SDL on Radeon

Submitted by linuxopjemac on Sun, 12/06/2009 - 18:16

It seems that running and SDL programs, like Tuxpaint or Frozen Bubble on a Radeon card causes a crash where you are completely logged out of your X-windows session.

This is an ongoing problem, you can track my progress here:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=506666

Work-around

The work-around is currently to use the fbdev driver for Xorg, which makes your 3D graphics unbearably slow, but then you can use 2D programs like Tuxpaint.

I have managed to "solve" the problem by changing my graphics driver to fbdev. This disables hardware acceleration and makes 3D very slow, but at least all the 2D programs work fine then.

If you want to try it, you have to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (after making a backup) so that the "Device" section looks similar to this:

Section "Device" 
        Identifier      "framebuffer" 
        Driver          "fbdev" 
EndSection

Then, under "Screen", you reference it:

Section "Screen" 
        Identifier      "Default Screen" 
        Device          "framebuffer" 
        Monitor         "Generic Monitor" 
        DefaultDepth    24

...

Affects

This problem affects my G4 Mac Mini with a Radeon card, running Fedora 9, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex and Debian Lenny. It does not affect older Ubuntu's or Debian Etch 4.5.