ATIx1950+RaedonHD+KDE 4.2/4.3b+ compositing

[Rahux]

Hi guys - this is a very newbie question (For someone using linux for 2 years without much time to tanker) but basically I want some help getting KWin going on my system. I've only ever had it going out-of-the-box in Mandriva and I know that proprietary driver no longer supports the X1950 (?RV570). From what I can tell I'm using the radeonHD driver under mesa (or at least, that's what's installed on the package manager). Do I need a different driver to get compositing going? If so, how do I easily switch between them or do I still need to dig into xorg.conf? I feel like I'm missing something obvious here.

[adamk]

It should just work out-of-the-box on any recent (in the last year) distribution. What problems are you having?

Adam

[RealNC]

Use radeon, not radeonhd.

[adamk]

Though I do also prefer radeon, either one should work. If switching does not help, please explain your problem.

Adam

[Kano]

For lenny that will not work and this was released 14/04/09. As you need Xserver 1.5+ for composite you should mention that.

[adamk]

Alright, maybe I should say that it should work on any recent, decent, up-to-date distribution out-of-the-box. That shoudl cover the Lenny scenario.

And, btw, isn't compositing supported on X server 1.4.* with radeonhd and radeon for r500 cards? Perhaps opengl isn't (I don't really remember), but I'm fairly certain the composite extension and render are both supported on older X servers.

Adam

[Rahux]

I've had this trouble before but for quite a while now I've been using OpenSUSE (latest release), and most recently KDE4Live. I first noticed a problem when I tried adding the Blue Marble widget to the desktop only to see "This object could not be created for the following reason: OpenGL Shaders not supported".

So then I went to "configure desktop effects" and hit enable and got the following: "Failure to activate desktop effects using the given configuration options. Settings will be reverted to the previous values. Check your X configuration. You may also consider changing advanced options, especially changing the compositing type"

Any ideas? As I said, running KDE4Live right now but I had the same sequence of errors on stable also.

Thanks for all your help!

[adamk]

So are you saying it works till you try to enable the Blue Marble widget? That one just won't work due to the lack of GLSL, as that message said. Not sure why that would cause the KDE effects to stop working, though.

Adam

[Rahux]

No, neither of them work at all.

[adamk]

What is the output of 'glxinfo | grep -i renderer' ?

Adam

[Rahux]

Hi Adam,

The output is:
OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer

Which I suppose explains the lack of GL/compositing but I don't quite understand why it's gone to software by default.

Thanks for your help.

Rahul

[adamk]

Please show us your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file.

[Rahux]

Hi there. The text was too big to paste in so I published it here:
http://writer.zoho.com/public/rahulk/Xorg0.

Thanks again Adam.

[adamk]

(II) RADEONHD(0): Direct rendering turned off by default. Use Option "DRI" to enable.

[Rahux]

Apologies but where am I enabling that option? In /etc/X11/xorg.conf ? If so , where abouts?

Here perhaps?
Section "Device"
BoardName "Radeon X1950"
Driver "radeonhd"
Identifier "Device[0]"
Option "monitor-DVI-I_1/digital" "Monitor[0]"
VendorName "ATI"
EndSection

Or here?
Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0660
EndSection

[adamk]

Anywhere in the Device section.

Adam

[Rahux]

Thanks Adam :) My hero. That was quite education too ;)

Appreciate it.