My hardware is very old: Radeon HD 6290, but still, Linux prides itself in working well with older hardware, and so I expect it to support my card. And it's hardly a weak card, being able to run older versions of Space Engine with acceptable performance.
When the system starts up, it gives the following message:
And on top of that, the backlight is stuck at maximum brightness with no way to change it.[ 4.959302] [drm:radeon_pci_probe [radeon]] *ERROR* radeon kernel modesetting for R600 or later requires firmware installed
radeontool does not work, and /sys/class/backlight/ only has a directory named acpi_video0, and manipulating the files there has no effect.
So I added contib and non-free to my sources.list and installed firmware-amd-graphics.
After restarting the computer, nothing changed - it still tells me it needs the firmware at boot time, and backlight control does not work.
I tried reinstalling firmware-amd-graphics, but still the problem persists.
I tried booting with the nomodeset kernel parameter, but the only thing that changed is the startup message:
It is evident that the firmware-amd-graphics package no longer comes with firmware for a card this old.[18.197827] [drm:radeon_init [radeon]] *ERROR* No UMS support in radeon module!
I tried installing the Catalyst (fglrx) 15.9 drivers from AMD, but the installer tells me it is incompatible with the X Server version and refuses to install:
If anyone has any ideas on where I could find working firmware for my card, your help will be appreciated.error: Detected X Server version 'XServer 1.20.4_64a' is not supported. Supported versions are X.Org 6.9 or later, up to XServer 1.10 (default:v2:x86_64:lib32:XServer 1.20.4_64a:none:4.19.0-5-amd64:)
Installation will not proceed.
Thank you.