Arch Linux

gwaar

Member

From: Chicago

Registered: 2011-02-11

Posts: 21

Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

Hello all, as this is my first post; I've recently been getting a newly acquired, but fairly old laptop (a Dell latitude d600) set up with arch linux, and have been going through all sorts of fun problems. I've been enjoying arch, and the very strange new experience of ratpoison, and the feeling of getting to work out so many problems with old hardware. One I'm pretty sure I don't quite have the expertise for however, is my video card.
   As it is right now, for my card Radeon Mobility 9000 - rv250, I've installed the xf86-video-ati drivers. However, I'd like to have the proprietary drivers installed (I'll admit, mainly for playing minecraft), and after reading through the wiki, it seems the proprietary drivers no longer support my chipset. There seem to be packages in the AUR, namely catalyst-old, that may serve my purposes, but installing them has proved to be a bit of a headache. Also it's 4:30am here, and I'm just about done searching around for fixes. I assume it can be done, but I've so far been lacking in google-fu prowess/technical ability. Excuse me if I've missed something.

Thanks guys.

Army

Member

Registered: 2007-12-07

Posts: 1,784

Re: Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

Afaik the proprietary drivers don't support those old cards anymore, they consider the open source drivers the "official" ones. You could of course install older versions of the driver, but trust me, you don't want to do that, they are 1. crap and 2. they don't support the most recent version of xorg, so you won't be happy with them no matter what you do.

flamelab

Member

From: Athens, Hellas (Greece)

Registered: 2007-12-26

Posts: 2,160

Re: Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

Only opensource driver for that card or an old Distro (Ubuntu 7.10 for example)

Cdh

Member

Registered: 2009-02-03

Posts: 1,098

Re: Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

Old catalyst drivers don't run on new xorg. Probably new kernel will also not work.

---

฿ 18PRsqbZCrwPUrVnJe1BZvza7bwSDbpxZz

v43

Member

Registered: 2011-02-03

Posts: 140

Re: Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

no, kms should work. i'm using kms with a mobility radeon m6 (it should be some kind of a r100 chipset, the first radeon ever). though i'm thinking of switching back to the normal open driver for better configuration and tv-out support.
good luck!

Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

A mobility 9000 will have some major problems with minecraft even if you did manage to get catalyst working.

---

Evil #archlinux@libera.chat channel op and general support dude.
. files on github, Screenshots, Random pics and the rest

gwaar

Member

From: Chicago

Registered: 2011-02-11

Posts: 21

Re: Proprietary ati drivers for an old computer

Well, I suppose I'll just have to deal with not playing minecraft on what is ostensibly a work computer anyway. A shame, to be certain, but I'm not about to downgrade everything just to get an incredibly old card working ~well. Thanks for the quick replies everyone though.