Hi Michael,

Note that the Radeon driver is not in the non-free section of the
> Debian archive but there is almost no hardware on which it would work
> without a non-free firmware blob and non-free BIOS blob.


For the non-free firmware blob, I know you mean linux-firmware-nonfree, but
what do you mean by "non-free BIOS blob"?

And sometimes the vesa driver works but the non-free Radeon driver
> shows a black screen.


Debian live supports hardcoding certain cards to certain drivers via
putting files in /usr/share/live/config/xserver-xorg/ (which are used by
the 1150-xserver-xorg script in live-config).  The prop nvidia drivers come
with lists of pci id's they support (which are used by 1150-xserver-xorg),
but there us no such list for fglrx/radeon.  Does anyone maintain a list of
when to use vesa or radeon instead of fglrx for ATI cards?

Thanks,
Corey



On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 6:07 AM, Michal Suchanek <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 31 January 2014 06:44, Daniel Baumann
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 01/31/2014 12:54 AM, Corey Velan wrote:
> >> Is the rationale for using non-free video drivers to get better
> >> performance (resolutions, etc)? Or are there some graphics cards where
> >> the open source drivers simply won't work?
> >
> > both.
> >
> >> When open source drivers don't work, what are the symptoms?  Would the
> screen just remain black
> >> or are there other symptoms?
> >
> > both; depending on the card/the driver, the vesa xorg failback works or
> > does not work.
> >
> > or in other words: it depends and if you want a specific answer you'll
> > need to give specific information (what system built/configured how,
> > which hardware, etc.).
>
> And sometimes the vesa driver works but the non-free Radeon driver
> shows a black screen. This is because the Radeon driver relies on BIOS
> for everything and the BIOS part that is meant to be used by the
> driver is obviously bogus on many boards, especially ones with early
> Radeon IGP chipset.
>
> Note that the Radeon driver is not in the non-free section of the
> Debian archive but there is almost no hardware on which it would work
> without a non-free firmware blob and non-free BIOS blob.
>
> Thanks
>
> Michal
>
>
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Corey Velan
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