This document concerns the current state of the XFree86 video driver support for ATI Radeon, FireGL, and Nvidia GeForce and Quadro video hardware which is present in Red Hat rawhide, and the current Fedora Core OS test release. I'm posting this in order to solicit feedback, and also to get more people involved in reporting bugs and also notifying Red Hat and myself of any missing hardware support, etc. for these 2 video drivers. More information on the Fedora Project, and our current Fedora Core test release can be found at: http://fedora.redhat.com Just to be clear, this information does not apply to any previous Red Hat operating systems such as Red Hat Linux 8.0, 7.x, but is exclusive to Fedora Core test 3 and later. Also, this video hardware support will also be released as an update for Red Hat Linux 9 in the near future, as: XFree86-4.3.0-2.90.$RAWHIDE_RELEASE_NUMBER ATI Radeon and FireGL support status: XFree86 4.3.0, which is in Fedora Core test releases and rawhide currently, contains additional patches to support newer ATI Radeon and FireGL video hardware than what the stock XFree86 4.3.0 release supports. This support is a combination of 4 things: 1) Enhancements I've implemented myself voluntarily on weekends, etc. and included, which either have been committed to XFree86 CVS already, or will be in the future hopefully. 2) Code that I have backported from the XFree86 developmental CVS head, either developed by ATI, or by other people who work on the "radeon" driver. 3) Code contributed to me directly by ATI. 4) Code contributed to me directly by other developers. Currently, our customized 4.3.0 "radeon" driver supports almost all ATI Radeon and FireGL hardware. 3D is supported on all video hardware up to and including the Radeon 9000 and 9100, FireGL 8700, 8800, and it may or may not also work on the 9200 hardware (untested). 2D support is present for all hardware including the 9500/9600/9700/9800 series cards also, and the newer ATI FireGL X1/Z1 hardware. There are different variants of these cards out there however, and some cards have different PCI device IDs than others, and so for example, while Radeon 9800 is supported 2D only, it's possible that someone might have a Radeon 9800 card that is unknown to our pcitable, and unknown to the video driver, but which otherwise should/would work ok once the PCI ID is made known to the video driver and pcitable database. About 2 weeks ago I updated the driver with a newer list of PCI IDs sent to me from ATI which was believed to cover all of the existing hardware at the point ATI sent me the files. I tested this on the hardware I personally have available, and everything worked fine, however I don't have one of every single card for every single PCI device ID out there, so I can only vouch for the particular chips I physically have available to test. Since then a number of newer ATI Radeon and FireGL hardware has been released by ATI, such as the 9800Pro XT and SE, 9600 XT/SE, and new FireGL cards. I do not yet have all of this hardware, however some of this hardware might work with the existing driver currently in rawhide, while other cards might still need to have their PCI IDs added before they're functional. This also goes for the Radeon Mobility, FireGL Mobility, and ATI Radeon IGP and Mobility IGP chipsets. Here is a list of all chips that the driver currently supports: ATI Radeon QD (AGP) ATI Radeon QE (AGP) ATI Radeon QF (AGP) ATI Radeon QG (AGP) ATI Radeon VE/7000 QY (AGP) ATI Radeon VE/7000 QZ (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW (AGP) ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 M7 LX (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LZ (AGP) ATI Radeon IGP320 (A3) 4136 ATI Radeon IGP320M (U1) 4336 ATI Radeon IGP330/340/350 (A4) 4137 ATI Radeon IGP330M/340M/350M (U2) 4337 ATI Radeon 7000 IGP (A4+) 4237 ATI Radeon Mobility 7000 IGP 4437 ATI FireGL 8700/8800 QH (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 QI (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 QJ (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 QK (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 QL (AGP) ATI Radeon 9100 QM (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 QN (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 QO (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 Qh (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 Qi (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 Qj (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 Qk (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 Ql (AGP) ATI Radeon 8500 BB (AGP) ATI Radeon 7500 QW (AGP) ATI Radeon 7500 QX (AGP) ATI Radeon 9000 Id (AGP) ATI Radeon 9000 Ie (AGP) ATI Radeon 9000 If (AGP) ATI Radeon 9000 Ig (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Ld (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Le (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Lf (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Lg (AGP) ATI Radeon 9000 IGP (A5) 5834 ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 IGP (U3) 5835 ATI Radeon 9200 5960 (AGP) ATI Radeon 9200 5961 (AGP) ATI Radeon 9200 5962 (AGP) ATI Radeon 9200 5963 (AGP) ATI Radeon 9200 5964 (AGP) ATI Radeon M9+ 5968 (AGP) ATI Radeon M9+ 5969 (AGP) ATI Radeon M9+ 596A (AGP) ATI Radeon M9+ 596B (AGP) ATI Radeon 9500 AD (AGP) ATI Radeon 9500 AE (AGP) ATI Radeon 9500 AF (AGP) ATI FireGL Z1/X1 AG (AGP) ATI Radeon 9700 Pro ND (AGP) ATI Radeon 9700/9500Pro NE (AGP) ATI Radeon 9700 NF (AGP) ATI FireGL X1 NG (AGP) ATI Radeon 9600 AP (AGP) ATI Radeon 9600 Pro AR (AGP) ATI Radeon Mobility M10 NP (AGP) ATI FireGL (R350) AK (AGP) ATI Radeon 9800 NH (AGP) ATI FireGL (R350) NK (AGP) If someone has an ATI Radeon or FireGL card which is not on this list, it is currently not supported by the