[feisty] fglrx does not support older cards

[Christian Roessner]

Binary package hint: xorg-driver-fglrx

The xorg-driver-fglrx in feisty does not support older cards like the ATI radeon mobility 9000. But a fglrx driver is needed for this card, if you want to use an external monitor with the so called "big desktop" option.

The latest supported driver is 8.28.8, so a second, maybe called legacy, package would be needed.

Only the fglrx driver is able to provide GLX in big desktop mode. The mergedFB option from the oss driver only supports resolutions up to 2048x2048 and can _not_ be used therefor. So without an older fglrx driver, an update from edgy to feisty will break such setups.

Kind regards
Christian

[Cristian Aravena Romero (caravena)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. Unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description didn't include enough information.

Please include the following additional information, if you have not already done so (please pay attention to lspci's additional options), as required by the Ubuntu Kernel Team:
1. Please include the output of the command "uname -a" in your next response. It should be one, long line of text which includes the exact kernel version you're running, as well as the CPU architecture.
2. Please run the command "dmesg > dmesg.log" and attach the resulting file "dmesg.log" to this bug report.
3. Please run the command "lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log" and attach the resulting file "lspci-vvnn.log" to this bug report.

For your reference, the full description of procedures for kernel-related bug reports is available here: <http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingKernelProblems> Thanks!

[Christian Roessner (christian-roessner-net)]

Here is my uname -a:

Linux roessnerlaptop 2.6.20-8-386 #2 Tue Feb 13 05:15:43 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Christian Roessner (christian-roessner-net)]

lspci -vvnn

[Christian Roessner (christian-roessner-net)]

And here is my xorg.conf which I used on edgy with fglrx. At the moment I use the radeon driver in single head mode to do this bug reporting.

[Christian Roessner (christian-roessner-net)]

I found an other bug here somewhere, where someone told us that there will be no legacy driver, because of a security bug in 8.28.8. Is that right?

As a result I downgraded to Edgy and I fear, I never may upgrade to newer ubuntu versions again. So this is really a problem, because one day there will be no more updates,fixes,security patches and I can not upgrade, because of a missing legacy package.

IMHO: Better a security broken fglrx as no chance of updating.

Thanks

[denix (denics)]

There is still no a solution for this problem.
The point is
"Do you want that Ubuntu become like Windowz?"
"Do I have to change my 2 years old laptop just to upgrade to Feisty?"
I think people run linux because is a good choice, not because they have to buy new hardware (like other OS) to use it...

Cheers,
Denis

PS: the problem is not Low Urgency, thousand of laptop have an ATI mobile insideati

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

oops, sorry

[Hector Miuler Malpica Gallegos (miuler)]

Bug related #83145

[stallman (lyc10000h-gmail)]

I have a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 which doesn't been supported by the new xorg-driver-fglrx.
So,what's the latest status for this bug?
How long we should wait for the xorg-driver-fglrx-legacy releasing?

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

I think your best bet is to talk to ATI about this - they are the only ones who can safely fix bugs which reside in binary portions of their driver. If ATI stop supporting your card with their binary driver there's not a lot that anyone else can do.

[anthony baxter (anthony)]

The problem is that the binary blob fglrx_drv.so has the X server version encoded in it, and the last version that supported the R200 &c only supports up to 7.1. Feisty has 7.2. You can (with a bit of messing about) build the kernel driver, but that won't help you, as the X server won't load the 7.1 driver.

Short of ATI cutting a new release for the older cards (which I strongly doubt will happen - thanks so very much ATI!) we're pretty much boned. I've had some success with pulling the latest ATI driver from freedesktop.org's git repo. It works much better with external displays, in any case. Details here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=357091

[Niklas Therning (niklas-therning)]

As a work around for this problem I downgraded x.org to 7.1 and used Envy to install the 8.28.8 driver. Details here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=432554

[sander (sander2)]

My Notebook has a ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 (Samsung P30) and I can't use my dual-head setup properly with the opensource ati driver. I understand that the reason for this *big* problem is that ATI wont support older (2 years, is that "old"?) cards. Anyway, I just want to vote for this bug just to show that there are more than just a few users suffering from this this fglrx issue.
Downgrading to xorg 7.1 is not really a solution, so i'll have to stick with edgy for now. :-(

[Amar (amar611)]

I agree with denix.. I run linux coz its a good choice.. I have been facing this problem since upgrade. I tried all possible solutions. Downgrading to xorg 7.1 is not really a solution. if that is the case what is point in upgrading to fiesty. I was really happy with 6.10. I am unable to use my Dell 2007 monitor just coz of this problem. please please please solve this issue.

[koni (koni-tzimsch)]

I've got the same problem with my 2 years old thinkpad as well . Since the upgrade to the feisty & thus a kernel > 2.16.18 I wasn't able to find a way to get the old fglrx driver working.

I do agree to the previous posts as well. Linux is the OS of choice for me. Unfortunately there are a couple of reasons to stick to the ATI (fglrx) driver: Lower power consumption, Big desktop & tv out, and still superior 3D acceleration. I'd really appreciate a legacy module to solve this Issue...

[Amar (amar611)]

I feel sad to say but I move back to 6.10 edgy.. and now everything work perfect...

[w4ett (w4ett)]

So what we are relegated to is either downgrading to edgy or possibly going back to xorg 7.1 with the mesa drivers?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

This package has become obsolete so we're closing out the bug report as WONTFIX.
Thanks for reporting it though!