I just got a laptop and I am trying to get my ATI Radeon 7500 Mobel 32meg card to work. I installed mesa relizing only later that mesa was the wrong thing to put on. So I did make uninstall and then I installed dri. But when I goto start Quake III or any other OGL program it says im using a mesa driver. How can I get the DRI driver to work?
I just uninstalled mesa and DRI then reinstalled the redhat mesa rpms. OGL now works but I cannt compile my OGL apps. I get these two errors glActiveTextureARB' undeclared (first use this function) andglClientActiveTextureARB’ undeclared (first use this function). It compiles fine on my desktop with nvidia drivers and OGL 1.4.
The hole reason why I did this was to get better FPS in OGL apps. I currently only get about 25 FPS while on my nvidia geforce II 32meg I get 100 FPS. Does anyone know how to speed up my ATI card?
You need to install the ATI Linux drivers which provide you with a version of libGL.so that uses hardware acceleration. Mesa only does software rendering, hence the slowness.
As for glActiveTextureARB() not being declared, I’m running into similar issues with the calls to load fragment programs (glGenProgramsARB, glBindProgramARB, glProgramStringARB, and glGetProgramivARB).
The problem with ATI’s drivers is that they don’t provide the header files for compiling. So you have to install Mesa first to get the headers, then copy ATI’s libGL.so over top of the Mesa version to get hardware acceleration.
That’ll get you part way, but depending on the version of Mesa you installed, you may or may not get all the OpenGL extensions and functions you need defined in the header files.
I tried declaring the OpenGL functions I needed which aren’t in the Mesa headers as “extern” so that at least it would get to the linking stage. However, I’m still running into problems when linking. I’ve checked ATI’s libGL.so using ‘nm -D’ to get a list of the symbols and I can see the functions I need in it, so now I’m not sure what to do.
I’m going to try using glXGetProcAddress() to get a pointer to the functions and see if that helps, but if anyone knows offhand how to use the functions I mentioned, please let me know.
btw, I’m back. 
My Linux reinstall was a bit painful (I used a “testing” version of the Debian installer CD so that I could get the sid release), but my system is so much smoother now and about half the size it was before with all the cruft I had build up.
oh, and proper font smoothing in X makes so much difference on an LCD display…
I have a Radeon 7500 under RedHat 9.0, works ok for me.
Only wish ATI did some back support for the linux drivers, they currently have made Linux drivers for the I think it’s Radeon 8000 and up that can be downloaded from their site.
Originally posted by laptop_user:
I just got a laptop and I am trying to get my ATI Radeon 7500 Mobel 32meg card to work. I installed mesa relizing only later that mesa was the wrong thing to put on. So I did make uninstall and then I installed dri. But when I goto start Quake III or any other OGL program it says im using a mesa driver. How can I get the DRI driver to work?
oops, sorry, just noticed that ATI’s drivers only go back to the 8000.
I guess the default Radeon support in that latest version of X ( http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/radeon.4.html ) isn’t all that good?
Unless you are using a proprietary version of the OpenGL drivers, then I believe that all other versions are based off of Mesa (even the ones which use DRI instead of software rendering). At least, the package is called xlibmesa on my Debian Linux system, if that’s any indication.
Well thats the reason I put DRI on. ATI links to them for drivers. Arnt they hardware accelorator drivers from DRI? DRI says it puts all the OGL stuff you need on for you. I guess the red hat version of mesa isnt the latest, or its something only on nvidia cards.
Originally posted by luxo:
Unless you are using a proprietary version of the OpenGL drivers, then I believe that all other versions are based off of Mesa (even the ones which use DRI instead of software rendering). At least, the package is called xlibmesa on my Debian Linux system, if that’s any indication.
All DRI (http://dri.sf.net) drivers (that come with XFree86) use Mesa.
ATI’s binary only drivers use DRI to communicate with the hw, but not Mesa.
Nvidia’s binary only drivers don’t use either DRI or Mesa.
[This message has been edited by nrg (edited 08-04-2003).]
is it generally recommendable to buy a laptop with a radeon mobility chip when you want to write OpenGL apps with linux? for example, a radeon 9000 mobility? or do you better buy one with a mobile gf?
Originally posted by JanHH:
is it generally recommendable to buy a laptop with a radeon mobility chip when you want to write OpenGL apps with linux? for example, a radeon 9000 mobility? or do you better buy one with a mobile gf?
I can’t tell you about the ATI, as I don’t currently have one, but I can tell you that the NVidia laptop series has performed very well for me, and it’s my understanding that the NV drivers are much more solid than the ATI. – having said that, it seems that ATI is catching up, I’ve seen some impressive demos of their new drivers boasting OpenGL 1.5, on their fireGL series.
I believe that the NV laptops are a better choice right now, but ATI’s drivers are catching up – it’s hard to predict when though.
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