On 9/22/06, Florian Schmidt <mista.tapas@xxxxxxx> wrote: <SNIP>
So, if you think the kernel has a problem, run your setup without the closed source driver. If the problem can be reproduced -> Great, you found a bug that can be fixed. If it cannot be reproduced -> too bad, it seems your closed source driver might be faulty -> report to the closed source driver author. I hope this clears the issue up a bit.. Regards, Flo
OK. To make you guys happy I rebuilt 2.6.18-rt3 with radeon and DRI support turned on. The kernel did not boot. It hung immediately saying it couldn't find the hard drive. That's the only change I made. Interesting.... NOTE: I'm no programmer. I understand your description above, but I also understand the description of others who say since the interface portion that goes between the kernel and the binary portion compiles OK then it's OK to use the ATI Driver. Clearly there are differing opinions out there and no reason for stupid simpleton me to know who's right and who's wrong. Please excuse my technical ignorance. Note however that there is *no* debate that there are Open Source zealots all over these lists who revel in telling people they are simply *wrong* for using closed source drivers no matter what the reason. Again, there is no way for me to know where anyone comes down on that subject unless they make their person views known. NOTE 2: Back on 2.6.17-rt5 (since it does boot) I see **significantly** less CPU usage with the Open Source Radeon driver than with the ATI driver. (9% vs. 90%) After rebuilding my AMD64 machine with gcc-4.1.1 the CPU usage in MythTV went through the roof. I had wondered if it had anything to do with the ATI driver and was thinking about trying the radeon driver this weekend. It's done now and nice to have it lower again with the radeon driver. I also see lower frame rate from the close source driver but I can live with that. - Mark
