(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Okay, I've had a little time this weekend, so I tried to figure out why I'm not getting any wobbles on the 9550. wNOPinspect yielded this:
Maybe that will mean more to someone else, but all it told me was that 3D was not working. So, I went to try and track down the reason. I actually found it rather quickly. It is loading the "radeon" driver which is meant for the older Radeon cards like my 7500. It needs to load the "fglrx" driver for the 9550.

I can't seem to find the "fglrx" driver. I tried modprobing it and searching for it with Pfind, but I got nothing. Is it included in the ISO, or am I just missing it?

Now on to better news. I have been using wNOP on my laptop for a few days now, and I am quite pleased with it. It is far more stable than Beryl was for me. In fact, I've only managed to crash Compiz once and Emerald has only flaked out a few times. I've added Kiba Dock (an OS X style dock application which requires either Compiz-Fusion or Beryl) and I'm having fun throwing the dock icons at one another (Kiba has a physics engine, so you can play pong with the icons if you set the gravity low and the inertia high).

Some of the features of Compiz can be real time savers on top looking really cool. I think I'm addicted. In fact, I am working on setting up wNOP for full time use.

The only problem is, when I go to work on my CS labs next quarter I will have to use CDE. How will I be able to stay sane working with that after having been spoiled by the eye candy of wNOP?

CDE...cb88 has a seizure and runs into teh wall .....the wall wins...

Well Compiz Fusion does not work "out of the box" for me on my ATI Xpress 200 and i have no real experience with linux to tweak it to work. If anyone knows how to fix it so that i can get 3D effects please tell me. I managed to get Compiz working with Sabayon Linux so I know its not the integrated graphics.

tombh, you're tips worked a treat

Here's a summary of what I did to get Compiz-Fusion to work with my Intel 945GM laptop graphics:

Booted wNOP with

puppy pfix=ram,nox

at the prompt, typed then typed 'xwin' twice and Compiz-Fusion started right up

Then, to fix flakey Thunar, I added to the "Device" Section of xorg.conf: and re-started X. Result: Thunar flakey no more

Nice work, tombh, and the others who contributed to getting this amazing eyecandy to work so well on small and efficient Puppy. I don't normally go in for this sort of thing (I like lean & fast), but I'm really impressed and I think "Wobbily NOP" will win over even more people to Puppy

rats...I'm not wobbling on my lappy...ATI Radeon Mobility X1600/256mg ram.

Did a usb install..also a live cd boot with no saved pup.

Any ideas?

So far as I know, all of the ATI cards mentioned which do not work use the the "fglrx" driver. I'm guessing that the reason I couldn't find it is because it is not there.

I will boot up my desktop and try downloading the driver. If I'm right, that will make it wobble. This should fix the problem on all ATI cards that do not use the "radeon" driver. I will check back soon with the results.

yes..I need the fglrx driver.

I remember now....I also needed that for 3DCC acceleration.

Had lots of problems with that on this lappy.

I'd love to see the wobble.

@Sir Duncan...thanks..I'll poke around when I get more time.

Ugghh . . . The latest version of "fglrx" that I can find for Puppy does not support AIGLX, so I am downloading the new one from ATI. Will post back soon.

EDIT:
Okay, I got it installed. Problem is, I can't get CF working. If I try "xwin compiz" it crashes. If I try running the wizard, it no longer detects my card properly. I may try again later.

Okay, just done a bit of research:

Firstly, for ATI there are both Open Source and proprietary drivers. "radeon" is the OSS one and "flgrx" is the proprietary one. The radeon driver is actually very capable and compatible as this page demonstrates.

Although, in benchamarks, the radeon driver probably isn't faster, it does have some other advantages, and these were the reasons I chose to use it over the proprietary one:
(1)Only the most recent ATI driver (ie 8.42.3) supports AIGLX but this driver has also dropped support for cards before the Radeon 9500 -- cards very capable of running Compiz-Fusion! The radeon driver has not dropped support for any cards, although as I now realise it does not support 5th generation cards, see here -- as The Jinx and Caneri have also disappointingly discovered
(2)The flgrx driver would probably add another 15MB to the ISO (the ATI installer is 42MB!). The radeon driver is already contained within Puppy.

So, the crux is that wNOP is going to need both drivers (radeon and flgrx v8.42.3) in order to satisfactorily accommodate a reasonable spectrum of ATI cards.

Now, SirDuncan (I know you should be revising!) but all this doesn't explain your non-wobbiling 9550. Not to worry, if this were wNOP2 you'd be at the cutoff point for flgrx anyway. Although finding out why that's not wobbiling would be a bonus.

Unfortunately I don't have a new enough ATI card to test the flgrx v8.42.3 driver although I can provide this link to it and at some point try and compile and upload it for others to test. From what I can see, the installer will compile the driver for you. You will need to be in puppy 3.01 and have devx_301.sfs installed.

But SirDuncan you're revising, if you do have a minute though the full output of wNOPinspect from your flgrx adventure would be very interesting to see.

And for anybody else that tries the flgrx driver too please try and attach a copy of the wNOPinspect script. See the first post of this thread.

Well this is what experimental releases are all about!

PS. SirDuncan: Kiba sounds amazing, where did you get it from? I can't even get a copy of SVN with SSL support.

Well, I don't yet know why the "radeon" driver isn't working, but I can't get the "fgrlx" driver to work either. I run ATI's installer and then back out to the CLI. I run the xorgwizard and then "xwin", but I get dumped back at the CLI. After running the xorgwizard, it is no longer possible to load Xorg no matter what. Xvesa can be loaded though.

