( Ubuntu/ Linux lime ) Major ATI Driver issues.

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hello all, I am trying to set up a Linux Lime laptop to use Blender and have run into some serious errors. The graphics card is a Radeon Xpress 200M.

First off, the system was running some standard Mesa drivers ( I am no longer able to specify which ones. Very sorry about this. ) and blender ran “psuedo slow”. The actual 3D view an tranformation were quick, and some of the buttons worked, but any button that caused a popup window to come up ( like the spacebar menu ) was extremely slow to respond, often taking 30 seconds when it should be instant.

Also the grid was extremely warped. Here is a screenshot:

Screenshot.jpg1024×640 51.4 KB

So what I did was try to install ATI graphics by first installing fglrx and xorg-driver-fglrx
and now I have NO opengl at all. Blender wont even start. I discovered this is because I had no actual driver installed.

So I started to follow these instructions

                                   10                     08                     2008                                                                            To make sure that this is the model of your graphics card, on a  terminal window and type:

lspci | grep -i vga
The output should be similar to this :
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
Now we need to install the fglrx driver:
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
Enable the Ati driver from the System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers.
Reboot the system, open a terminal window and type:
fglrxinfo
The output should be the following:
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon Xpress Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7412 Release
That’s it.
My problem now is the same as vikas:

Hi,
I am having issue with
Enable the Ati driver from the System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers
I don’t see the ATI driver in the list. I have two drivers in that list

  1. Broadcom B43 wireless driver
  2. Software Modem

I have EXACTLY the same problem. No one has replied to him. No amount of uninstalling and reinstalling fixes the issue.

If anyone can help with this it would be Greatly appreciated. At the very least I would like to know how to revert.

edit: minor goof, this is linux mint not lime.

2

The instructions I followed can be found by searching google with “Enabling Desktop Effects for Ati Radeon Xpress 200M”
I cannot post the link because of the new user anti spam, but it is the first result you get.

3

Update: Discovered fglrx was not the way to go as it conflicts with mesa drivers. I am now back to square one with blender running in its slow state. Here is my glxinfo

name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer,
GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer,
GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_allocate_memory,
GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_swap_control,
GLX_MESA_swap_frame_usage, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_OML_sync_control,
GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGI_video_sync,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer,
GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
GLX version: 1.2
GLX extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer,
GLX_MESA_swap_frame_usage, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read,
GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group,
GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
OpenGL vendor string: DRI R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 (RS400 5955) 20090101 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE2 NO-TCL DRI2
OpenGL version string: 1.5 Mesa 7.7.1
OpenGL extensions:
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_depth_texture, GL_ARB_draw_buffers, GL_ARB_fragment_program,
GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample, GL_ARB_multitexture,
GL_ARB_occlusion_query, GL_ARB_point_parameters, GL_ARB_provoking_vertex,
GL_ARB_shadow, GL_ARB_shadow_ambient, GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp,
GL_ARB_texture_compression, GL_ARB_texture_cube_map,
GL_ARB_texture_env_add, GL_ARB_texture_env_combine,
GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3,
GL_MESAX_texture_float, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_ARB_texture_rectangle, GL_ARB_transpose_matrix,
GL_ARB_vertex_array_bgra, GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object,
GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_window_pos, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra,
GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate,
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_blend_logic_op, GL_EXT_blend_minmax,
GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_convolution, GL_EXT_copy_texture,
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements, GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit,
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_fog_coord,
GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters, GL_EXT_histogram, GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays,
GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil, GL_EXT_packed_pixels,
GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_polygon_offset, GL_EXT_provoking_vertex,
GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color,
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_shadow_funcs,
GL_EXT_stencil_two_side, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_subtexture,
GL_EXT_texture, GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_cube_map,
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp,
GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_rectangle, GL_EXT_texture_sRGB,
GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra, GL_APPLE_packed_pixels,
GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate, GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3,
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once, GL_ATI_separate_stencil,
GL_IBM_multimode_draw_arrays, GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip,
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate,
GL_MESA_pack_invert, GL_MESA_ycbcr_texture, GL_MESA_window_pos,
GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_light_max_exponent, GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil,
GL_NV_texture_rectangle, GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_NV_vertex_program,
GL_OES_read_format, GL_SGI_color_matrix, GL_SGI_color_table,
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp,
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays

64 GLX Visuals
visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat

0x21 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x22 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0xc0 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0xc1 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 0 0 0 0 16 16 16 0 0 0 Slow

And display driver info:

-Display-
Resolution : 1280x800 pixels
Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
Version : 1.7.6
-Monitors-
Monitor 0 : 1280x800 pixels
-Extensions-
BIG-REQUESTS
Composite
DAMAGE
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
DRI2
GLX
Generic Event Extension
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
RANDR
RECORD
RENDER
SECURITY
SGI-GLX
SHAPE
SYNC
X-Resource
XC-MISC
XFIXES
XFree86-DGA
XFree86-VidModeExtension
XINERAMA
XInputExtension
XKEYBOARD
XTEST
XVideo
-OpenGL-
Vendor : DRI R300 Project
Renderer : Mesa DRI R300 (RS400 5955) 20090101 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE2 NO-TCL DRI2
Version : 1.5 Mesa 7.7.1
Direct Rendering : Yes

4

I got something in the back of my head.
IIRC it is an issue with compiz.
You have to disable compiz and its eyecandy, then Blender should do just fine.

5

Boy it would have been nice if the problem was that simple. Unfortunately messing with compiz doesn’t seem to effect the performance of blender in any way D:.

I changed back to using this setup :

-Display-
Resolution : 1280x800 pixels
Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
Version : 1.7.6
-Monitors-
Monitor 0 : 1280x800 pixels
-Extensions-
BIG-REQUESTS
Composite
DAMAGE
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
DRI2
GLX
Generic Event Extension
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
RANDR
RECORD
RENDER
SECURITY
SGI-GLX
SHAPE
SYNC
X-Resource
XC-MISC
XFIXES
XFree86-DGA
XFree86-VidModeExtension
XINERAMA
XInputExtension
XKEYBOARD
XTEST
XVideo
-OpenGL-
Vendor : DRI R300 Project
Renderer : Mesa DRI R300 (RS400 5955) 20090101 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE2 NO-TCL DRI2
Version : 1.5 Mesa 7.7.1
Direct Rendering : Yes

and now blender runs again, but is back to its unstable performance. I believe I have narrowed the problem down to being an issue with the OpenGL drivers. ( I installed wings3d and it had similar problems with the display grid, and the console specifically stated that no suitable OpenGL mode could be found. ) Problem is finding if any good opengl drivers exist that work well with this old card. Is there no solution?