ATI 8.40.4 driver and Googleearth

[kubadmin]

> On Tuesday 14 August 2007 04:22:42 pm kubadmin wrote:
> > Larry,
> >
> > I installed the new driver and everything seems ok, speed is much better
> > (I'm getting 2095 fps with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) but, and this is a BIG
> > "but", GoogleEarth no longer works.
> > It worked fine with the 8.3x.x versions of the driver. I've even
> > uninstalled the 8.40.4 driver according to ATI's instructions and
> > re-installed it the wiky way but the problem remains.
> > Do you have any hints of what I might try?
> > GoogleEarth is probably the only app I really need a functional ATI
> > driver for. It didn't work with open drivers or the fglrx driver
> > distributed with kubuntu until you came out with your wiki and now I'm
> > back to stake zero.
>
> Antonio:
>
> I can confirm your frustration and I too have a broken Googleearth.  I
> stumbled across what is likely the problem while looking at the Synaptic
> package manager description for Googleearth.  I pasted the issue at the
> bottom, but highly recommend not following the instructions to fix the
> issue....as the fix seems to make a bad problem worse.
>
> What I do recommend is that you reinstall the previous driver and reinstall
> Googleearth afterwards.  Whenever I download the latest fglrx driver I
> always hold on to the last working version until I know the latest appears
> to work.
>
> The wiki still has the last version listed, so I will leave it up for a day
> or two yet....and now that I know about this issue I will post it on the
> wiki when I edit it for the latest version.  As far as the wiki goes, I did
> not start it, nor do I own it, but I do update it as a part of the
> community--seems as though I get to downloading the drivers quicker than
> others.
>
> I will probably continue using latest fglrx driver and wait until
> Googleearth issues get resolved.  Not a pressing program for me at the
> moment.
>
>
> Larry
>
> ===========================
>
> googleearth for Ubuntu
> ----------------------
>
> If you have an ATI graphic card using the proprietary driver (fglrx),
> googleearth may freeze at splashscreen[0].
>
> Here is a possible workaround[1][2]:
> $ cd /usr/lib/googleearth/
> $ sudo wget http://librarian.launchpad.net/7037027/libGL.so.1 -O libGL.so.1
>
> It will replace the shipped libGL.so.1 with a previous version from fglrx.
> (Thanks to Tyler McAfee for digging this).
>
> Links:
> [0] https://bugs.launchpad.net/medibuntu/+bug/97056
> [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/medibuntu/+bug/97056/comments/14
> [2]
> http://n01getsout.com/blog/2006/11/26/google-earth-for-linux-freezing-with-
>ati/
>
>  -- The Medibuntu Team <medibuntu at sos-sts.com>  Thu,  5 Apr 2007 12:33:15
> +0200

Hi Larry,

I rolled back to 8.39.4 and it works fine. I've filled a bug report at ATI's 
site. You can "vote" for this bug at: 
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=774
(I think this "voting" thing means "I also have the same problem").
By the way, they have all the previous versions of the Radeon driver at their 
site just in case you deleted it from your computer as I did. :(
The address is:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/radeonprevious-lin
For other graphics boards start at:
http://ati.de/support/driver.html
and find your way trhough till you find your model.

Best regards,
Antonio

PS - I didn't have to re-install GoogleEarth, just reboot after installing 
8.39.4 and it works fine.

>I don't know about everyone else but I had the same problem with google earth 
>with my ATI Radeon Express 200M but I happened to reboot the machine and 
>google earth worked fine. If you already haven't give a reboot a try.

>-- 
>David M.

Hi David,
What happened to you is normal, when you install a new graphics driver you 
have to restart X in order for it to be effective.
Rebooting the system does the same thing because it restarts everything.
Are you sure you are using the latest driver version (8.40.4)?
Anyway, the Radeon Express is integrated in the motherboard and it has 
probably a slightly different version of the driver so it works fine with 
GoogleEarth.

Best regards,
Antonio