driver. Run "lspci" and look and see if it lists the card by name, or if it says "unknown" or similar. If lspci doesn't know what the card is, even if it isn't on the above list, please file a bug report in bugzilla, and include full details of the video card, and also manually choose any Radeon video card from the list of hardware in redhat-config-xfree86 and test the card out with X. Report any problems found in your bugzilla bug report. I plan on improving our 4.3.0 radeon driver to support any new cards that come out whenever I have the information I need to do the work, and have some spare weekend-hacker time to do the necessary volunteer work. Currently the XT/SE cards wont work I don't think, however you can probably trick them into working by using the "ChipID" config file directive in the config file to lie to the driver about what card you have. "man XF86Config" documents this option and how to use it. ie: ChipId "0x4150" That line would probably allow a Radeon 9600 SE/XT/whatever to work by faking that it is a "Radeon 9600 AP". You can get the various PCI ID numbers for various supported cards from: /usr/share/hwdata/pcitable So, if your card is not autodetected by our config tool and/or not autodetected by the video driver, please report a bug report or request for enhancement in bugzilla, so that I at least know about the missing hardware support and might be able to add support for it when I have spare time, for future XFree86 4.3.0 update releases. I can't guarantee any kind of speedy resolution of course, but it'd be nice to have a list of various cards in bugzilla that need work, so that when I do have the time to hack on it, I can add them all at once. ;o) Nvidia support status: The "nv" driver in 4.3.0 supports the majority of Nvidia hardware that existed in February 2003, plus it has code to support similar hardware that Nvidia planned on shipping later than that, but which the driver will claim is "unknown Nvidia blah blah" and try to drive it nonethless. The "nv" driver *only* supports CRT displays officially, flat panel display types are not officially supported, but the driver has experimental support which might or might not work depending on the exact brand/make/model/phase of the moon, etc. It is also possible that there are newer Nvidia boards that aren't supported or just don't work at all for one reason or another. User's experiencing problems with the "nv" driver, be they general bugs, or lack of support for their particular card, should also file bug reports in Red Hat bugzilla, however they should also file them in XFree86 bugzilla as Nvidia doesn't release their specifications nor any detailed information on how their hardware works, so adding support for new chips is nowhere near as simple as doing it for the Radeon driver. All Nvidia "nv" driver related bug reports if filed in Red Hat bugzilla, should also be filed at: http://bugs.xfree86.org including complete details of any problems, and having config file and log file attachments. Where possible, I will try to also update the Nvidia "nv" driver to support newer Nvidia hardware as volunteer time permits. NOTE: This is STRICTLY for the Red Hat/XFree86 supplied "nv" driver. DO NOT file bug reports about using the proprietary Nvidia video drivers, as we do not support those drivers at all. Any problems experienced while using the Nvidia proprietary drivers should be reported to Nvidia directly and discussed on their end user web support forums (don't have the URL handy) as this is Nvidia Inc.'s preferred mechanism for handling problems in their drivers. If a user is using both the proprietary and the "nv" driver on their system and having problems with the "nv" driver, before reporting problems, disable the proprietary driver and it's kernel module completely, then do a full system reboot in order to reset the video hardware to it's default power on state, as the different drivers can and do program the Nvidia hardware a bit differently and this can cause the 'nv' driver to fail once the proprietary driver has been used since boot time. Final comments: I must ask politely that people please do NOT email me personally for help configuring their hardware or solving X configuration problems, etc. I generally get 20-50 or more email requests for special help from people when I send an email like this out, and unfortunately, I really truely do not have time to help that many people out individually. Any email based tech support or discussion of any problems should take place on xfree86-list@xxxxxxxxxx, or fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx, or even xfree86@xxxxxxxxxxx, so that numerous developers and other people can possibly assist with a given problem someone is experiencing. Any generic questions about future X support or development should also be directed to one of those mailing lists, or dri-devel on sourceforge, rather than directly to me. Bug reports and RFEs should be filed at: http://bugzilla.redhat.com http://bugs.xfree86.org While this email is rather lengthy, if I've missed anything and someone decides to respond, please respond on the mailing list that you received this email from and do not reply directly to me privately. I'll probably reply to any discussions on our mailing lists that crop up from this mail, but probably ignore all private replies. ;o) Thanks in advance for testing out this new hardware support, and for contributing bug reports and enhancement requests so that we can hopefully end up being able to support the latest video hardware for y'all. ;o) Enjoy. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat _______________________________________________ xfree86-list mailing list xfree86-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/xfree86-list IRC: #xfree86 on irc.redhat.com
