I am very confused. I did a software "Update" last night. The package manager downloaded and installed the latest Linux kernel and modules, among other things. When I turned my computer back on this morning I had hardware accelerated graphics. I have a Radeon X850. (R420)

Has anyone else experienced this? I admit, I didn't have much time to look into this before going to work to understand why this happened. At work (shhh!) ;-) I downloaded and reviewed the latest "linux-libre" kernel. So much has changed recently in regards to the video drivers that I can't tell if Radeon cards should have hardware accelerated graphics or not. It looks like the "linux-libre" kernel now compiles a "radeon.ko" kernel driver, but doesn't include non-free blobs. In the past, the "radeon.ko" file wouldn't even have been built.

I haven't seen any comments about this on the forum or the mailing lists or on phoronix.com or on fsf.org or on x.org, so I thought I'd ask about it here. Thanks!

You seem to have the best card right now according to http://free3d.org/

I am using only a laptop at the moment and am stuck with Nvidia 2D, but I've been thinking about putting together a desktop with all the right parts to create a totally free computer. Nice to know what video card to get. Now I just have to get the right motherboard. : )

Congratulations on getting 3D. One step at a time, right?

I have a radeon x850xt and I just did an apt-get update and nothing happened.

I didn't think that the new radeon driver was deemed free software because of the microcode anyway. Look at the other forum posts about it.

junebug: The "radeon" driver that is used on that website is open source software, but the FSF decided it is not free software because it has a "binary blob". So please keep in mind that gNewSense works great with Radeon cards, but you won't have hardware accelerated graphics. :( At least, that used to be the case until my last system update. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have hardware accelerated graphics. I'm going to try to find out what happened on my computer. I'll let you know! :)

khwaac: Thank you for doing an update and trying it out. I know I shouldn't have hardware accelerated graphics with gNewSense, but I am so confused because, for some reason, I do. @_@ I will hunt around some more this weekend and try to understand what happened.

It's nice to have an "X850 friend". :D I'll let you know what I learn. If you're interested, here's more information about my computer setup:

http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/User:Drcouzel

Thank you!

Well, I'm stumped. Apparently the Radeon X850 currently has hardware accelerated graphics support in gNewSense.

The Linux kernel driver is called "radeon.ko". I used a "dpkg -S radeon.ko" command to find out that it came from the package "linux-image-2.6.24-24-386". As a test, I used grub to boot using an older Linux kernel and verified that I had no direct rendering support by using the command "glxinfo | grep direct". Then I uninstalled my current Linux image package. Then I confirmed my repository settings:

Core software (main) Non-core useful software (universe) Download from: Server for United States No third-party software sources Important security updates (deltah-security) Unsupported updates (deltah-updates) Package backports (deltah-backports)

Then I reinstalled the latest Linux image package. I restarted my computer using that image and, once again, saw that I now have direct rendering support. The glxgears test from www.free3d.org on my computer went from 700 fps to 5000 fps.

khwaac, I'm very interested if you have the same results. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I did! Thanks!

Hi static_drc

Yay! Someone in my situation. I've been trying to get this to work for a while and I recently gave up hope.

I'm still fairly new to GNU/Linux, so I am unfamiliar with the kernel update process. Would you be able to explain the steps to update the linux image so I can get 3d? (if it is certainly free). I have a really customized setup now so i don't want to compromise my system though.

I have an ASUS M2N68-CM motherboard that is not supported by coreboot (I emailed them). I am using a AMD Athlon X2 5000+ , 2gb of ddr800 and I think I have exactly the same gfx card as you.

Let's see. First, check to see if you have hardware accelerated graphics. In a "Terminal" window, type this command:

glxinfo | grep direct

(that means, "show info about 3D support" and "only show the info about direct rendering")

If it says "yes", then stop here. You already have it. :P

If it says "no", then please check which kernel image package you have installed. You can do this in Synaptic Package Manager. Do a "Search" for packages with this "Name":

linux-image-2.6.24

All of the Linux kernel images that you have installed will be marked with a green box. The image I am using that has the Radeon driver is called:

linux-image-2.6.24-24-386

After you install that package, please check to see where it came from. Select "Properties" and choose the "Versions" tab. Mine says my package came from here:

2.6.24-24.61 (archive.gnewsense.org)

If you just installed a new Linux kernel image package, then remember to restart your computer for it to take effect.

