Breezy, 2.6.12 kernel, and ATI 200M?

[Christian Convey]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the info. This is painful - I can get a nice, cheap laptop
with this chip, but  it sounds like I have to pin my hopes on ATI's
future software engineering efforts :(

I'm thinking maybe I should suck it up and get something with an Intel
990 chip. From what I understand, 3D performance on the 990 is poor,
but the driver is decent.

Boy to I miss laptops with nVidia chips. Too bad I've sworn off
Toshiba laptops - they seem to be the only mainstream manufacturer
whose non-high-end laptops use nVidia chips :(

Anyway, thanks for the help.

- Christian

On 10/9/05, Andy Choens <gunksta at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/9/05, Christian Convey <christian.convey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I'm considering buying a notebook with an ATI 200M graphics chip. I
> > want to run 32-bit Breezy on it, which currently has a kernel version
> > of 2.6.12-9-xxx.
> >
> > Should I expect X to do OK on this notebook?  I have several reasons
> > to be concerned:
>
>  Define OK.  You will have to hack your xorg.conf file by hand to get it to
> boot at all.  With the ATI driver you need to etra line
>
>  Option       "NoAccel"
>
>  The ATI drivers "work".  They certainly work better than the ATI driver
> which has (in my experience) terrible support for this chip.  I'm running
> 64-bi Breezy and I had to turn off the RAM on the graphics card to make it
> boot using ATI's drivers due to a well documented bug with ATI's driver.
> Hopefully they will get it right next time.  So, right now my 200M with
> 128MB of onboard ram is using 32 mb of my system memory so I can use it.
>
>  But 3D "works" now..albeit slowly.
>
>  This probably ain't what you wanted to hear.  But, Linux support of new
> hardware always improves.  So, I'm thinking that support in Drake will be
> fantastic for this hardware.
>
>  --andy
>
>
>
>
> > (A) ATI's web page for their proprietary driver only mentions support
> > through 2.6.11 kernels:
> >
> https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9448/1m/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.14.13-inst.html#176806
> >
> > (B) I've seen some postings on this newsgroup of people having
> > problems with this chip, but I don't know if these people are the
> > exception or the rule.
> >
> >
> > Also, if I do buy the notebook, am I better off using the
> > 'linux-restricted-modules' package, or the driver available from ATI's
> > website?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Christian
> >
> > --
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> > ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> > http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
> >
>
>
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