Am 03.04.2012 13:28, schrieb Nikos Chantziaras:
> On 03/04/12 03:16, Michael Hampicke wrote:
>>> However, now that the firmware loading problem is fixed, my screen still
>>> goes
>>> black on bootup.  But now it's instantaneous instead of 60 seconds
>>> delayed :(
>>>
>>> I'm back to functioning vesa mode if I boot with radeon.memset=0, but
>>> that's
>>> not really my goal...yet :p
>>
>> Last time I reinstalled gentoo, I tried kms too (with my Radeon HD2600
>> card). And I had lots of problems with it - in combination with
>> ati-drivers fglrx module (blank on boot, freeze while starting X,
>> generell crashes and kernel panics, low performence...,...). So I
>> finally decided not to use kms disable everything related to kms. Since
>> then everything is running smoothly. Two weeks ago, I purchased an new
>> video card (Radeon HD7770) and gave kms another shot. And again,
>> everything went down the crapper. So disabled it. I can live without it
>> for the time being. But still, I would be interested in the "why?".
> 
> You cannot use two drivers at once.  Either use the kernel driver (which
> does KMS), or ati-drivers.  You cannot mix drivers.  Not in Linux, and
> not in any other OS I'm aware of.
> 
> 

	Seems like there have been some changes on that subject in time. Keep
in mind, up until a few months ago I was running Windows7 on my
workstation. I'm not new to linux, as I've been using linux on servers
since a very long time, but the whole X stuff is kinda new for me.

In the past I always experimented with linux in dual boot, and I vaguely
recall that there were (or are?) different kinds of video drivers on
linux. You had the drivers provided by the kernel, the drivers of Xorg -
like xf86-video-ati - and third party drivers like ati-drivers fglrx.
And now there's kms too, which I understand is not a driver, but a means
for the kernel to setup the driver itself (resolution, color depth).

So, if I now use the kernels radeon driver, i could use kms, but cannot
use xf86-video-ati or fglrx, if I use xf86-video-ati or fglrx, I cannot
use kms?

It would be great if someone could link me to some reading material on
that subject. Something that explains, the difference between kernel
video drivers, framebuffer console, Xorg video drivers and 3rd party
drivers.