I have attached the wNOPdump file from the "fglrx" attempt to this post. I'll boot up from CD again and get the full dump from the "radeon" driver in a few minutes. EDIT: file added.

As for the Kiba dock, I couldn't get anything from the SVN either. I ended up getting binaries from an Ubuntu repository. As soon as I get all the kinks out, I will be posting the DotPets. If you really want to try them, I can post up what I have now, but no guarantees that all is good and stable.

the first one looks interesting
info on 3D in ati express 200M:

http://www.ensode.net/ati_radeon_xpress_200m_linux.html

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221320&page=21

hey would those links cb88 recommend work with ati xpress 200 (desktop version) or is it strictly for the mobile version of ati xpress 200

I honestly don't know if there is any major difference between the regular and the mobile versions of the cards in terms of setup. I suggest you create a new save file (or boot from CD if you have a full HD install) and try it on the clean file so that you don't mess up anything important if it doesn't work.

So just to be clear -- For The Jinx and Caneri 3D acceleration and thus wNOP will only work for you once the fglrx driver is properly installed, that needs to be the first thing to happen.

Also just to be clear about installing this driver:
(1) You will need to be in wNOP to run it.
(2) devx_301.sfs must be installed on wNOP
(2)(a) This can be done by booting wNOP with a savefile, then placing devx301.sfs in /mnt/home. If devx_301 doesn't mount on subsequent boots then use Xfce Menu -> Puppy Setup -> Bootmanager to make sure it does. To test if devx_301 is installed typing at the terminal should return the output: (3)The command: needs to be run from the terminal after successful driver installation.
(4) Reboot needed

(Don't worry all this will be in wNOP2!)

SirDuncan
Thanks for those dump files. Interestingly the radeon driver dump appears to be perfect! DRI is active and xorg.conf reports no errors. The only clue I can see is that the module "intel_agp" is being loaded, no doubt because of a legacy intel graphics card which I assume you have disabled through the BIOS or whatever. Strictly that module shouldn't be loaded, but I'm not sure how to stop it, but then I'm not totally sure it's the cause of the problem. What I really need to see now is the output of from within that first fresh (ie pfix=ram) boot of wNOP.

As for the fglrx dump file, xorg.conf has not been setup, so maybe you didn't run "aticonfig --initial" after installation. Also did you follow most of the steps outlined above? And would it be possible to run the installer from the terminal to catch any of its output -- I know its got a horrible long name but something I only just learnt recently is that if you type the first few letters of a command and then press tab twice bash autocompletes with suggestions!

Thanks And no rush.

Okay I can wait for Kiba, it looks fantastic though. If I get desperate I'll go a-hunting in the Ubuntu forests

P.S. Seeing as it looks like the fglrx driver will be an added feature and so added MBs to wNOP2, it would be great to try and compile the Compiz-Config-Settings-Manager into a standalone executable. I reckon that could cut a fair amount of MBs away from the final ISO size. If anybody has any python experience I've been looking at PyInstaller to do the job.

An ode to the wobble
Upon the shoulders of our forebears,
Barry, gray and wow to name but some,
Through rain, snow and ripple effects --
We shall strive to conquer fusion.

So that every corner may be activated
And as if from the highest summit
We may see the truest vista --
all windows in a single desktop fit

Somehow I was afraid that the old Intel card might be a problem. I would have removed it if it weren't built in to the motherboard. I'll have to see what I can do to stop it from loading.

I did run "aticonfig" although I used the command "aticonfig --initial --something_else_I_don't_remember_but_was_told_to_do_in_a_how-to_I_found". Perhaps I shall try just "aticonfig --initial" next time.

Most of what I'm trying to do with Kiba right now is to weed out the unnecessary packages. The Ubuntu repo had it split into a lot of seperate packages. I have it narrowed down to 3-4 right now. That might be good enough to post it for testing. I'll do that when I get home, I have my last final for the quarter in about half an hour. Then I get to go home for winter break.

I already have my desktop packed to leave, so I won't get to do any testing until late tonight (probably early morning tomorrow for you) or tomorrow. I'll be spending most of today driving.

sirduncan: If you have screen1 display1 or card1 are in your xorg.conf delete those lines

you should only have screen0 display0 and card0

and try deleting anything that pertains to the intel gpu

that is how I got the nvida 6200 with integrated intel gpu to work

svn downloaded for kiba here you go!

no i don't have svn in puppy ..... downloaded with Xpee..at school

I get home and the first thing I go to do is upload Kiba, only to find that CB has beat me to it. Since he posted the source, I suppose I can still post the binaries (though I will probably recompile now that I have access to source to ensure full Puppy compatibility).

These were plucked from an Ubuntu repository. All 4 are necessary (well, you could leave out the settings manager, but I don't suggest it) and are only tested on wNOP. They should work with any 3.01 (possibly older versions as well) that has Compiz Fusion.

Now, back to work getting wNOP functional on my 9550.

An ode to the wobble
Upon the shoulders of our forebears,
Barry, gray and wow to name but some,
Through rain, snow and ripple effects --
We shall strive to conquer fusion.

So that every corner may be activated
And as if from the highest summit
We may see the truest vista --
all windows in a single desktop fit Smile

Set
to wobble
Phases on
Stun
Fusion enthuses us to jell

Great Job this is running off of a memory stick and is working great. Also the sound module configured itself perfectly, normally I have to work on it to get it up and running.