[gentoo-amd64] kde4, xorg, xf86-video-ati/radeon, and multi-panel display

[Duncan]

New thread, since the topic wandered from what it was on the old one.

Beso <givemesugarr@×××××.com> posted
d257c3560811221559h2762345eq6e13c03bf0e6588@××××××××××.com, excerpted
below, on  Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:59:53 +0000:

> 2008/11/22 Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net>:

>> FWIW, I tried the kde3 krandr-tray applet and it appears to be
>> outdated, only handling randr-1.0 commands.  I suppose kde4 has an
>> updated version with the 1.1 and 1.2 commands.  I do have kde4 merged
>> now, but it's still broken in enough ways I don't use it for everyday
>> yet.
>>
>>
> well, the system-settings one seems to work quite well for me. it's true
> that dual head is a little tricky with kde (most of the time makes
> plasma crash without setting the dual head). also i'm using the 4.2
> development brach (plaudis kdebuild overlay) that seems to be
> a little better in terms of usability and functionality than the portage
> 4.1.3 version.

Yes.  I think their choice of versioning sucked.  For quite some time I 
and others have argued 4.0 should have been 3.8 (developer base and 
technology preview for 4.0), 4.1 should have been 3.9 (public release 
preview for 4.0), and what is 4.2 should finally make the first decent 
4.x full release, what should have been 4.0.

But all that and just how far it's going to deflate KDE's momentum has 
been rehashed and rehashed over and over in the various blogs and 
Internet forums.  Meanwhile, we have the versioning we have.

I've chosen not to try the not-full-releases since I gave up on the betas 
earlier.  Additionally... well let's just put it this way, paludis, no 
way, no how, so that has been another encouragement not to do the KDE SVN 
stuff since the Gentoo/KDE folks started requiring paludis for it.  Thus, 
I'm sticking with 4.1.x since that's what's released.

But with 4.1, once I got the dual panels setup correctly with randr, it 
hasn't been a problem.  It was a problem with earlier 4.x and the merged 
framebuffer, and 4.1 doesn't seem to take well to them changing on it, 
but once I got xorg.conf setup to use randr to layout the dual panels as 
I wanted when it started, 4.1 was able to handle it after that.

But you're right on plasma.  It still isn't working quite right, in 
general.  It's supposed to let one zoom the desktops, and I can sort of 
do that, but once they get zoomed out, getting them to zoom back in 
/reliably/ has been a problem.  Sometimes plasma crashes, sometimes they 
zoom in but only on one panel's display, sometimes they zoom in but get 
stuck half on and half off the display... it's a mess!

Add that to the fact that I haven't seen a working ksysguard panel applet 
or the like for 4.x yet.  (ksysguard works, but I need something I can 
put always on top at the top of the combined display, without anything 
else ending up underneath it... like it works when set as a panel applet 
in kde3.)

Add /that/ to the fact that khotkeys seems to be broken, or at least 
trying to assign anything but default hotkeys to anything fails to work, 
AND that khotkeys is the main way I launch stuff in kde3.

Add /that/ to the fact that most of the fancy new effects require opengl, 
they don't work with composite and etc, the other option, but 
unfortunately they don't disable or otherwise indicate the ones that 
don't work, and opengl is limited to 2048x2048 on the radeon 92xx series 
and I'm running 1920x2400 so opengl doesn't work well, or at all in the 
lower 352 px of display, and kde4 has so far been too broken to seriously 
use.

Hopefully with 4.2 enough of that is fixed to at least be worth working 
around the issues that may remain.

>> So I scripted up a solution using xrandr, put the entries in my kmenu,
>> and can use them to switch resolutions.  But there's still a problem.
>> The origin coordinates portion appears to be broken, so when I
>> downgrade resolution, the viewport is always the upper left portion of
>> the full size version.  There's no mouse panning with randr yet (that's
>> supposed to be added for xorg-server 1.5.3 or possibly later if what I
>> read is correct), and with origin coordinates broken at least on the
>> radeon driver on my hardware, upper left (still stacked at least, but
>> still just upper left) is all I get, and that's not very practical.
>>
> if you could post the script it would be interesting.

I'll post the script in a separate reply...

>> The point being that yes, dual-panel works with the freedomware xf86
>> ati/ radeon driver, at least for my hardware, once it's configured to
>> do so. However, there are some limitations.
>>
> i'll try out to see these days how the fglrx driver works with dual
> head. i've read that it does behave in quite a good manner. also,
> now that it has uvd and basic xvmc included i could also think to go
> back with it. the only problem is xorg compatibility.

As you know I won't even consider the proprietary drivers, here.  I had 
my fill with nVidia, and vowed never again.  Plus, every time xorg adds 
something new, it's the proprietaryware folks that hold it back, by 
months, nearing a year sometimes, from stabilizing.  I /do/ believe KDE 
got it right on that one, not waiting up for nVidia to catch up, simply 
telling folks using the nvidia driver that they'd have a seriously broken 
experience due to their choice of hardware and proprietaryware driver 
that couldn't keep up.

As for ATI/Radeon, at some point the new freedomware drivers should in 
general catch up, now that AMD has opened the specs.  I've been waiting, 
as I'd really like to upgrade this 9200.  Apparently the r5xx chips have 
a 4096x4096 virtual 3D area, and it'll be nice getting dual DVI dual-
link, too, instead of settling for the single single-link DVI and single 
analog that my current 92xx series has.

>> We should probably start a new thread on that if people want to discuss
>> the config and how I got it to work.
>>
> this would be really interesting.

That'll be another post as well.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program
has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." 
Richard Stallman