CentOS - Mar 2015 - CentOS 7 on Dell Inspiron with ATI Radeon HD 6320 video card

Hi,

I'm currently installing CentOS 7 on a client's Dell Inspiron laptop. 
Here's the video card:

# lspci | grep -i vga
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. 
[AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6320]

Most of the time, I either have to deal with Intel or NVidia graphic 
chipsets. As far as I understand, I can choose either the free 'radeon' 
driver or the proprietary 'fglrx' driver with this video card.

I'm not too worried about performance, since this will essentially be a 
laptop for office productivity. On the other hand, I do worry about 
driver stability. I vaguely remember having seen freeze problems with 
these cards.

Which driver should I use for a most stable setup?

Cheers,

Niki

-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques 100% Linux et logiciels libres
7, place de l'?glise - 30730 Montpezat
Web  : http://www.microlinux.fr
Mail : info at microlinux.fr
T?l. : 04 66 63 10 32

On 03/15/2015 05:15 AM, Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently installing CentOS 7 on a client's Dell Inspiron
laptop.
> Here's the video card:
>
> # lspci | grep -i vga
> 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
> [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6320]
>
> Most of the time, I either have to deal with Intel or NVidia graphic
> chipsets. As far as I understand, I can choose either the free
'radeon'
> driver or the proprietary 'fglrx' driver with this video card.
>
> I'm not too worried about performance, since this will essentially be a
> laptop for office productivity. On the other hand, I do worry about
> driver stability. I vaguely remember having seen freeze problems with
> these cards.
>
> Which driver should I use for a most stable setup?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
>
It sort of depends on your usage.  For normal desktop usage, the 
provided Radeon driver seems adequate and stable.  If you have any need 
for "reasonable" 3D performance, fglrx is a better proposition.

Like you I've mostly dealt with nVidia or Intel video.  I had some 
painful initial issues with the fglrx driver, but once I became more 
accustomed to the quirks it was quite stable.  The wiki at elrepo was 
helpful.  This was on desktop systems, I know the "portable" chipsets 
used in the laptops are a bit different.

-- 
Jay Leafey - jay.leafey at mindless.com
Memphis, TN

Le 15/03/2015 20:09, Jay Leafey a ?crit :
> Like you I've mostly dealt with nVidia or Intel video.  I had some
> painful initial issues with the fglrx driver, but once I became more
> accustomed to the quirks it was quite stable.  The wiki at elrepo was
> helpful.  This was on desktop systems, I know the "portable"
chipsets
> used in the laptops are a bit different.
I've experimented a bit with both, and went with the free radeon driver, 
which seems stable.

On a side note, the laptop gave me some headaches with the Broadcom 
BCM4313 wireless driver. After some research in the CentOS wiki and a 
page on ELrepo, I managed to configure it. I took some notes here:

https://kikinovak.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/configurer-une-carte-wifi-broadcom-bcm4313-sous-centos-7/

Cheers,

Niki

-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques 100% Linux et logiciels libres
7, place de l'?glise - 30730 Montpezat
Web  : http://www.microlinux.fr
Mail : info at microlinux.fr
T?l. : 04 66 63 10 32