On 06/05/07, Phil Meyer <pmeyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The radeon driver is from Xorg and does support AIGLX. The fglrx driver is from ATI and does NOT support AIGLX yet. The radeon driver does NOT support the X1NNN (X1400 in your and my case) video cards.
Ah, understood now. I'm sorry I'm so dense: this is a lot of similar-sounding acronyms in English for one day! So with an X1400 card one cannot run Beryl nor GoogleEarth in Linux at this time.
> B) There are different graphics environments, call X servers: Xorg, > XGL and X11. Fedora uses Xorg 7.2, but the FGLRX drivers are only good > for <= 7.1. Also, despite the fact that it's really Xorg and not X11, > Fedora puts the files in a directory /etc/X11/. Now, I may have to > switch to XGL to use 3D, because only XGL uses OpenGL. The fglrx drivers work fine with 3D environments and 3D games on Fedora. The problem is that ATI does not support the composite extension in their fglrx drivers. The Beryl and Compiz window managers require the Composite extension (AIGLX), OR they require the Novell solution: the XGL server. In both AIGLX and XGL we are talking about the X windows server, not the 3D OpenGl libraries and drivers.
Thank you for being so clear. Redundant information is good for me at this point. Apperently, if I can get the XGL server running, then I can run Beryl? I'll get to google...
> > C) OpenGL is the only graphics library that can do 3D on Linux. The > other 3D graphics library, Direct 3D, runs only on windows. > > So this is how I understand it. To use Beryl, Google Earth, or other > 3D programs, one must use OpenGL, XGL, and the FGLRX driver. The ati fglrx drivers will run all #D applications on Fedora (or any Linux) EXCEPT beryl and compiz, because they lack support for the X windoes composite extension (AIGLX). Xorg wrote AIGLX. Novell wrote XGL. XGL from Novell features a similar mechanism for overlays and transparencies as does AIGLX, but XGL does not require video driver support other than OpenGL. That is why fglrx will work with XGL and not AIGLX, currently.
Thank you. This is getting clearer. How do you keep up with all the letters?!? :)
The only option you have, today, to use Beryl or Compiz today with an ATI X1NNN series video card is to install the ATI fglrx drivers and the Novell XGL X windows server. I have done this on a couple laptops with good success, but it is a pain, and less stable than the commercial nvidia driver with AIGLX, or so it was for me.
I'll be googling that in just a few seconds.
Us ATI X1NNN owners watch every month to see if ATI will finally support the Composite extension.
I'm going to write to them now. I don't like to watch, I like to pressure... Dotan Cohen http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/451/sixpence_none_the_richer.html http://what-is-what.com/what_is/kde.html
