Which one of the drivers is the best one?

[cesarvasc]

Hi, community!
I have installed Debian on my laptop a few weeks ago. It has the GPU card (lspci):

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Thames [Radeon HD 7550M/7570M/7650M]

I have installed the following ATI drivers to work with my AMD/ATI Radeon graphic card:

Code: Select all

aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-ati

Recently, I discovered that backports repo has a very interesting package called firmware-amd-graphics (see https://packages.debian.org/jessie-back ... d-graphics), and the web page says:

(...)This package contains the binary firmware for AMD/ATI graphics chips supported by the radeon, (...)

In this case, can someone please tell what is the correct (and best) driver option to work with my AMD/ATI radeon card? Did I choose the best approach when installing xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-ati? Or do I have to install only the firmware-amd-graphics package (specially when Debian Stretch is out) ?
Regards,
-Cesar

[stevepusser]

You aren't getting full hardware acceleration for your graphics with the free driver without a firmware package. For stock Jessie, the AMD firmware is in firmware-linux-nonfree. If you are going to use a newer kernel from jessie-backports, you will also need a firmware upgrade from there, and the developers decided to split the AMD firmware out into its own separate package.

But...seriously, this is all explained in the Debian wiki: https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo

which should be the first resource you turn to.

[pendrachken]

uhh, Steve, you might want to actually read the wiki page.


A quick scan through sees no mention whatsoever of the split firmware packages that are in backports ( what the OP was asking about ), and furthermore the only place stretch is even mentioned is when talking about hybrid graphics.
Even where the wiki mentions how the xserver ati package can choose which driver to use is not quite as clear and concise as it could be for a new user... which is pretty much the only people who are going to be heavily using the wiki.

[bw123]

Did I choose the best approach when installing xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-ati? Or do I have to install only the firmware-amd-graphics package (specially when Debian Stretch is out) ?

I'm not sure why you would have to do 'aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-ati' after an install, unless it was a very minimal install. I don't understand your reference to 'when stretch is out' because stretch is "out" now.

So what's the problem?

[GarryRicketson]

bw123 » I don't understand your reference to 'when stretch is out' because stretch is "out" now.

I think the OP means released, Debian Stretch is not yet released , and there fore
is not yet a official Debian distrubtion, it is "testing", and SID,.(Still In Development)


Has Debian Stretch been released ?

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/

Debian “stretch” Release Information

The code name for the next major Debian release after jessie is "stretch".

This release started as a copy of jessie, and is currently in a state called "testing". This means that things should not break as badly as in unstable or experimental distributions, because packages are allowed to enter this distribution only after a certain period of time has passed, and when they don't have any release-critical bugs filed against them.
Please note that security updates for "testing" distribution are not yet managed by the security team. Hence, "testing" does not get security updates in a timely manner. You are encouraged to switch your sources.list entries from testing to jessie for the time being if you need security support.

It is worth taking the time to read all of the above link and not just the piece I quoted,...
On "SID" , which stands for Still in Development, that is what is still being developed or worked on, and is not even released for testing yet,
I have noticed on this forum there do seem to be a lot of users contributing to the myth , saying they are using Debian 9 or Debian Stretch, but neither has really been released, they are TESTING , and will be Debian 9 (Stretch) when released,... Debian Testing is not Debian Stable, the current stable version of Debian is JESSIE (Debian 8.
https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/

Debian “jessie” Release Information

Debian 8.7 was released January 14th, 2017. Debian 8.0 was initially released on April 26th, 2015.

bw123 »So what's the problem?

Well, based on the what the original post says:
and this small part:

Postby cesarvasc » Did I choose the best approach when installing xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-ati?

The OP wants to know if this was the best approach, and from what Steve says
it sounds like some additional firmware might improve it.
If the OP is using Debian Jessie, they should disregard what the wiki says about Debian Testing (soon to be Stretch), it does not apply.
When Debian Stretch is released, and if the OP wants to upgrade to Debian Stretch, it may apply, I am not sure on that , but I would think when they upgrade, if they do , everything should upgrade smoothly, as long as everything
they use is from Debian repositories and backports,...maybe Steve can clarify on that,...
After reading all of the parts in the wiki, related to Debian Jessie, and the additional information that is in the links they have, if the OP still does not understand something, or has questions, of course they need to ask.
Also, if there is any thing the OP is not sure about, definitely ask first, before
trying it,..

[bw123]

Thanks Gary, for the info on releases. One thing I really don't understand, is how a 'beginner' could be using stretch, since TTBOMK the recommended way to get stretch is to install jessie, then alter sources.list and do a dist-upgrade.

? how are all these beginners and newbies getting stretch on their machines, when they have no clue how to even use a command prompt?

[stevepusser]

It isn't difficult to install Stretch right from an ISO. I can sympathize with those with newer machines that have trouble getting them to work correctly with Jessie and turn to Stretch in the hope of having it just work out of the box. If all you have is a wifi connection and the 3.16 kernel doesn't support the wifi hardware, it's a lot tougher to upgrade the kernel via sneakernet.

I was assuming that if the OP found out about the newer Stretch firmware packages, they could do a bit more searching and find out the story of those.

[cesarvasc]

First, I want to say thanks for the replies, stevepusser, pendrachken, bw123 and Garry.

And yes, I actually installed Jessie on my laptop. But I would also like to know what is the "correct" approach when Stretch is released. After reading all the replies, here is what I (not a "Debian-expert-guy") did understand:

ATI/AMD Radeon card + Debian Jessie installed: for getting hardware acceleration, the correctis to install the open xserver-xorg-video-radeon and xserver-xorg-video-ati drivers, BUT I must install the firmware-linux-nonfree as well;

When Stretch is released: I will just have to keep the very same packages above (i.e., xserver-xorg-video-radeon, xserver-xorg-video-ati drivers and firmware-linux-nonfree) with no additions.

And If one day I decide to install and use another kernel from the backports repo: in this case, I will then have to install the firmware-amd-graphics (and keep the other 3 packages installed, right?)

Thanks, again for the help.
Regards,

[stevepusser]

A good resource is packages.debian.org. Looking at the Stretch version of firmware-linux-nonfree: https://packages.debian.org/stretch/fir ... ux-nonfree

we can see that the Debian developers are anticipating that many Jessie users will upgrade in place, and that the new version depends on the the firmware-amd-graphics package and will pull it in automatically. So the advice to install firmware-linux-nonfree will still get the AMD firmware even in Stretch, and also nothing needs to be done if it's already installed before a Jessie to Stretch upgrade.

The same applies if you upgrade the firmware from jessie-backports.