AcuraRBKG6

Hey again. Thinking that glxgears is reporting a pretty-high FPS rate (>3500 FPS), I decided to take the initiative to play Tux Racer as a test. The performance was horrid. It was probably going 0.5 FPS instead of the 3500 FPS that I thought I was achieving. What could possibly be the problem here? glxinfo reports that direct rending is on and run by the card itself. Could it just be that my card is really bad under Linux? I am running Mandriva Linux 2006 Free. Thanks once again! -C

The problem has been solved. glxgears now reports FPS of well over 2000. Thank you very much, Ian!

Thanks for the (very prompt) reply. I tried to remove the ati-xorg package, but it states that it needs dkms-ati to be removed. So then I tried to remove that, but it says that it is needed by ati-xorg. How do I go around these dependencies? edit: forget the last post.

Hey everyone. I've been searching for days as to how to *properly* install the ATI drivers for my FireGL V5000 card, but nothing has seemed to work. This is what I did. First, I installed the kernel-source via urpmi to make sure that the driver installs relative to my kernel. Next, I installed the RPM for Mandriva/2006 from the Official ATI drivers using rpm -Uvh --force (excuse me if I got the command slightly wrong, but I did use the force option). I went into init 3 and used aticonfig --initial, but no 3D acceleration was used. This was the output of glxinfo |grep render [root@localhost share]# glxinfo |grep render Loading compatibility GL library /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.4.502 direct rendering: No OpenGL renderer string: Mesa X11 glxgears reports [root@localhost share]# glxgears Loading compatibility GL library /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.4.502 4769 frames in 5.0 seconds = 953.738 FPS 4827 frames in 5.0 seconds = 965.381 FPS 4840 frames in 5.0 seconds = 967.828 FPS and fglrx_config doesn't even load! Should I remove the driver and start from scratch? If so, how do I do that? Thanks in advance -C

Try this: 1) Install the card into the PC. 2) See if Mandy picks it up. If it doesn't: 3) Create a new wireless connection. You can do this by either clicking the star, system, network (I think) or just go into konsole as root and type drakconf. It will then give you the option to use the Windows INFs there. Have you checked the "HCL" for Mandriva to see if your card is up? Welcome aboard, btw

That is definitely indicative of a bad power supply. I believe what happens is that when your girlfriend presses the power button to start your computer 'cold', the power supply starts to gradually power up. I'm not entirely sure of what exactly causes this, but I am definitely sure it has something to do with power received. If you hear a really faint noise coming from your computer, I am sure this is the issue. The reason why her computer takes a shorter time to 'warm' with less devices is because the PS has to distribute less power. When her computer has been on for a while, however, it's already 'warm,' so it doesn't take as long to boot. I would highly recommend to at least try and replace the power supply. I would also take a look at the motherboard's capacitors; they might be shot. If the replacement of the power supply doesn't work; I'm sure the motherboard is faulty at this point.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe that the firmware of ipw2200 depends solely on the kernel. That means that a higher version number does not necessarily indicate better operability. Therefore, what I would do is (as root, of course) is erase all of the files in /lib/hotplug/firmware and downlaod the 2.3 files to substitute. If anything, after you reboot your computer try to modprobe ipw2200 if nothing comes up (which it should). Before you reboot, however, try to delete all interfaces too, and install the wireless by itself to see how that works out. -C

I think users should also avoid ATI video cards, as the drivers for them are not particularly good with Linux in general (at least on a laptop, anyway).. I did hear that nVIDIA cards are extremely compatible with Linux, however. -C

When you say every day, do you mean every physical day change or every time you reboot your computer? how many networking devices do you have installed?

