On Mon 13 Mar 2017 at 19:30:32 (-0400), Felix Miata wrote: > Simplest way to use is purge all traces of Intel, proprietary and > AMD/ATI drivers, install xserver-xorg-video-modesetting, then > restart.
When you say get rid of drivers, is that just things like xserver-xorg-video-foo, or do you also mean things like kernel modules? This laptop uses AFAICT the xserver-xorg-video-radeon package (xserver-xorg-video-all is installed) with lines like: (II) LoadModule: "radeon" But long before this, the kernel loads a module called radeon. I think the latter sometimes gives me problems. For example, during the previous kernel, exiting X would often lead to the machine apparently sleeping. The only way of awakening it was pressing the power button momentarily, whereupon it would wake up only to shutdown. Well, at least that avoided fscking. Another oddity is that dmesg always says (both then and now): [drm] Loading R300 Microcode radeon 0000:01:00.0: firmware: failed to load radeon/R300_cp.bin (-2) radeon 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load failed with error -2 radeon 0000:01:00.0: Falling back to user helper [drm:r100_cp_init] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware! radeon 0000:01:00.0: failed initializing CP (-12). radeon 0000:01:00.0: Disabling GPU acceleration However, if I feed it radeon/R300_cp.bin (by installing firmware-linux-nonfree), the display goes blank soon afterwards. lspci -vv gives: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV350/M10 [Mobility Radeon 9600 PRO Turbo] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 005d Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B+ DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 66 (2000ns min), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11 Region 0: Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M] Region 1: I/O ports at 3000 [size=256] Region 2: Memory at d0100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] [virtual] Expansion ROM at d0120000 [disabled] [size=128K] Capabilities: [58] AGP version 2.0 Status: RQ=80 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ ITACoh- GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW+ AGP3- Rate=x1,x2,x4 Command: RQ=32 ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ AGP+ GART64- 64bit- FW- Rate=x4 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-) Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME- Kernel driver in use: radeon Cheers, David.