You should now have the same Radeon kernel driver installed that I do. The file should be located here:

/lib/modules/2.6.24-24-386/kernel/drivers/char/drm/radeon.ko

And, it should have automatically been loaded when you restarted your computer. To check if it is loaded, type this command into a Terminal window:

lsmod | grep radeon

(that means, "list the loaded kernel modules" and "only show the info about radeon")

If it is loaded, you should see a couple of "radeon" information lines, one with "drm". Also, the "glxinfo" test from the beginning should show "yes".

If you do ALL of these things and STILL don't have hardware accelerated graphics, then I'm not sure what is going on, but I'd be happy to continue to try and work it out. :)

(I apologize if this "tutorial" is too basic or too advanced for you! Just let me know if I should do it differently) :)

test

Wow thanks for the great tutorial.

glxinfo | grep direct showed that I have no direct rendering.

This is because I have not specified the radeon driver in my Xorg.conf but as you will see this isn't the only reason.

I searched for linux-image-2.6.24 and it shows I have 3 images installed.

linux-image-2.6.24-16-386

linux-image-2.6.24-23-386

linux-image-2.6.24-24-386

I checked the version of 2.6.24-24-386 and it was 2.6.24-24.59gnewsense9 (now), so obviously the image on my machine is not as up-to-date as yours.

I checked the contents of

/lib/modules/2.6.24-24-386/kernel/drivers/char/drm/

and there is no radeon.ko

I downloaded the and installed the latest 2 header packages and the linux-image-generic 61 version from archive.gnewsense.org and restarted but radeon.ko is still missing. I'm not sure if that updated the image correctly, I used dpkg -i

Thanks for you help so far.

Well, I don't have a lot of time right now, but I just want to let you know, it looks like I accidentally installed the Linux kernel from the Ubuntu repositories and not the gNewSense repositories. I still don't understand how that's happening, but I did uninstall it. I will look into it more later. I just wanted to let you know that there still is no hardware accelerated graphics in gNewSense for our video card.

I hope "larrabee" will come out soon. :-D

I think I have found the offending files. And I think I understand the reason why I was so confused: they are on the gNewSense server!

Here is the server I use:

http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense

And I'm pretty sure that these are the offending packages:

pool -> main -> l -> linux -> linux-image-2.6.24-24-386_2.6.24-24.61_i386.deb

pool -> main -> l -> linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24 -> linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-24-386_2.6.24-24.41_i386.deb

As you can see, they are from gnewsense.org with all the rest of the gNewSense packages. If you were to install these (and I don't recommend you do!) then you would have hardware accelerated graphics with your Radeon card.

My guess as to what has happened, and this is only a guess, is that somehow an Ubuntu Linux kernel image build got into the gNewSense repositories and it's not supposed to be there.

I don't recommend installing those packages for two reasons: because they contain non-free software, and because I am having a hard time cleanly uninstalling them! I will work on it more when I have time, but I don't use any software that requires hardware accelerated graphics anyway.

I also wonder why those packages automatically installed in an update on my computer and not on your computer. :-P

I filed a bug report here:

http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00359

Thank you for your help! :)

>>glxinfo | grep direct

FYI the more recent drivers support direct rendering even with the software renderer, so looking for direct rendering is no longer a reliably way to determine if you have hardware acceleration. You need to look at the OpenGL renderer string instead, eg "grep renderer" rather than "grep direct".

On my system the hardware-accelerated case gives :

"OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R600 (RV620 95C5) 20090101 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE2 TCL"

... while the software-rendered case (no hw accel) gives :

"OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer"