Saturday 1 July 2006

XGL on Dell Inspiron 5100 with SUSE 10.1

This documents my attempt to install XGL on my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop using Suse 10.1. I first tested it with the Kororaa Xgl Live CD so I knew that it would work. I had some problems with the login screen (seen this reported elsewhere - but I don't have it with SUSE 10.1) but overall it worked well. The following procedure works for me!
First a bit on hardware:
  • Dell Inspiron 5100
  • Radeon 7500 Mobility with 32 MB Video RAM
  • Using Xorg "radeon" driver with 3d dri enabled
I mainly followed the procedure on Opensuse.org here.

Download the following RPMs from Suse factory i586:
Download the following RPM from Suse factory noarch:
Install the RPMs. I had a dependency issue when I tried this:
  • error: Failed dependencies: libpng12.so.0(PNG12_0) is needed by compiz-cvs_060621-2.i586
  • I used --nodeps and it installed with no apparent side ill effects. There is a libpng12.so.0 in /usr/lib provided from libpng-1.2.8-17 so I am not sure why I got the error.
Make sure that you have enabled 3d acceleration from YaST:
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Activate the desktop effects from the Gnome Control centre:
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It didn't work for me first time because it said 3D acceleration enabled although it was. I saw this:
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When I checked the status with glxinfo I got this so I know it's working:
  • name of display: :0.0
  • display: :0 screen: 0
  • direct rendering: Yes

After a bit of research I found the XGL control applet sometimes does not identify that 3d acceleration is enabled and that if you hold shift and double click on “3D Acceleration: Disabled” then you can force it to on:
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You can now click on “Enable Desktop Effects” and you now have XGL!
The only problems I have are:
  • I occasionally get lines or corrupted pixels on screen. A quick spin of the cube (CTRL+ALT+ARROW) sorts these out quickly.
  • Windows have pink lines around them after restoring from hibernation. I have to restart the X server to sort these out.
  • The display does not handle full screen dvd video very well. Either use a hardware player (!) or turn of desktop effects to be able to play video at any decent speed.