ATI Radeon Xpress 200 -- need help.

[TheRenegade]

Hello, I have been using Debian for a few weeks now (love it, besides it being a little bulky). and have everything going besides wireless and my graphics card, the former being less important to me. I haven't had any problems running Debian without a graphics card, but I know I will need it to play games, configure a 3d desktop if I choose, etc...


Can someone please take the time to run me through the steps? I'd really appreciate it. I've looked for/at some tutorials but for one reason or another, they didn't work, or something came up...

I'm still learning.

[reed9]

Are you running the current stable, Debian Lenny?

You have two options. The proprietary fglrx driver or the open source xserver-xorg-video-ati driver.

The fglrx driver dropped support for older cards, including the xpress 200 as of version 9.4 and older versions of the driver require xorg-server <=1.6 release. Lenny uses pretty old packages, so you should be able to use this driver if you're running that. It's in the non-free section of the repos.

The open source ati driver does now support 3D acceleration for your card, but I don't think the version in Lenny does. You may need this for Squeeze or Sid.

In either case, the card does't handle 3D acceleration all that well. I have a computer with this card and the best I've seen it work is with the latest Ubuntu and Fedora and the open source driver. Window compositing is tolerable with those. I don't game so I couldn't speak to performance there.

[reed9]

ATIProprietary - Debian Wiki

[TheRenegade]

Alright! You're back.

Before anything else, I just have to say thanks again.





OK, now I got to step 4 in the Debian wiki link you provided, and I want some clarification and reassurance before I attempt it.

I am using LXDE, which I am pretty sure uses openbox for a window manager... What would the command be for it?


And, yes, I believe I am using the newest stable version (5.0).

[reed9]

Alright! You're back.

I didn't know I was missed. Thanks. Been in Aspen, CO on vacation.

The LXDE metapackage in Debian installs GDM by default.

invoke-rc.d gdm stop

Assuming you didn't install a different login manager, like slim, this would be the correct one.

[TheRenegade]

Ok, thanks.


Also, I hope you had a good time (assuming it wasn't a business trip lol).

[reed9]

Semi-business, but still involved a lot of drinking.

[TheRenegade]

Haha... good, good.



Ok, well I went through all the steps, including messing up my xorg.config file somehow, going through hell trying to figure out what I did wrong (that's a lot to do when you have never been "stranded" in a terminal being asked for your login). I figured out I put quotations around my DefaultDepth number.... lol... ah, good times.


I guess it's installed and everything... But for some reason I can't get compiz to work. It's not that big of a deal, but I'd like to know if my graphics card is all set.

[TheRenegade]

Ok, well I ran this in the terminal:

lspci -k

and got

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Xpress 200 Host Bridge (rev 01)
	Kernel modules: ati-agp
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:11.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 Serial ATA Controller (rev 80)
	Kernel driver in use: sata_sil
	Kernel modules: sata_sil
00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 Serial ATA Controller (rev 80)
	Kernel driver in use: sata_sil
	Kernel modules: sata_sil
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
	Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd
	Kernel modules: ohci-hcd
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
	Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd
	Kernel modules: ohci-hcd
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (rev 80)
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
	Kernel modules: ehci-hcd
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 81)
	Kernel driver in use: piix4_smbus
	Kernel modules: i2c-piix4
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 IDE Controller (rev 80)
	Kernel driver in use: ATIIXP_IDE
	Kernel modules: atiixp
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB4x0 High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge (rev 80)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev 80)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200]
	Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci
	Kernel modules: fglrx
02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
	Kernel driver in use: 8139too
	Kernel modules: 8139cp, 8139too
02:04.0 Communication controller: Conexant Device 2f40

So, this can only mean that it is compiled, and running, correct?



Now, if I could only get that completely unnecessary, yet still fun to play with Compiz 3d effects to work....

[reed9]

Sorry for the delay. Probably with Debian you will need to tweak your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

If you want to post the contents, someone should be able to help out.

There is some good info in the Arch Wiki, much of it applicable to any distro.
ATI - ArchWiki