Re: Xinerama

[Thomas Steffen <steffen dot list dot account at gmail dot com>]

On 10/24/05, Øystein Gisnås <oystein at gisnas dot net> wrote:
> I've heard that Xinerama is supported (but no DRI) with the 8.18.6
> drivers. When I fire up my dual head config with Xinerama enabled, I
> only get garbled screens. There is no hang, and the log says that
> Xinerama is enabled.
>
> Can anyone confirm that they've got Xinerama working?

I tried to install the "automatic installer" script from ATI, on
Ubuntu breezy for amd64. And as far as I can tell, it was a complete
failure.

1. I had big trouble downloading the file, because the server sets the
wrong content type (text or realaudio depending on the package), and
the server breaks wget because it needs a POST operation (why the
heck?).
2. There is no documentation to be found anywhere.
3. Dual head does not work, although I have not changed the
configuration. In fact, my main screen remains black.
4. I could not find the configuration file to rewrite my xorg.conf.
5. It crashed my PC when I tried to change the configuration (pure
guesswork, of course).
6. The GL library installation seems broken.
7. The control tool does not work on a pure64 system, because it
relies on rare 32bit libraries.
8. glxgear freezes after a few frames.

Ok, I guess I could figure out these problem if I investigated them,
but they are just too many! What kind of QA is ATI doing on these
drivers? Although I thought this would be impossible, 8.18.6 seems
like a big step backwards too me.

</rant>

That said, I will try the patch from Alexandru tonight. If my past
experience is any indication, the number of problems should be greatly
reduced by using flavio-fglrx, even in a preliminary version.

If anybody has experience on a pure amd64 system, I would be
interested to hear about it.

Thomas