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I installed a ppc port of Ubuntu 10.10 on my rather old eMac (G4, 1.25 GHz). So far i have a good impression so far, but the graphics don't seem to be really supported out of the box although there is a driver preinstalled i guess.

Is there a way i can accelerate my Radeon 9200? When i move a window it has a trace and things get slow when there are other windows running in the background. Besides i can get no fancy but useful effects like dropshadows and transparency. Not very sexy :(

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    you could drop it =)
    – steabert
    Mar 27, 2011 at 18:48
  • im really thinking about trying out linux, but however for now i want to leave that crappy card in my old emac and live without it, because soon i will have a new machine anyway :P Mar 28, 2011 at 19:11
  • but hey, im not a fan of throwing things away. Linux would be a good way of keeping my mac up to date. It would be cool to know a solution for running Ubuntu on it successfully :) Mar 28, 2011 at 19:15

5 Answers 5

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ATI dropped support for that video card years ago, leaving the open source driver as the only option for older ATI hardware. If you really get that bad performance with the default Ubuntu driver, you might want to try the latest xorg (the basis of displaying graphical stuff in Linux, including drivers) from this package repository. The software is not stable though, so there's always the chance it doesn't work at all and gives you a black screen. And I have no idea if they provide packages for PPC, but you can try.

So if you're willing to risk it you can try the driver by typing the following commands in terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Then reboot and hope for the best.

If things go wrong but you still have a somehow usable system, you can revert back to the safe driver with:

sudo ppa-purge xorg-edgers

Good luck!

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  • hm although after a fresh install it was a long process to update all components while using this new repository as an additional resource, i tried it... but finally it wasn't successful because they don't seem to really care about my hardware :( in other words there was no change at all Mar 28, 2011 at 22:28
  • i researched a little bit and heard myths about generating a X11.conf file and tweaking it a little bit, maybe you know more about this than me... Mar 28, 2011 at 22:31
  • xorg-edgers has PPC packages but not all of them.
    – Broam
    Apr 11, 2011 at 16:25
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You can first read these instructions

If you say the "Additional Drivers" list is empty, maybe your card is unsupported? They provide a link to this AMD website where you can check that. If it is supported, you might try installing fglrx in the terminal like so:

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install fglrx

Then the command fglrxinfo tells you if it worked.

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  • i checked out your tip and the instructions you gave, but had bad luck as i found out that there is no ppc version of it. It just seems to be a good solution for standart x86 machines. Mar 28, 2011 at 19:08
  • @Julian Weimer: sorry to hear that. Can you turn off all 3D acceleration so that you have a smooth 2D experience?
    – steabert
    Mar 28, 2011 at 19:14
  • how do i do that? Mar 28, 2011 at 22:45
  • @JulianWeimer: you don't! fglrx doesn't work with this driver.
    – RolandiXor
    Mar 28, 2011 at 23:24
  • I meant: if you have problems with the current driver, you could switch to the vesa driver, but that has no acceleration.
    – steabert
    Mar 29, 2011 at 4:54
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As user13178 says, that card is no longer supported by ATI/AMD. Plus, the ppc ubuntu port is community supported, and you are unlikely to find working drivers. I suggest getting a modern system ;).

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As user13178 says, that card is no longer supported by ATI/AMD. Plus, the ppc ubuntu port is community supported, and you are unlikely to find working drivers. I suggest getting a modern system ;).

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If you find that your display becomes very slow, and you own ATI Radeon, all you need to do is to put this line in the Device section of your xorg.conf:

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

After that, your display should return to the normal speed, and X server will stop burning CPU cycles during such simple tasks like moving windows or switching workspaces.

This is my whole xorg.conf Device section, with some other tuneups which you might find useful (depending on your card):

Section "Device" Identifier "ATI Radeon" Driver "ati" Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" Option "AccelDFS" "true" Option "EnablePageFlip" "true" Option "EnableDepthMoves" "true" EndSection

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