SUSE LINUX includes several OpenGL drivers for 3D hardware support. Table 11.4, “Supported 3D Hardware” provides an overview.
Table 11.4. Supported 3D Hardware
OpenGL Driver | Supported Hardware |
---|---|
nVidia | nVidia Chips: all except Riva 128(ZX) |
DRI |
3Dfx Voodoo Banshee, 3Dfx Voodoo-3/4/5, Intel i810/i815/i830M, Intel 845G/852GM/855GM/865G/915, Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550, ATI Rage 128(Pro)/Radeon (up to 9250) |
If you are installing with YaST for the first time, 3D acceleration can be activated during installation, provided YaST detects 3D support. For nVidia graphics chips, the nVidia driver must be installed first. To do this, select the nVidia driver patch in YOU (YaST Online Update). Due to license restrictions, the nVidia driver is not included in the distribution.
If an update is carried out instead of a new installation or a 3Dfx add-on graphics adapter (Voodoo Graphics or Voodoo-2) needs to be set up, the procedure for configuring 3D hardware support is different. This depends on which OpenGL driver is used. Further details are provided in the following section.
The OpenGL drivers nVidia and DRI can be configured easily with SaX2. For nVidia adapters, the nVidia driver must be installed first. Enter the command 3Ddiag to check if the configuration for nVidia or DRI is correct.
For security reasons, only users belonging to the group video
are permitted to access
the 3D hardware. Therefore, make sure that all local users
are members of this group. Otherwise, the slow
software rendering fallback of the OpenGL
driver is used for OpenGL applications. Use the command id to
check whether the current user belongs to the group video
. If this is not the case, use YaST
to add the user to the group.
The diagnosis tool 3Ddiag allows verification of
the 3D configuration in SUSE LINUX. This is a command line tool that must
be started in a terminal.
Enter 3Ddiag -h
to
list possible options for 3Ddiag.
To verify the X.Org configuration, the tool checks if the packages needed for 3D support are installed and if the correct OpenGL library and GLX extension are used. Follow the instructions of 3Ddiag if you receive failed messages. If everything is correct, you only see done messages on the screen.
For testing OpenGL, the program glxgears and games like
tuxracer and armagetron (packages have
the same names) can be useful. If 3D support has been activated, it should
be possible to play these smoothly on a fairly new computer. Without 3D
support, these games would run very slowly (slideshow effect).
Use the glxinfo command to verify that 3D is
active, in which case the output contains a line with direct
rendering: Yes
.
If the OpenGL 3D test results are negative (the games cannot be smoothly played), use 3Ddiag to make sure no errors exist in the configuration (failed messages). If correcting these does not help or if failed messages have not appeared, take a look at the X.Org log files.
Often, you will find the line DRI is disabled
in the
X.Org file /var/log/Xorg.0.log
. The exact
cause can only be discovered by closely examining the log file—a
task requiring some experience.
In such cases, no configuration error exists, because this would have already been detected by 3Ddiag. Consequently, at this point, the only choice is to use the software rendering fallback of the DRI driver, which does not provide 3D hardware support. You should also go without 3D support if you get OpenGL representation errors or instability. Use SaX2 to disable 3D support completely.
Apart from the software rendering fallback
of the
DRI driver, all OpenGL drivers in Linux are in developmental phases and are
therefore considered experimental. The drivers are included in the
distribution because of the high demand for 3D hardware acceleration in
Linux. Considering the experimental status of OpenGL drivers, SUSE cannot
offer any installation support for configuring 3D hardware acceleration or
provide any further assistance with related problems. The basic
configuration of the graphical user interface (X Window System) does not include 3D
hardware acceleration configuration. If you experience problems with 3D
hardware acceleration, it is recommended to disable 3D support
completely.
For information about DRI, refer to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/README.DRI
(xorg-x11-doc
). More
information about nvidia driver installation is found at http://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html.