It all depends on what you want. If you want CLI only Pentium I with at least 32 MB and a hard disk > 2 GB should be alright. Any graphic card will do, and you probably won't have any use for sound. 4 M If you want X Windows Pentium II with at least 64 MB RAM and a hard disk > 6 GB should be good. A graphics card that is at least 2D accelerated should be fine. If you want X Windows at its fullest Pentium III at 1 GHz with 128 MB RAM, 10 GB hard disk, A 3D card with >=64 MB VRAM (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND NVIDIA, SINCE THEY DO NOT NEGLECT THEIR LINUX BASE), and a decent sound card. Mandriva Linux picks up DSL modems and Ethernet devices pretty readily. When I had Mandy 8.2, it picked up my cable modem and WINMODEM really good. It has a pretty good hardware base, so I wouldn't worry too much about that unless you have some really exotic hardware (Hayes Accura 14400 Baud Modem, for example, which I have). Don't buy the latest and greatest because, most likely, the performance differential between that and a mid-range system of 2002 will probably be unnoticeably small (unless you do scientific stuff like TeX and Maxima).

oh also don't set up teh virtual resolution. For some reason, that always blacked out my settings. This is what you can do. 1) Run fglrxconfig again and choose option 2. DO NOT CONFIGURE VIRTUAL DIMENSIONS. 2) Reboot X or the computer. 3) When you get back on X, you should get a GUI at the max resolution that is specified in the config tool. Exit X by typing as root in Konsole init 3. 4) (as root) emacs /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add to the "Displays" section the resolutions you want. 5) Save it and restart X by typing startx. 6) Your resolution should now be what you initlally specified. See if that helps.

I'm sorry that you're having problems with your card, man. I had problems with mine too (FireGL V5000), and I eventually had to uninstall Mandy and put Windows Server :( 1) Try to modprobe fglrx and see what console reports. It should not report back anything. 2) That /etc/X11/xorg.conf doesn't look like it's even been touched by fglrxconfig. Try running the config tool again. 3) When you run the installer, do you get a graphical interface? If you do, run the installer again and upgrade. This shouldn't take very long (5-10 minutes). At the end when it displays your configuration, edit the display settings and test it AS IT IS. If the confirmation window shows up, then tell it that that is the correct setting. You should AT LEAST get VESA mode when you restart. If you do, run the installer again. 4) Did you try the RPM version? Try running the RPM installer and see if you can do that. Tell us what happens. Good luck! Carlos

Hey guys. FIrst of all, I think this is a wonderful forum and community, and is probably what inspired me to use Mandy as the only operating system on my laptop. However, I am running into some serious problems, most of which are coming from my FireGL V5000 card. I installed all of the drivers as per the *.run installer (I couldn't use a RPM because Mandy 2006 uses X.Org 6.9, and the RPMs go as high as X.Org 6.8), and then used fglrxconfig to configure my dual-head and display settings. Upon reboot, glxgears reports really low fps (150 - 170 fps), and fgl_glxgears doesn't even run because OpenGL is missing. When I did the grep, it showed that it was using MESA GLX and that there was no direct rendering. So, I got the libraries for MESA, but that didn't solve the OpenGL problem. Of course, because of that, I can't play MPGs or WMVs (exits to command-line with a signal 11), nor can I play any games without supreme lag (like TuxRacer). I love Linux, and I would really hate to switch back to Windows. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks in advance! --C

did you try pushing the button?

The type of laptop that you get really depends on the company that you buy from. There are relatively few companies that make super solid laptops, while now a days there are a lot of companies that make laptops just to make a profit. For example, while IBM's laptops aren't great in the hardware side of things (their workstation uses an aging FireGL T2), they are built to last. I'll tell you one thing: DON'T GET AN HP NOTEBOOK if you want Linux compatibility. The school I attend gave us HP Compaq nw8240 Mobile Workstation, and using Windows on it was perfect. However, Ubuntu wasn't compatible with the display, Fedora had its own problems, Solaris wouldn't install, and it took a couple of days to get Mandriva working right. Not only that, the material used is pretty cheap (mostly polished plastic). I speak from experience: I owned a Thinkpad 600 two years back. The actual notebook was from 1997 or 1998, and until I sold it in 2003 that laptop looked absolutely perfect. Everything was functional, and I had to worry about nothing. Compare that to MANY laptops in my school (same as mine) failing within the FIRST THREE MONTHS of operation. Now that's fresh.