and AMD took a long time for releasing this, I hope they have fixed issues regarding new Xorg version. Fedora folks will really want this version to work, otherwise there will be *blood* You have got AMD graphics card? What are you waiting for? Download the drivers immediately and test the damn thing! And please let everyone know whether it works for you with details of your graphics card. You know where the howto for installation is How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers.

I really hope that things turn out well and you don’t really get to this point. But if these drivers don’t work for you, proceed to the post Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers and checkout mesa-dri-drivers-experimental.

From the release notes for version 10.1,

Resolved Issues

• [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Display Manager Properties tab now properly shows a single mode instead of multiple modes when big desktop mode is enabled.
• The operating system will no longer fail when switching between virtual desktops.
• [RHEL 5.4 32-bit] [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] System now functions properly after selecting “Detect Displays” button and hot-plugging a HDMI display.
• [Ubunut 9.10] X no longer fails after executing multiple Xserver generations with Xinerama enabled.
• Hotplugging a HDMI monitor or toggling between LCD and HDMI no longer causes the system to stop responding.

Know Issues

• [RHEL4-U8 32-bit] Corruption may be observed while starting Xserver on some ASICs.
• Corruption may be observed after 90, 180 or 270 degree desktop rotation on some ASICs.
• System may stop responding after switching to DC (battery) mode with CrossFireTM enabled and full-screen applications running.
• System may become unresponsive after executing specific combinations of XRandR reflections and rotations.
• The output log file may report the Engine Clock or Memory Clock values as 0 MHz on some systems.
• [RHEL 5.4][ ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Applying customized TV modes might not work properly, pop up message requesting restart will not appear and customized format will not apply.
• [Ubuntu 9.04 x86 64-bit] Some systems may become unresponsive during video playback with certain Dual Head configurations.
• [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Specific customized modes under the HDTV page may fail to apply on some systems.
• [Ubuntu 9.04] With one DP monitor and one DVI monitor connected in clone mode, unplugging and re-plugging the DVI monitor may cause the system to deadlock.
• Xserver may fail to launch after enabling CrossFireTM and restarting on some ASICs.
• [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Super Anti-Aliasing (16x) mode may not be available on some display adapters with CrossFireTM is enabled.
• Display rotation may fail to apply from ATI CatalystTM Control Center with desktop effects enabled.
• [RHEL] Enabling Xinerama may cause input devices (keyboard and mouse) to become inaccessible after restarting Xserver.
• System may fail to return to console mode after enabling all adapters and exiting Xserver for multi GPU configuration on some ASICs.
• ATI CatalystTM Control Center may report error when two displays of different maximum resolutions are set in clone mode.
• [SUSE 11.1 64-bit] Enabling CrossFireTM might fail with some ASICs
• Scaling setting changes may fail to retain after mode change, reboot or restarting Xserver.
• [SUSE 11.2 x86] CrossFireTM might not be functional under specific configurations
• [Ubuntu 9.10] CAL test “completemodulelist.txt” might not execute and throws segmentation fault.
• [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Some systems may intermittently stop responding when changing the scaling options.
• [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Applying “Size and Position” adjustments for Analog Monitors might not work properly.
• [Ubuntu 9.04] Some video cards may stop video output signals when monitor has been powered off.
• [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Disabled display will become enabled after Xserver restart.
• Flickering corruption might be visible while running OpenGL applications with CrossFireTM enabled on specific ASICs.

Related Posts

• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?
• News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released
• How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers
• Info: ATI Drivers 9.8 Doesnt Work with Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)
• Info: ATI Drivers 9.7 does not work in Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

AMD has released the next version 9.12 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 9.12 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As of now, I haven’t tried the drivers on Fedora 12 because supposedly my SMPS is broken But since there were a whole lot of bug reports to AMD regarding xorg 1.7 and catalyst, they might have fixed it. Please try and let everyone know if these drivers work with Fedora 12. You know where the howto for installation is How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers.

Also, if these drivers doesn’t work, a lot of people are finding mesa-drivers-experimental a huge success over catalyst drivers. Don’t miss those experimental drivers. Checkout comments on Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers.

Anyway, let us know whatever works for you

Related Posts

• News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!
• News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released
• How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers
• Info: ATI Drivers 9.8 Doesnt Work with Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)
• Info: ATI Drivers 9.7 does not work in Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

As promised in my last post (News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released), I am back with a post on configuring dual display with ATI Radeon HD Graphics Card and proprietary catalyst (fglrx) drivers from ATI.

