Frames flicker and disappear

This is a quirky one. What happens is opengl programs compile and load ok but the window with the actual gl frame flashes and then hides. If I place the cursor over that area of the desktop the frame flickers. If the frame is in a proper window, the window is there and can be moved but any gl content flickers as it moves and tends to disappear leaving a plain, empty, opague window. Does some driver need updating. I have a very recent Fedora 10 install.
Thanks.

This could be a problem with ATI drivers (in your last thread you told you have an ATI card) and desktop composition.
I have similar problems with my ATI card and the proprietary fglrx driver: opengl windows disapear, including the window borders, but can still be dragged (if you manage to hit the title bar without seeing it), which makes them appear again (at least for a moment).

Try to disable desktop composition (compiz or whatever fedora uses). That “solved” the problem for me.

I’m using Gnome. I disabled the “desktop effects”. That did it. Thanks for that.

No problem.

Despite

… the problem still persists :frowning:

If someone knows how to get fglrx working with aiglx (desktop compositing) and direct rendering opengl apps at the same time, i would be very interested !

Catalyst 9.3 is the first driver that supports flickerless AIGLX & OpenGL at the same time. It’s not perfect, but it works.

The only solution right now is to wait for newer drivers (which will have better support for this) or switch to the GIT version of the open-source drivers that support DRI2 & RDR.

Stephen,
I’ve had a look around for GIT, and only found it either in refernece to Piglit, or at http://cgit.freedesktop.org/ that is just a massive list of apps. Do you mind providing a link to where GIT can be got in particular?
Thanks.

Git is the source control system that is used by the developers of the open-source drivers (Radeon/RadeonHD). The “git version” is jargon that means “bleeding edge”, “unreleased” and “straight from the source control repository”.

Just so this is clear, using the “bleeding edge” driver requires invasive changes to your system: an Xorg upgrade, a kernel upgrade and untested/unstable code. I suggest sticking with vanilla Fedora 10 & Catalyst, unless you are really adventurous and don’t mind a botched system. If you can wait for another month, Fedora 11 will ship with the new drivers anyway.

Still here? :slight_smile: Ok, first, you’ll need to see if your card is supported by the open-source drivers. At this point, there are open-source drivers for Ati cards:

  1. “Radeon”, which supports R100-R500 with 2d/3d/video and R600-R700 with 2d/video only.

  2. “RadeonHD”, which supports R500 with 2d/3d/video and R600-R700 with 2d/video only.

In other words, if you have a Radeon HD2000 or newer card, stick with the closed-source drivers for now.

After that, you’ll have to visit http://www.radeonhd.org/ and http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon and read the documentation for the drivers. The latter link details how you can checkout the git repository and build the new driver.

If this sounds complicated, it is! My advice would be to keep using Catalyst; run OpenGL apps fullscreen (where they should not flicker); possibly turn off compositing for now; and, finally, wait for Fedora 11 to ship with newer drivers.

Last thing: make sure you are using Catalyst 9.3 (released on March), because earlier versions do not support flickerless OpenGL with composition.

Just for the record, I’m runing fglrx version 6.800 (as shipped with ubuntu 9.04 beta for xserver 1.6), which is supposed to be an even more recent release (named catalyst 9.4 pre-release by Linux Magazin) than catalyst 9.3 (which version reads 6.593).

But opengl apps don’t work with desktop compositing !

I’ve tried catalyst 9.3, but there is an ABI mismatch with the xserver shipped by ubuntu (which is kind of curious, because the release notes claim the driver should be compatible with xorg 7.4, but that might be as well ubuntu’s beta status mixing things up).

I’m a little lost in all those version numbers (catalyst vs. driver, xorg vs. xserver).

So I will be patient as always an wait for the next official fglrx release :wink:

Unfortunately the Catalyst 9.4 beta shipped with Ubuntu 9.04 is older than the final Catalyst 9.3 release. The 9.4 beta does not support OpenGL w/ compositing - you’ll have to wait for the 9.4 final, which will ship this month.

On the other hand, the 9.3 release is not compatible with XServer 1.6 used in Ubuntu 9.04.

In other words: in 2-3 weeks, Catalyst 9.4 will be released and everything should work fine :slight_smile:

I installed my ATI driver from AMD’s web page only a few days ago. Checking there now it still shows 9.2 as the current latest driver, effective 2/20/2009, that is what I suppose I have. How can I check which Catalyst driver I have for sure?

BTW, as per this howto, http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=155503 I did update my kernel but, only because I was told to!

At some point my system failed to, you know, put anything on screen, that is when I had to Restore and run ati-config back to defaults as well as making some seemingly useful changes to the config file itself. Now that my screen works and I can compile and run opengl programs, I am quite happy. But anyway, how to check the driver version?

This topic was automatically closed 183 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.