Arch Linux

agibbins

Member

From: London, England

Registered: 2009-12-13

Posts: 5

Website

Dell Studio 1555

Hi all,
First and foremost I'd like to give my greatest thanks to anyone that's ever contributed in any way (code, documentation, support, graphics, happy faces) to Arch, it's a truly amazing distribution.  I come from a Debian Server, Ubuntu Desktop background and am incredibly impressed with the documentation (which my below questions are no doubt going to prove that I've missed something ) and am really pleased with the beautiful bloat free setup I've managed to obtain in a mere 4 hours.  Huge thanks!

Now, onto the minor problems I'm experiencing with my setup which are most likely due to my stupidity rather than an arch/Linux hiccup.
I'm running a Dell Studio 1555 laptop and a "ATI Technologies Inc M92 [Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series]" with the xf86-video-ati driver, I previously tried the atiradeon driver but I had trouble with suspend so scrapped that.

  1) I highly suspect I've missed something here - but I'm unable to get dual monitors working.  I open the Gnome display panel select my screens, turn off the mirroring and it gives me an error about being unable to set the virtual resolution (both monitors are 1920x1080).  Ubuntu completed this automatically so I know its possible, is there a way I can do this without editing my xorg?  Editing my xorg would be a huge pain as its a laptop I travel with a lot - and detaching the dual monitor is something I'd like to be easy to do.

2) My laptops keyboard has an eject button which I thought was tied to the hardware so wouldn't need a driver but it's not working in Arch.  I can eject using the "eject" command as well as using nautilus, "showkey" also doesn't pick it up.  Any idea how I can map it?

3) When I ran Ubuntu on this laptop the brightness keys worked out of the box however to get them to work in Arch I have to turn apic off.  Does anyone have any idea why?  Also, what are the disadvantages I'm going to experience without APIC?  I notice that my battery is reported as lasting 3 hours when it really lasts around 6 - at least it did on Ubuntu, haven't yet tried on Arch for that long, is this related to APIC being off?

4) Also, when I ran Ubuntu compiz worked fine.  However when attempting to run fusion-icon on Arch (by Arch I mean the way I've set it up - not a fault of Arch itself) I get a white screen with the mouse cursor on top and have to Ctrl-C out of it.  I've seen this thread and the response was "If you are using opensource drivers you do not have 3d support for newer ATI cards." - but I'm pretty sure I was using the open source drivers on Ubuntu.  Perhaps I wasn't, in which case are there any disadvantages (other than the obvious - its not open) to switching to the proprietary drivers?  I watch HD but don't game (if that contributes towards a decision in any way).

5) When I plug my external VGA monitor in, it works fine (mirrored - not dual, see above) however the second I plug my laptop into power it starts flickering very slightly, everything goes all shaky.  I didn't notice this in Ubuntu so pretty sure it didn't happen.  Any idea why I could be getting this?  Laptop is fairly close to the monitor however the laptops transformer is fairly far away so I'm not convinced its caused by interference - especially when I didn't get it in Ubuntu and nothing hardware wise has changed since.

Thanks in advance, any pointers are greatly appreciated!

Last edited by agibbins (2009-12-13 15:12:50)

MadTux

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 553

Re: Dell Studio 1555

Since you have an ATI card and use the open source driver, one thing you could check is to configure kernel mode setting according to the ATI wiki:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI … _.28KMS.29

I have been experiencing problems with an ATI card and KMS enabled, so I had to disable it completely (according to the wiki). Since KMS is enabled by default in kernel 2.6.31, you might have to try both enabling and disabling and see if that improves things.

agibbins

Member

From: London, England

Registered: 2009-12-13

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Dell Studio 1555

I've not experienced any issues with my ATI card other than things mentioned above, suspend etc works fine.  I'm running kernel 2.6.31 so I assume I have KMS enabled, do you really suggest I disable it despite most things working correctly?  It's supposed to improve things not damage them?

MadTux

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 553

Re: Dell Studio 1555

Sure did you express problems with your graphics card. Dual monitors not working, Compiz giving a white screen and flickering are graphics problems. However, I am not suggesting anything, I am rather giving you some piece of information you might not be aware of and telling you that I had problems with KMS and ATI cards.

agibbins

Member

From: London, England

Registered: 2009-12-13

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Dell Studio 1555

Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain clearly.  Dual monitors work fine, but I have to manually modify my xorg to set the virtual resolution - Gnome display tool refuses to do this automatically for some reason.
The compiz white screen doesn't appear to be a graphics fault, its like a full screen application thats just white - I can move my mouse over it etc, its not a display glitch or anything.

I'll try removing KMS anyhow, thanks for the suggestion.

MadTux

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 553

Re: Dell Studio 1555

Ok, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding. Now that I understand your problem better I have to admit that KMS is almost certainly no improvement.

agibbins

Member

From: London, England

Registered: 2009-12-13

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Dell Studio 1555

To make things a little clearer.  This is the exact error Gnome Display gives:

The selected configuration for displays could not be applied

requested virtual size does to fit avaliable size:
requested=(3840, 1080), minimum=(320,200), maximum=(1920,1920)

When I submit this:

Both monitors are 1920x1080 and it gave me no option to set a virtual size.

Last edited by agibbins (2009-12-15 14:36:17)