Hardware Used

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3200 (256MB, onboard)
Monitor 0: ViewSonic VG1930WM 1440×900 (19″ LCD, Connected via DVI port)
Monitor 1: Samsung SyncMaster 793S 1280×1024 (17″ CRT, Connected via VGA port)

Types of Dual Display

• Mirror: Both screens have same content, identical refresh rate and resolution.
• Clone: Both screens have same content but refresh rates and resolutions can be different.
• Horizontal: Both screens can have different content, refresh rates and resolution. Screen 1 is left or right of Screen2.
• Vertical: Same as horizontal. The only difference is that Screen1 is above or below Screen2.

In this post, we are interested in Horizontal setup with xinerama on. This way we can have two desktops allowing full screen modes on both of them and allowing us to drag and drop windows from one screen to the other.

Install ATI Drivers

If you don’t have ATI drivers installed already, follow this How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers on Fedora 11 (works for any version of ATI Catalyst drivers).

Generate xorg.conf file

If you don’t see the xorg.conf file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf, then you need to generate it to proceed to next step. Use the following command as root to generate one

[root@fedora ~]$ Xorg -configure

This command will generate the default xorg.conf file at /root/xorg.conf.new. Copy it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

[root@fedora ~]$ cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Backup xorg.conf file

Backup your original xorg.conf file so that you can restore it in case the configuration doesn’t work the way you expected.

[root@fedora ~]$ cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

Generate Configuration for Dual Display

Now we are ready to generate the configuration for dual display. Use the following command with appropriate arguments (in accordance with your hardware configuration)

# --screen-layout will place second screen on left of your first screen. Other possible values are right,above,below.
# --xinerama=on option enables you to have two different desktops and one of them being passive.
# You can drag and drop windows from one desktop to the other. Task bars appear only on one of the desktops.
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left --xinerama=on
# --resolution=_screen_number_,widthxheight
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --resolution=0,1440x900 --resolution=1,1280x1024
# Set horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates for both monitors.
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --hsync=0,30-60 --hsync=1,30-60 --vrefresh=0,30-60 --vrefresh=1,30-60

You can download my xorg.conf file via this link.

Reboot or Logout and Login Again

If you just setup your ATI drivers and configured the dual display, you need to reboot so that fglrx module can be loaded properly. If you rebooted after setting up the drivers, just logout and login again to checkout your dual display If everything works fine, say thanks to me and if not blame ATI

Adjust DPI for Normal Font Size

I faced a problem with my font sizes being too big while using xinerama. It was easy to fix by adjusting DPI. Go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance. Go to Fonts tab. Click Details located near the bottom right corner. On that window, try descreasing the “Dots Per Inch” value. Mine worked fine with 85 DPI.

Below is an image of my dual display setup. Click to enlarge.

Related Posts

• News: ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.2 Released. No Fedora 12 Support.
• News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!
• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?
• Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers
• News : ATI Catalyst Graphics Drivers 9.11 Released

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

AMD has released the next version 9.9 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 9.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. I have already tried them with kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.i586 and they seem to work fine without SWCursor hack. But I still see corruptions around cursor while moving cursor in a playing video or in Compiz. BTW I got dual display working with Xinerama turned on with this version. I’ll post a HowTo about the same very soon. I think it’ll take some more time before the drivers are completely stable. AMD has been doing a really good job in rolling out drivers at regular intervals.

Note : The installation process is same as version 9.8 and can be access at How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.

Related Posts

• News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!
• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?
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• News : ATI Catalyst Graphics Drivers 9.11 Released
• News : ATI Drivers 9.10 Working with 2.6.30+ Kernels

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

Last Updated : January 30, 2010.
Note: This How To is valid up to Catalyst Driver version 10.1.
Note: With minor changes this How To may work for other Linux distributions like Mandriva, Suse, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Cent OS etc.

Following the suggestions in comments on my last post about ATI Catalyst (fglrx), I tried to reinstall ATI drivers version 9.8 and finally it worked. I thought of noting down the the process in few simple steps which anyone can follow and get the drivers working on Fedora 11 with latest kernel versions.

Step 1 : Update Kernel, Install kernel-devel

Huge thanks to Richard Lloyd and mxyzptlk2063 for pointing this out.
This step is not necessary. You may like to stick to the kernel version you already have. In case you want the latest kernel, just use yum to get the latest kernel.

Note: Do not forget to update the kernel-devel package as well as its needed to compile the fglrx kernel module.

DONT UPDATE THE KERNEL. Instead stick to whatever kernel version you have. If you have 2.6.30.*, you are unlucky Get a kernel version 2.6.29.* and install the kernel-devel for the same.

With Catalyst Driver version 9.10 you can update kernel to latest version before installing the Drivers.

[root@fedora ~]$ yum update kernel
[root@fedora ~]$ yum install kernel-devel

Step 2 : Download Drivers

Download the ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver from ATI/AMD website.

Step 3 : Install Drivers

Install the drivers that you have downloaded using the following command.

[root@fedora ~]$ bash ./ati-driver-installer-9-8-x86.x86_64.run

Step 4 : Check Installation Result

Check the /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log file for result of installation. If there are no errors, proceed to the next step.

