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Making G3s and Radeon graphics great again
- Thread starter juancarlosonetti
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Press Tab. You will see a list of bootable kernels under labels you gave them. Just type those in and you're on your way.
You can select the new kernel at the yaboot prompt by typing the text you put under "Label=" in the yaboot.conf file. You can press tab at the prompt to see all the available options. The first option specified in the yaboot.conf file is always the default one.
This means we have a problem with the /etc/apt/preferences.d/pin.pref file. You are running Sid, right? It works okay on my computer, so let's try some things to see what is wrong here. Please open the file with nano. Is there a blank line at the end of the file?
Also, please send the output of "ls -lh /etc/apt/preferences.d".
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[doublepost=1564680025][/doublepost]@sparty411, you might also want to try this version:
I booted your new kernel, and the screen no longer flickers!
I figured I must have made an error while typing everything out by hand. I said **** it, and just copied your pin.pref from another machine. All is good now! Gonna install a DE, and check it out
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Code:
Package: *
Pin: release unstable
Pin-Priority: 900
Package: *
Pin: release wheezy
Pin-Priority: 100
package: *xorg*
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: libaudit*
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: libfs6
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: libglu1-mesa
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: libmtdev1
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: libpciaccess0
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: libxkbfile1
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: multiarch-support
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: x11*
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: xfonts*
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: xinit
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1
package: xserver*
pin: version *
pin-priority: -1I figured I must have made an error while typing everything out by hand. I said **** it, and just copied your pin.pref from another machine. All is good now! Gonna install a DE, and check it out
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Thanks @z970mp !
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That's a nice idea. I might do that once I have settled on a good-looking window manager.@juancarlosonetti any chance you're gonna take a video of it in action? I think it'd be pretty astonishing seeing an old iBook G3 on one of the latest linux distro with fully working graphics
I booted your new kernel, and the screen no longer flickers!
I figured I must have made an error while typing everything out by hand. I said **** it, and just copied your pin.pref from another machine. All is good now! Gonna install a DE, and check it out
7:20
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Okay, now that my DE is installed, I'm getting flickering every 15 seconds or so, and lightdm doesn't seem to work, either.
Lightdm is very buggy on PowerPC and I remember reading lots of people saying that it has lots of graphical glitches. Have you tried avoiding lightdm and just starting the DE with the "startx" command? It's a long shot, but it might work.
What could also have happened is that the DE pulled some dependencies that need KMS during installation. May I ask what DE you installed?
On my end, fvwm works well and without flickering, and it has almost no dependencies. That's what makes me think this might be the problem. I'm posting this from Arctic Fox.
Also, please copy the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log if you can. It might be useful to know what xorg is doing.
You were right about lightdm, as removing it seems to have fixed the flickering problem. I have XFCE installed, and it seems to be working fine now. Would you still like me to dump Xorg.0.log?
Glad that it worked. Don't worry, I just wanted to take a look at the log file to see if Xorg was indeed loading the Radeon driver, and to see if there was anything weird running in the background. If it works, we don't need to take a look at it anymore
Fug. Uninstalling XFCE, and then proceeding to install LXDM with LXDE broke GPU acceleration.
You didn't need to uninstall Xfce...
Well folks, it seems we have some problems here.
But that's OK, because we're only just getting started.
I’m still learning how to use LinuxYou didn't need to uninstall Xfce...
Well folks, it seems we have some problems here.
But that's OK, because we're only just getting started.
I broke GPU acceleration AGAIN on a new install when I installed Fluxbox. Lol.
Added a simple tutorial to make audio work after waking from suspend.
juancarlosonetti, this made my week. Thank you.
I know it's too much to ask for but will it be possible to image your perfect install to be able to clone it onto our Macs without manual step through?
Just like https://fienixppc.blogspot.com did it for PPC64.
I know it's too much to ask for but will it be possible to image your perfect install to be able to clone it onto our Macs without manual step through?
Just like https://fienixppc.blogspot.com did it for PPC64.
Sparty, are you using a login manager? In theory, and as far as I know, everything is working correctly. The Radeon driver is loaded by Xorg, and you have pinned all the necessary packages. But I have the feeling that login managers (LightDM, etc.) can **** things up.
Have you tried starting your graphical environment with "startx" from a tty?
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While doing something like an installation iso would take an enormous amount of time, after rereading the guide, I think that it would be relatively easy to automate the process with a simple script. With that script, it would be possible for someone to install Sid, run a script, and let the system modify all the necessary things. I might do something like this.
You were right about compositing making matters worse, as fluxbox seems to work fine, started from slim login manager, as well at a startx from the CLI.
