[arch-general] some notes on the radeon gallium driver

[Sven-Hendrik Haase]

 On 06.10.2010 15:05, Stephen E. Baker wrote:
>> My understanding is that r300g is the new default in Mesa 7.9. See
>> http://www.mail-archive.com/mesa-commit@lists.freedesktop.org/msg23390.html
>> . Does this mean that Arch will automatically switch to it on release
>> of Mesa or will extra steps be required?
> As I understand it the PKGBUILD will also have to be altered.  The
> driver will be built by default but not installed to
> "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/" as mentioned by Stafano.  The purpose of
> having both drivers built is so that one could experiment with the
> gallium driver with export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH = ... before executing
> particular opengl programs without switching outright.
>
> I've been doing this for a couple weeks now with the git version of
> just the r300g driver running with Arch's packaged mesa 7.8 and have
> found that it has fixed all the bugs I was having in Neverwinter
> Nights and eduke32 with no new problems besides the occasional
> stuttering when fps drops too low.  I would vote for making it the
> default in Arch with mesa 7.9.
>
I'm seconding this. r300g is working exceptionally well compared to r300
and it is very stable even with lots of 3D stuff and wine games. I'd
definitely want this to be the default in Arch. Perhaps we should file a
bug report. In fact, I will file one if we  can get a few more opinions
on this.

I think it would be a very beneficial idea for Arch users.

-- Sven-Hendrik