Hi,
I just installed Rocky Linux 8.7 on an old iMac. So far EFI, partitioning, booting and the NIC are managed OK. Next thing on my list is the video card. Here’s what lspci
spews out.
# lspci | grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV630/M76 [Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT/2700]
Unfortunately X won’t start.
Now I vaguely remember having setup these old AMD cards under CentOS 5 using the fglrx
driver. But I haven’t done this for about 15 years or so.
Apparently I’m now supposed to use these old cards with the free radeon
drivers. Only it won’t work.
Any suggestions ?
SWAG:
video=vesa on the grub commandline
swag=Scientific Wild-Assed Guess
2 Likes
Actually, it works now. I just had to generate /etc/X11/xorg.conf
like in the old days and explicitly configure the radeon
driver. Works like a charm now, even with KDE desktop effects enabled (magic lamp, wobbly windows and all).
Sometimes having started out on Slackware 7.1 helps when you have to catch that bear with your bare hands. 
2 Likes
Indeed.
One does not actually need entire config explicitly, just the device section.
Those “bits and pieces” can be as separate /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf
files. For example:
$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-kovacs.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
EndSection
The rest of config comes from defaults.
RPM’s of NVidia’s proprietary driver seem to add:
$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia.conf
Section "OutputClass"
Identifier "nvidia"
MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
Option "PrimaryGPU" "yes"
Option "SLI" "Auto"
Option "BaseMosaic" "on"
EndSection
Section "OutputClass"
Identifier "intel"
MatchDriver "i915"
Driver "modesetting"
EndSection
That looks like conditional: “for NVidia cards do use ‘nvidia’ with options …”
rather than explicit: “we have device …”
I wanted to remap mouse buttons, so I stole the idea:
$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/01-mouse.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Mouse Remap"
MatchIsPointer "true"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "ButtonMapping" "3 2 1 4 5 6 7 2 2"
EndSection
(Could narrow the match to mice that actually have buttons.)
1 Like
Thank you very much for that detailed explanation.