Apparently everything is working the way it should be, but I’m just surprised how poorly it performs. It seems to me that 3D acceleration shouldn’t even be possible without a Xorg.conf file set up, correct? Even then, it still wouldn’t be possible, because there is no xserver-xorg-video-ati package available for ppc 32 bit. The current Radeon driver only supports the 9600 and up, to my knowledge.
Does your iBook have the mobility Radeon 7500 chip? If so, I don’t understand how you have working 3D acceleration, and I don’t. I think we both have the same machine (A1005).
I have the Radeon 7500 indeed and, to be honest, I actually don't know if 3D acceleration is working on this machine. I don't use a compositor, and I use very lightweight apps, so I might not be noticing some issues. Arctic Fox is the only app I have seen lagging badly, but I have always supposed it was because the CPU can't cope with heavy websites. Spiderweb works like a breeze, though.
The xserver-xorg-video-ati package is indeed available for PowerPC. It is installed in this guide when you install the metapackage xserver-xorg-video-all. If you take a look at your installed packages, it should be there:
Code:
$ apt list -a xserver-xorg-video-allI have seen people in some forums toying with the xorg.conf file, and claiming they got good results with it. I will do a bit more research on this.
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Spiderweb is tremendously faster for me as well. Is it possible that AF is only using frame buffer mode for some reason?
I remember having success with Xorg.conf on my PB A1138 on Ubuntu 10.04. Setting up a Xorg.conf enabled 3D acceleration for me, in that instance. I remember trying to replicate the setup on my iBook, but it did not work.
Have you tried enabling/disabling hardware acceleration in AF? Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced. It should be enabled by default. Try disabling it and restart the browser and see if that helps. It's worth a shot. Curious why SW responds better on a G3 as AF is slimmer and lighter weight so it should be opposite. On my G4 AF is noticeably faster than SW. On my G5 i can't really tell the difference.
Cheers
Cheers
Hi all,
To get 3D working you need to get the RADEON firmware files and put them in the correct
folder to get the driver to read it. I found them in debian firmware-linux-nonfree
package.
I'm using a G4 with mobility 9700 64Mb VRAM with adelie linux 1.0 beta 1 which uses the 4.14 kernel and
graphics are smooth with full acceleration no fbdev driver. The only problem is that this breaks sleep.
Take a look at this link in the Graphics topic
http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com/2012/03/installing-debian-linux-on-ppc-part-iv.html#graphics
Best regards,
voidRunner
To get 3D working you need to get the RADEON firmware files and put them in the correct
folder to get the driver to read it. I found them in debian firmware-linux-nonfree
package.
I'm using a G4 with mobility 9700 64Mb VRAM with adelie linux 1.0 beta 1 which uses the 4.14 kernel and
graphics are smooth with full acceleration no fbdev driver. The only problem is that this breaks sleep.
Take a look at this link in the Graphics topic
http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com/2012/03/installing-debian-linux-on-ppc-part-iv.html#graphics
Best regards,
voidRunner
An update:
After disabling hardware acceleration in Arctic Fox, as advised by @wicknix, there's definitely a slight, but noticeable improvement. Spiderweb is still the browser with the fastest response and it has almost no input lag. But Arctic Fox is usable now.
On the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, 3D acceleration is disabled. I can confirm this. Moving the cursor or scrolling increases the CPU load, and "
LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo | grep render" returns "OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe [...]", which seems to be a software rasterizer.
Enabling KMS on this kernel during boot time with the "
Linux video=radeonfb: off" and "radeon.modeset=1" options enables 3D acceleration (unbelievable), but it makes the desktop get psychedelic colors (not the content of the apps, which remains "normal"), and it also makes Xorg flicker and freeze randomly. I thought that maybe this kernel would work well with KMS, but it doesn't. KMS is just very ****ing broken.
There has to be a way to enable 3D acceleration without KMS, I just don't know it yet.
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Hi juancarlosonetti,
Don't forget because it's very important for stability
radeon.agpmode=-1
About the weird colours there is a patch for Xorg that fixes it but it's not included
in the builds. In my case I'm using lxqt with openbox and except for some apps
everything looks ok. ( lightdm displays the wrong colours but you can replace it with another
login manager, I use slim ).
Best regards,
voidRunner
Don't forget because it's very important for stability
radeon.agpmode=-1
About the weird colours there is a patch for Xorg that fixes it but it's not included
in the builds. In my case I'm using lxqt with openbox and except for some apps
everything looks ok. ( lightdm displays the wrong colours but you can replace it with another
login manager, I use slim ).
Best regards,
voidRunner