[LAD] (Somewhat OT) Advice needed on distro choice

[Fons Adriaensen]

Hello Ray and Raymond,

Thanks for your responses.

> 2009/10/13 Fons Adriaensen <fons at kokkinizita.net>
> 
> > There's only only problem I've not been able to fix:
> > when using apps that frequently update pixmaps or
> > send Ximages, the mouse pointer gets corrupted with
> > that data. It happens with Ardour, jkmeter, japa,
> > and others. No idea where to start... Driver is
> > the 'ati' module, probably it needs some parameters.
> 

[Ray]
 
> Is this xf86-video-ati? What card is this? In case you missed it:
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#There_are_2_different_open-source_ATI_drivers.2C_xf86-video-ati_and_xf86-video-radeonhd
> 
> Sounds like a bug to me..especially since KMS is enabled by default.
> 
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#AMD.2FAti_cards_and_KernelModeSetting_.28KMS.29

The card is ATI Technologies Inc RV370 [Radeon X300SE],
the driver is the -ati one.

Somehow the problem seems to have solved itself. I've
been using the machine all day, rebooted a few times to
see if that would make a difference, but everyhting just
works... :-)

There's no xorg.conf, and input devices are from hal.
Errors in the log file are:

(EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)

and more insteresting:

(EE) RADEON(0): [dri] RADEONDRIGetVersion failed because of a version mismatch.
[dri] radeon kernel module version is 2.0.0 but version 1.17.0 or newer is needed.
[dri] Disabling DRI.

[Raymond]

> How about running a Linux live CD/DVD on that system with a distro
> that does not display this behavior. Once you find one that works
> correctly, just check the info for what is loaded, running, its Xorg.conf,
> etc. and replicate it to see if the problem goes away.

Seems like an excellent idea in case the problem returns.

Overall I'm *very happy* with ArchLinux so far. Almost
everything I need is installed now, and I'm only at
2.7G disk space used. Next weekend the laptop (IBM R51)
will get the same refreshing treatment.

Ciao,
 
-- 
FA