Note: You may see lines like this at the end of file

You must change your working directory to /lib/modules/fglrx
and then call ./make_install.sh in order to install the built module.
- recreating module dependency list
- trying a sample load of the kernel modules
done.

You can ignore these lines happily if they don’t contain any error message. You don’t really need to execute the command mentioned in those lines.

Step 5 : Blacklist radeon and radeonhd kernel modules

Add these lines to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.

blacklist radeon
blacklist radeonhd

Step 6 : Generate initial Xorg configuration file

Note: This step is optional with Catalyst Driver version 9.10, but it wont harm even if you execute this.

You have to generate the initial xorg.conf file which will use fglrx as display device.

[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --initial

Step 7 : Modify xorg.conf

Open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and add the following line to “Device” section (the one with fglrx as driver)

Option "SWCursor" "true"

Step 8 : Reboot

Reboot your machine. And you’ll have the latest ATI Catalyst drivers working on your Fedora 11

Step 9 : Testing

You can test your newly installed drivers and get the performance benchmarks for your graphics card using the commands below.

[saini@fedora ~]$ glxgears
[saini@fedora ~]$ fgl_glxgears

My graphics card is ATI Radeon HD 3200 (256MB, Onboard) and I get 1500FPS with glxgears and 300FPS with fgl_glxgears.

In case you messup things somewhere, you can uninstall the fglrx drivers using the following command

[root@fedora ~]$ /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Related Posts

• News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!
• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?
• Info: ATI Drivers 9.8 Doesnt Work with Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)
• Info: ATI Drivers 9.7 does not work in Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)
• News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

I installed Fedora 8 32 bit from a leaky mirror on Nov 7th and I just had a very bad experience with it. Nothing seemed to be working. But I can’t accept that. As I am a hardcore fan of Fedora, I just can’t sit back and say “ah, Fedora 8 sucks, i am not gonna use that”. I fetched Fedora 8 x86_64 (64bit) from a mirror yesterday, after the release. I installed it and everything worked out of the box. I can’t believe that I wrote something wrong about Fedora. How could I do that ?

First of all, I would like to say that The artwork team at Fedora has done a very fantastic job. The graphics right from installation up to the desktop are just awesome. Especially the default background is very nice. Here is shot of the default Gnome Fedora 8 Desktop.

Right after the installation, I fetched the nVidia proprietary drivers from here and installed them. And those were installed successfully without giving any errors or problems. [ If you want a complete howto on installing nvidia drivers. Its here.] A reboot after the installation and compiz worked out of the box. Here is shot.

Ok, graphics done. What now ? I just realized that there is no mp3 support. No worries. Codeina aka Codec Buddy is there. Just issue ‘codeina’ command from command line and a window like this will appear.

Check Fluendo MP3 Audio Decoder and click get selected, accept the license conditions and you’ll see that codeina is fetching the codecs. [If codeina does not fetch codecs or give error like timeout or some other network error. Try checking your proxy setting in System -> Preferences -> Internet And Network -> Network Proxy . It may help. ]

Ok. Now, codeina has done the job. Lets play some mp3. Note that amarok still can’t play mp3 files because it uses xine engine. So, you can choose either Totem or Rhythmbox to play your mp3 files. Here is a shot of Rhythmbox. So, Codeina also works out of the box.

Another major improvement in Fedora 8 in audio section is introduction or pulseaudio. Issue command ‘pulseaudio’ from command line and you will see a window like this.

You can control the sound stream from different players or whatever. You can mute individual streams and can even set the default devices for certain streams through this fantastic gui.

Another good thing in Fedora 8 is Eclipse. Eclipse 3.3 is back in Fedora 8. They excluded it from Fedora 7. I am happy to see it back here in Fedora 8.

Another utility that I found helpful is Remote Desktop utility. Launch System -> Preferences -> Internet And Network -> Remote Desktop and you’ll see a window like this.

Set your preferences and now you can browse your desktop from anywhere using ‘vncviewer <yourIP>:0′. Though one call always configure vncserver to get that done. But for newbies it’ll be a great help.

Also, My wireless lan card, Ralink rt2500 WNC-0301 is detected successfully in Fedora 8. But I am not sure whether it works or not, because there is not wifi environment in my lab and I can’t check it without that. [ Anyway if your wifi card doesn't work, here is a howto on installing Ralink rt2500 WNC-0301 using drivers from serailmonkey. ]

Another improvement is that cursor was never invisible. Up to Fedora 7, I suffered cursor invisible problem on first login. [ If you are facing the same problem, add line

Options "HWCursor" off

to "screens" section in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and issue 'gdm-restart' command. It'll be fine afterwards. ]

The boot time has also improved significantly. My Fedora 8 boots in just 45 seconds.

These Fedora 8 Screenshots and other related to Fedora 8 can be reached here.

Recommended Posts

• How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers
• Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers
• How To: Configure Squid Proxy Server
• News: ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.2 Released. No Fedora 12 Support.
• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

As expected, I upgraded to Fedora 7 – Moonshine yesterday. The coolest feature I noticed is that it automatically detected my Ralink WNC-0301 wireless lan card. Well, support for other wireless lan cards like ipw2100, ipw2200 and ipw3945 is also there which is I think the best feature. Because I see a lot of people around fighting with there wireless lan cards to work under Fedora Cores.

The gui is kind of improved but one more cool thing that you will notice is the theme “flying high”. The wallpapers, splash screen, login screen are improved a lot. Overall, the artwork part is worked out hardly. Default font is also nice.

A lot of media players are provided. amarok and kaffeine are included first time but amarok with no mp3 support. You have to install gstreamer and gstreamer08 plugins to make it work. The system preferences menu is totally different with similar tasks being grouped.

In addition to all that now Fedora also has some basic directories in the home directory like Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, Downloads.

Everything else is the same with upgraded versions.

Here is a Video of my current Fedora 7 desktop.

PS0 : There seems to be some problem after installing the nvidia driver for F7. Follow the procedure here replacing everything related to fc6 by f7 and at the end after configuring your xorg.conf file make these changes

The section “Files” should be like this

1
2
3

Section "Files"
	ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules,/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/"
EndSection

now restart the xserver and the nvidia will work .

For more info refer my xorg.conf for F7.

PS1 : If you are a IIITian, I suggest you not upgrade to F7 because iyum is not yet configured to cache F7 rpms and you have to install updates for your OS from the internet and that really sux. So, wait for iyum repo for F7 to be up and then upgrade.

PS2 : Pidgin has some memory leaks … its consuming 2GB virtual memory … here’s the proof … I am back to kopete again

Pidgin Memory Leak

Edit : If you are looking for wireless configuration in Fedora 7, here is a reference.

Related Posts

• News : Fedora 12 : Constantine Released [All you need to know]
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• Info: Spicebird 0.7 Pre with Awesome Features

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.

Well, finally I realized the power of my onboard graphics card … too lazy to realize even this (it took me a year to realize this obvious fact). I downloaded the latest nVidia drivers from here and also upgrade to the kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6. You can get it from any site which provides rpms or you can install is using yum. Not to forget I did it on Fedora Core 6 – Zod. So, here goes the exact procedure.

Warning: Take a backup of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file before experimenting with 3D desktop. It help in case of X server crashes.

1. Download the latest nVidia drivers from here.

2. Upgrade to kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6

(a)Download rpms kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.i686.rpm and kernel-devel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.i686.rpm and install using

[root@zod saini] rpm -ivh kernel* [Enter]

OR
(b)

[root@zod saini] yum install kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6 [Enter]

3. Reboot and switch to the newly installed kernel.

4. Login as root and delete the temp file for xserver

[root@zod saini] rm -f /tmp/.X0.lock [Enter]

5. Install the nVidia drivers

[root@zod saini] bash NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9755-pkg1.run --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.20-1.2944.fc6-i686/ [Enter]

A user interface(I don’t know what to call it, graphical user interface on command line) will appear, answer the basic questions and you are done.

6. run this command

[root@zod saini] nvidia-xconfig [Enter]

7. Open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in you favourite(Vim) editor and edit it as follows …

Add these lines to the “screen” section

1
2

Option     "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option     "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"

and Add this line to the “Device Section”

Option         "TripleBuffer" "true"

or you can use my xorg.conf with appropriate modifications.

8. Now install Beryl + emerald or compiz

(a) Get rpms from any site which supplies rpms for packages in fedora and install

[root@zod saini] rpm -ivh beryl-* emerald-* [Enter]

OR

[root@zod saini]  rpm -ivh compiz-* [Enter]

(b) There is always a short cut

[root@zod saini]  yum install beryl* emerald* [Enter]

OR

[root@zod saini]  yum install compiz* [Enter]

9. Now logout and login again and run command beryl-manager or compiz and you are done with installing beryl/compiz with latest nVidia drivers. Enjoy the 3D desktop.

10. If in the above process your X-server crashes, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 and login as root, replace your existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with the backup you took in the beginning and do startx.

I installed the above packages on Fedora Core 6, the Hardware is Nvidia Ge Force 6100 onboard.

Here are some screenshot of my 3D Desktop ( They can also be seen here ).

Related Posts

• News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!
• News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?
• News : ATI Catalyst Graphics Drivers 9.11 Released
• News : ATI Drivers 9.10 Working with 2.6.30+ Kernels
• News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released

Fedora Tutorials and Videocache by Kulbir Saini.