sabayon defaulting to xorg-x11, should be ati

[nicklas]

hello. installed sabayon 11 amd64 gnome edition. the installer installs as normal, removes the non-selected language packs as usual. but then, it starts removing anaconda and some other packages, and thats fine too. but then it removes nvidia and ati drivers, i have ati, so dont need nvidia. also after install, checking with eselect list opengl, its set to xorg-x11, but both ati and nvidia is on the list. the thing i, i have an ATI Mobility™ Radeon® HD5470 with 1GB DDR3 VRAM card, and according to the ati drivers site, i fill in the form for drivers for my card, i should be using 13.1 driver, which is current driver right? could it be removing the drivers at installation, and defaulting to radeon/xorg-x11 for some other reason? like with latest kernel and/or ati drivers, my computer wont work with that?

[micia]

Hi,
Sabayon defaults to open source ATI drivers because they have proven to be more stable and compatible than closed source ones. The proprietary ATI drivers have less compatibility and some quirks that make them very hard to support out of the box, moreover they don't mix well with kernel modesetting and open source drivers.

For this reason, if a user wants the closed source drivers, Sabayon provides them in its repository and the user can manually switch to them.
To do this, you should install the appropriate version from entropy, remove the xf86-video-ati drivers and disable kernel mode setting, then use eselect opengl to switch to ati (and eventually eselect opencl to switch to amd) and update your xorg.conf to use fglrx.

[nicklas]

Ok, thanks for the quick response. With that info, ill stay with radeon.

[micia]

Alright then.

To add solved to your thread you should add it to the end of the first message subject, as explained in:
viewtopic.php?f=86&t=17059

I'm doing it for you this time.

[nicklas]

"Unsolved" this, cause i wonder if ill get the same performance with radeon as with fglrx? On a new card i understand if not, but my card isnt that new, so maybe radeon has good 2d and 3d support for it? Also, if radeon is as good as fglrx, better to go opensource.

[anomaly65]

Might try this:

http://forum.sabayon.org/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=28808 (it works; just update the version/kernel rev numbers, etc)

I've got a couple systems, one with integrated 4xxx and another with dual 7850's in crossfire mode that work without any issues. Same story for several systems with various nvidia cards.

Over at phoronix.com you can see comparisons for either nvidia or ATI/AMD proprietary drivers versus the open source. It's not a fair contest (the open source lose handily). The opensource drivers simply don't have the capabilities, and if properly installed, the proprietary drivers are at least as stable. IMHO

The reason for the proprietary drivers being closed source are "submarine patents" and the vacuous lawyers that sue any company with such complex products (about 10-100x that of a CPU) into oblivion in court based on random patents that never had any product associated with them. AMD (as do many vendors) have staff dedicated to improving the opensource drivers of course. Their financial position doesn't make that easy I'm sure.....

Good luck!!
andy

[nicklas]

Could someone please give me a complete/correct detailed guide on how to install the driver, so i wont screw up? Also, do you have to remove open driver, cant i keep it and just switch to closed, in case i want/need to switch back later?

[nicklas]

thanks for the tip. but seems my card isnt supported after all, get no modules found (or something like that, dont remember exactly) at /opt/bin/aticonfig --initial , so seems my card isnt supported by the drivers now, since its not included in the list apperantly.

[Matte88]

You shouldn't have compatibility issues, since inserting your GPU model here gives latest drivers to download.
Following the good howto written by the good anomaly65 as you can see:

If you have an HD5000 or newer, then run these "cut-n-paste" style as root:

Code: Select all

equo remove  xf86-video-ati
equo remove --configfiles xf86-video-ati
equo install =sys-kernel/linux-sabayon-3.8.3
equo install =sys-kernel/sabayon-sources-3.8.3
equo install x11-drivers/ati-drivers-13.3_beta2#3.8.0-sabayon amdcccle
eselect bzimage set kernel-genkernel-x86_64-3.8.0-sabayon
eselect kernel set linux-3.8.0-sabayon
eselect opencl set amd
eselect opengl set ati