How do I install radeon driver? no mouse curser [Solved]

[Stevo]

How was the video when running the Live CD or USB of MX? Did it still have the video problems, or was the open source xorg Radeon driver working well? (It does on my laptop, and you are saying it did with Debian, also)

If that had been working well, I'd concentrate on getting the xorg driver to work...if it had an invisible cursor, maybe there's a magic incantation to add someplace like "make the unseen appear" for that driver...

[Jon_J]

How was the video when running the Live CD or USB of MX? Did it still have the video problems, or was the open source xorg Radeon driver working well? (It does on my laptop, and you are saying it did with Debian, also)

If that had been working well, I'd concentrate on getting the xorg driver to work...if it had an invisible cursor, maybe there's a magic incantation to add someplace like "make the unseen appear" for that driver...

I followed your advice and booted "Live" inxi -Gxx showed that my hardware on my radeon card was loaded.
It showed values in this line instead of "NA"
GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A
lspci -k showed radeon driver was loaded as well.
There is no / etc/X11/Xorg.conf file. I found a way to get my mouse cursor to appear in another linux, "System Rescue CD"
It has an Xorg.conf file. All I needed to do was enable this setting: Option "SWCursor" "true" under Section "Device"
I'll look at my Debian installation and try to find out how it makes the mouse pointer work.

[Jon_J]

I finally got my graphics card working with a mouse!
I booted live MX-14 b2 and reinstalled it. This removed my driver mixups.
As stated in my post above, the drivers included on "Live" worked, but there was no mouse cursor.
The "Fix" was this.
I got the settings manager open and tabbed over to the correct resolution for my monitor. (1280x1024)
This setting also set the correct refresh rate - 60.4 Hz
When I accepted this setting my mouse magically appeared on my desktop. No need for an Xrog.conf.
Funny thing is, before I did this, I exited 'X' to read the text onscreen, and I had a square mouse cursor outside of 'X'
BTW, I'm posting this in MX-14 b2

Thank you Stevo and all of you that have helped me on this,
Jon

[kmathern]

I finally got my graphics card working with a mouse! :happy:
I booted live MX-14 b2 and reinstalled it. This removed my driver mixups.
As stated in my post above, the drivers included on "Live" worked, but there was no mouse cursor.
The "Fix" was this.
I got the settings manager open and tabbed over to the correct resolution for my monitor. (1280x1024)
This setting also set the correct refresh rate - 60.4 Hz
When I accepted this setting my mouse magically appeared on my desktop. No need for an Xrog.conf.
Funny thing is, before I did this, I exited 'X' to read the text onscreen, and I had a square mouse cursor outside of 'X'
BTW, I'm posting this in MX-14 b2 :happy:

Thank you Stevo and all of you that have helped me on this,
Jon

@Jon_J, what does inxi -Gxx report now? Does it still show the N/A's?





note: I was in the process of writing the following post when your latest reply appeared, it looks like you might have things fixed, but I'm going to submit the post anyway.

Looking at the Debian wiki's howto, https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo, it looks like MX14 has all the required driver packages and firmware packages already installed.
It does show something about a creating a minimal xorg.conf here: https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo#Editin ... Fxorg.conf.
I thought that wasn't needed anymore, but you could try it in a MX14 Live session, create the following minimal /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "radeon"
EndSection

Log out of Xfce and log back in, that should restart X.
Run 'inxi -Gxx' again to see if it still shows N/A's in "GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A"

[Jon_J]

Code: Select all

$ inxi -Gxx
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:9498 
           X.Org: 1.12.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1280x1024@60.4hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5 Direct Rendering: Yes

Code: Select all

$ lspci -v | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

kmathern, I'll try your suggestion using "Live" later today and report back here.

Edit: I looked at the Debian wiki page and it appears that the HD 4000 series cards are not included in this list. Mine is a HD 4650
"For Debian Squeeze and later releases, you will need to install proprietary firmware if you have one of the following Radeon-based cards:"

Jon

[Stevo]

It looks like you have the xorg (free as in speech) Radeon driver up and fully functioning now, including 3D acceleration via openGL.

MX ships with the non-free firmware that Debian is talking about, in order to make the hardware work out of the box with the least hassle. Debian usually won't ship the firmware by default, because it violates the Debian Free Software Guidelines. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does make it a bit harder for beginners, because they then have to enable the non-free section of the repository and manually install the 'linux-firmware-nonfree" package.

[kmathern]

Code: Select all

$ inxi -Gxx
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:9498 
           X.Org: 1.12.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1280x1024@60.4hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5 Direct Rendering: Yes

Code: Select all

$ lspci -v | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

kmathern, I'll try your suggestion using "Live" later today and report back here.

Edit: I looked at the Debian wiki page and it appears that the HD 4000 series cards are not included in this list. Mine is a HD 4650
"For Debian Squeeze and later releases, you will need to install proprietary firmware if you have one of the following Radeon-based cards:"

Jon

The codename for the HD 4650 is "RV730", which is listed as supported, and your inxi -Gxx report confirms that.

[Jon_J]

I finally got my graphics card working with a mouse!
I booted live MX-14 b2 and reinstalled it. This removed my driver mixups.
As stated in my post above, the drivers included on "Live" worked, but there was no mouse cursor.
The "Fix" was this.
I got the settings manager open and tabbed over to the correct resolution for my monitor. (1280x1024)
This setting also set the correct refresh rate - 60.4 Hz
When I accepted this setting my mouse magically appeared on my desktop. No need for an Xrog.conf.
Funny thing is, before I did this, I exited 'X' to read the text onscreen, and I had a square mouse cursor outside of 'X'
BTW, I'm posting this in MX-14 b2

Thank you Stevo and all of you that have helped me on this,
Jon

@Jon_J, what does inxi -Gxx report now? Does it still show the N/A's?





note: I was in the process of writing the following post when your latest reply appeared, it looks like you might have things fixed, but I'm going to submit the post anyway.

Looking at the Debian wiki's howto, https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo, it looks like MX14 has all the required driver packages and firmware packages already installed.
It does show something about a creating a minimal xorg.conf here: https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo#Editin ... Fxorg.conf.
I thought that wasn't needed anymore, but you could try it in a MX14 Live session, create the following minimal /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "radeon"
EndSection

Log out of Xfce and log back in, that should restart X.
Run 'inxi -Gxx' again to see if it still shows N/A's in "GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A"

I made the minimal xorg.conf and restarted 'X' The output looks the same as from my installed version. I double checked and made sure xorg.conf is in /etc/X11

Code: Select all

demo@mx1:~
$ inxi -Gxx
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:9498 
           X.Org: 1.12.4 driver: radeon Resolution: 1280x1024@60.4hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5 Direct Rendering: Yes