Ubuntu On Sony Vaio FW Series

Does anybody knows how to detect second display before Xorg or GDM loads? I’m always moving between home with second display (through hdmi) and another places with just my laptop screen

Why am I asking. Ok I can enable second display in Catalyst Control Center (CCC), but for applying changes I need to re-login. Next I need to enable Xinerama and re-login again. Now I have two working displays. Next I move somewhere without additional display, boot my laptop. It boots to login screen with wrong resolution (1280), I login, disable Xinerama, re-login, disable second display, change resolution back (without re-login). That’s too m uch moves to enable/disable second display. Oh I forgot to mention, it’s all about FGLRX of course. XrandR does not work with Xinerama enabled. I guess radeonhd should work ok, but I need performance.

Here is what I want. Just before login screen appears system should check if second display connected and load appropriate configuration for Xorg.

I know how to detect it after GDM loads Xorg, and I’ll post a solution soon when I test it. But I want a better way out.

Stay tuned.

I’m thinking on updating this module with another brightness control which does not require DSDT patching.

It’s based on changing hardware registers on Ati card and work with radeonhd and fglrx drivers only. Worth it or not, what do you think guys?

It’s possibly would not work with power manager, only with fn keys and maybe without onscreen osd

If someone have laptop with fullhd screen, I would like to test this method with you, because you have another Ati card.

Tested HDMI output with plasma today. Works great, but Xorg needs to be restarted every time you want to connect a tv with fglrx.

UPD: Sound trough HDMI works only with fglrx or radeonhd driver.

2 days ago was released new ATI Catalyst™ 8.12. Well I’m not so fast about news =) Let’s test it.

ATI Catalyst 8.11 is out. Just installed it and testing.

I guess I’ve found why glxgears have so low fps with fglrx. It’s because of PowerPlay.

Even when laptop is on AC power, it show me only 400+ and fps goes higher when I scroll something in Firefox =) (that’s strange)

I have turned off PowerPlay in Catalist Control Center and it gave me 4k-5k fps.

Another what I’ve found is that cpu is much cooler with fglrx (even with PowerPlay turned off) then with radeonhd. Seems radeonhd eats more cpu. I was thinking it is because of cpufreqd, but was wrong.

So I have updates to 8.10 completly.

Wifi works out of box.

Fglrx installed from Hardware Drivers works. Compiz works with fglrx (but there is still a scrolling lag in Firefox, so I’m not using Combiz because of that).

Audio works (using ALSA everywhere). When you plugin headphones laptop speakers does not turn off.

I can’t make work a radeonhd driver from repos, I guess I need to compile a new one.

Edu mentioned that we can enable brightness control with radeonhd, I’m going to do that after I make radeonhd works. (checked, xbacklight does not work)

Bluetooth works (my switcher not).

My wireless mouse works (well it works anywhere

Undervolting stops working, need update for new kernel. My CPU is cool enough I guess (41C right now).UPD

I have moved back to powernowd from cpufreqd (cpu is hotter with it, maybe someone saw that too?)

I thought there will be new OpenOffice 3, but there is only 2.4, and old Firefox (3.0.3)

P.S. Tried to update another laptop today, but repos speed is too low, maybe it’s overloaded, seems people update their Ubuntu today too =)

P.P.S. I’ll update post if remember something bad =)

UPD: xbacklight does not work.

Following this comment I have updated my Intrepid installation on another partition to beta.

Well I still have no 3D. Fglrx is working in testing mode (square AMD logo with crossed “3D” in bottom right corner with “Testing use only Unsupported hardware” text on it)

Then I have checked xorg logs and found this:

(WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Version Identifier:8.54.3
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Release Identifier: UNSUPPORTED-8.543.2
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Build Date: Oct 10 2008 21:37:39
(WW) This ATI Proprietary Linux Driver does not guarantee support of video driver ABI higher than 2.0
(WW) Video driver ABI version of the X server is 4.1
(--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:1) found
(--) Chipset Supported AMD Graphics Processor (0x95C4) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:1) found

I guess I should test live cd then.

UPD: ok, I have forgot to install linux-headers for newer kernel, now I have logo in the corner without crossed “3D” with the same text. 3D works, compiz works.. but that annoying logo, and I have only 1000-1300 fps in glxgears, it should be faster.

I’m using fglrx driver now and have enabled Compiz. I’m not using smooth scrolling in Firefox but found that default Firefox scrolling is lagging in Compiz. Here is a little solution.

If you have XGL installed (xserver-xgl), go and remove it, it lags even more. Then open your xorg.conf for editing. Alt+F2 and type gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Find this line in device section Driver "fglrx", after this line put new lines:
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

I have other lines too, that can help in video rendering:
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"

Save file and then logout and login back (restart xorg server). That should help.

Yes, I’ve moved to hardy, while fgrlx bug is not fixed.

Installed Hardy, then downloaded fglrx driver from ati.com and installed it too.

If you have xorg-driver-fglrx package installed, you should remove it first.

Now all works like on Intrepid, but with 3D and Compiz =)

I have Intrepid still installed on another partition, so I’ll keep watch that bug.