Last edited by handy; March 27th, 2010 at 02:00 AM. Reason: disambiguation
Hey, does anyone know if there's a way to switch between Catalyst and ATI as easily as easily as between Kernel versions at Grub. I'm loving the ATI driver and would like to be able to help by filing bugs. I'm missing Savage2 though...
I know that you can change the string in xorg.conf, but my understanding is that you'd also need to install and uninstall driver stuff every time.
Facebook, Apple, Google, corrupt governments, the ISP's and Telco's
can be beaten at their own game by free and open source software.
Here's how. (Extra credit)
If you have a search, (Ubuntu forums, games I think?) there is a thread where a guy wanted to be able to easily switch xorg.conf , with some suggestions he wrote a script that worked beautifully.
If you can find that thread you are in, as he took care of the incompatible files very nicely.
If you find it could you please post the link here for future reference?
Good luck.
Well, I looked and I looked. I found plenty of people running scripts to swap between a single and a dual monitor setup, but nothing to toggle between fglrx ant ati.
Facebook, Apple, Google, corrupt governments, the ISP's and Telco's
can be beaten at their own game by free and open source software.
Here's how. (Extra credit)
Last edited by handy; March 28th, 2010 at 09:32 AM.
Heh heh. Someone after my own thinking. Yes, in fact, I did search with Scroogle (and Cuil).
The closest I found was this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8909615
Which was for switching between FGLRX and Nvidia. Close, but I have no idea what's different between the ATI / FGLRX / Nvidia drivers... :-/
Facebook, Apple, Google, corrupt governments, the ISP's and Telco's
can be beaten at their own game by free and open source software.
Here's how. (Extra credit)
That link is to the thread I was thinking of. Sorry, my memory let us down.
I think that it is very likely possible to modify the script to do what you want, but I'm not up for it. My scripting & programming peaked in my Amiga days about 15 or so years ago.
[Edit:] I was just thinking that it really would be very useful for what I expect to be a growing number of users to be able to choose from the Grub menu, between the open-source & the proprietary drivers.
I hope someone with the knowledge takes this problem up & solves it for the community. It will encourage many more users to try the open-source drivers I think, & many who only use the open-source drivers would be happy to be able to easily switch to Catalyst when the need arises.
Last edited by handy; March 28th, 2010 at 11:36 AM.
My review of the Open-Source drivers after trying it out for a few days:
Specs and 'benchmark':
Card: ATI 4570
OS: Kubuntu 10.04
Driver info: 1.5 Mesa 7.7.1-DEVEL
GLXGEARS:
780 FPS (Composition Enabled)
1316 FPS (Composition Disabled)
Desktop Experience: (Open-Source wins this one)
Excellent, its extremely snappy, its faster than any catalyst I've tried (I've tried them all since verion 9.x until 10.4 beta. Composition is also enabled, all animations work perfectly. In catalyst I experience a slight delay when maximizing or minimizing a window, also changing window size can sometimes not go smoothly, this all goes very smoothly with the open-source drivers.
Video Experience: (Open-Source wins this one)
Excellent, extremely snappy again, not what I'm used to even with catalyst. The annoyances I had with catalyst were especially when maximizing/minimizing video, changing size of video, etc. It would always lag with catalyst, but not with the open-source driver. I click and it jumps to full screen the moment I click, same with making it smaller. Also with catalyst I experience tearing in fast moving video, which I find VERY annoying. I've tried 1080p Flash and normal video, very snappy, no lag at all.
Games Experience: (Catalyst wins this one)
The open-source drivers will not play your heavy games, at least they don't even start on my computer. I've tried Savage 2 and Heroes of Newerth, all the other games you'd find in the repositories will work.
Power Management?: (Catalyst wins this one)
The open-source drivers make my laptop warmer and I hear the ventilator, which I normally don't hear. This must be due to improper or lack of power management, I don't know.
Distro/latest stuff support: (Open-Source wins this one)
If you want to upgrade to the latest kernel and I don't know what, your only option to use a driver without hacks and what not, will be the open-source one. Catalyst 10.4 beta didn't work for me in Kubuntu 10.04, according to some it works though... for me, this one is also for open-source.
Conclusion: I'm only worried about the power management. If they fix that, I'm going to stay with the open-source drivers permenently. I don't play the heavy games anymore anyway since Im too busy and it takes away too much of my time.
If you want to install it, you can install it with the following command: sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-ati
Anyone know when the new open-source drivers will be released?
2.6.33 had power management improvements, i think they are being improved in .34
Network bridging gui <vote for that| my ideas : 1) show failed logins 2) Report file editing 3) Renice the active program ...etc
kernel .34, & the associated packages, as far as the ATi open-source drivers are concerned, seems to be primarily about power management.
It is happening; from what I read this morning on the Arch forum, there was a great leap forward in the most recent -git packages, in both PM & 3D speed.
I don't know, but I expect Ubuntu will use kernel .34 in 10.10?
Though there is a how-to for using development packages in the Ubuntu Stuff section of the first page of this thread.
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