Comment 26 for bug 442574

Here is a use case that I hope can change the status of this report from Opinion to New/Confirmed.

The fglrx package is needed if one wants to use the AMD CodeXL tool, an OpenGL/OpenCL development tool from AMD. The CodeXL tool can work with "offline devices", i.e. without having an AMD GPU in the computer from where it is run, but it requires the Catalyst/fglrx libraries to be installed anyway.

Here is the problem: when CodeXL sees that the host is using an AMD libGL.so library, it disables its "offline" features and tries to use the available AMD GPU. But there are no available AMD GPUs, so it fails.

To use CodeXL one has to

1. start on a system where fglrx is not installed
2. install fglrx (this install libGL.so and many other libraries)
3. use CodeXL (the fglrx's libGL.so is present but not loaded, so CodeXL does not know it is available and "offline devices" can be used)
4. remove fglrx

If one reboots without removing the fglrx package, then its libGL will be loaded and CodeXL will stop to work.

This problem would be solved if it were possible to install fglrx without activating its version of libGL.so.