2.15CE OpenGL question (SOLVED)

[jamesbond]

Hi,

Last night I tried to setup OpenGL on freshly minted 2.15CE.

It didn't work. 3DCC showed that DRI is working, but the FPS is only ~12fps.

The problem is, it used to work in 2.13.

This is the steps I did when I got 2.13 working:
===============================
1) Install xorg DRI package from pupget
2) Install xorg OPENGL package from pupget
3) edit xorg.conf and insert

Code: Select all

load "dri"

to the modules section of xorg.conf

4) Installed 3DCC.pup
5) reboot
6) Test it - and it says DRI is working, and I got FPS around ~50

My card is an ageing Radeon 9100 AGP.

This is the steps I did when I tried to setup 2.15CE:
================================
1) Install xorg DRI drivers with PETget
2) Realised that xorg OPENGL is already part of 2.15CE, so no need to install
3) edit xorg.conf to insert load "dri" line as above
4) realised that 3DCC is part of 2.15CE so no need to install
5) reboot
6) Test it - and it failed miserably. 3DCC says DRI is not working. It refused to even run the test.

After a few more checking, I found out that the main reason is that the libglx.so in /usr/X11R7/lib/xorg/modules/extensions is not there --> (according to the .files in unleashed package, it should be there).

So I tried to be clever and continued with the following:
6) use PET-be-gone to uninstall xorg OPENGL
7) use PETget to re-install xorg OPENGL --- there is an error about missing library (didn't take note which one).
8) reboot
9) test it - this time 3DCC says DRI is working, but I only got FPS around ~12fps

============================

I don't use 3D that much, just that having it working properly gives me a warm cozy feeling that things are okay (because it worked in 2.13).

My only concern is whether this situation will affect gxine movie rendering?

Anyone has similar experience?

[MU]

You alsop can install OpenGL with 3DCC.
It is a dotpup made from files Barry once posted for an Alpha-Version of 2.10 I think.
Or extract one missing file manually, the archive with the full Xorg still is available here:
http://puptrix.org/isos/Puppy-2.10-Alpha/X11R7/

As far as I know this is the same Xorg as in Puppy 215.

Mark

[jamesbond]

Thanks Mark.

That's right - I presume 2.13, 2.14 and 2.15CE all have the same Xorg codebase (didn't see Barry announcing update on his development pages) - so I'm amazed that it didn't work. The funny thing is that 3DCC says DRI is working but the FPS is low. Anyway, I've messed my install and forced to delete pup_save, so I'll start clean and try the 3DCC-way

Only one question - do you recommend the opensource radeon drivers, or the closed source ati fglrx one?

[MU]

DRI is accelleration in general, it is "the base" for everything else.

It is a "Direct Rendering Interface". A library to access enhanced features of your graficscard.
If it works, additional software can use it to take advantage of hardware-accelleration.

But you need the correct additional software for that. If DRI works, your mplayer can use it to play videos faster.
Because mplayer has special libraries to use DRI.

But this does not automatically mean, that also 3D will work.
Because 3D applications like games depend on other additional software like OpenGL.
So if there is trouble wiith your OpenGL, Games run slow, though DRI works, and mplayer runs fine.

3DCC should include all required libraries, if you install them with it (also OpenGL).

Ati:
In most cases, the free radeon drivers are better.
They are more stable, and support Xorg better (like the addon xcompmgr to use shadows and transparency).
The Ati fglrx driver is just needed for very few cases, like the games Doom3/Quake4. These games have some special effects, that the free driver does not offer.
But they crashed my Puppy 2.x in the past, so for those games I still use a Puppy 108 in addition. With that old Kernel, the fglrx drivers run fine.

Mark

[jamesbond]

Thanks for the excellent explanation !

I tried the 3DCC-way today - following step1,2,3 (load DRM, DRI, then OpenGL) - and it works !!!! Thank you !!!!

For curiosity reason, I also tried to do this:
1) use PETget's DRI instead of fetching it from 3DCC
2) use 3DCC OpenGL
I didn't load the DRM because I noticed that it's already in the base system.

And it works also !!!

Conclusion - something is wrong with PETget version of OpenGL .... (or the OpenGL that is included in 2.15CE).

Lesson learnt - I think next time (=when I upgrade to next version) I'll go with 3DCC way. It's included in many puppy derivates for a simple reason - it works, and it's simple to use.