# Installation problem of AMD Radeon GPU drivers on openSUSE-13.2 in Dell Inspiron 14 5447



## kg11sgbg (Nov 18, 2014)

Hello, I had purchased a DELL Inspiron 14 5447 Ultrabook/Laptop from Flipkart ,during Diwali DELLSE offer.
The Ultrabook is functioning perfectly in Windows-8.1(64-bit).

Specs. of this Ultrabook/Laptop can be found here at Flipkart
I had DUAL Booted this machine with openSUSE-13.2(64-bit),and it is running successfully.
BIOS settings is at UEFI.

Problem is arising whenever I am trying to install AMD Radeon drivers for the discrete R7 265M GPU(Mobile version) that is present in this Ultrabook/Laptop. In that case the graphical login is not starting up.
In Windows however no issues ,no problems with AMD Radeon HD GPU drivers + Intel HD4400 drivers. Both are residing and functioning side-by-side without any interference or issues.

But in openSUSE-13.2,there seems to be problem with the 2 chipset's drivers. In openSUSE ,only the Intel HD driver is functioning and O.K.

How do I install AMD Radeon HD driver? Is   it possible to keep both the different chipset's drivers in openSUSE?

Please Help me out Friends.


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## dashing.sujay (Nov 18, 2014)

Dual graphics always has driver issues in Linux. However, in most cases, it picks up the dGPU counterpart which doesn't seem to be your case.


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## sling-shot (Nov 18, 2014)

> In that case the graphical login is not starting up.



Could you give some more information regarding this statement? Can you see a terminal?


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 19, 2014)

sling-shot said:


> Could you give some more information regarding this statement? Can you see a terminal?



Yes,the terminal opens in text "login" mode.
Eventually, I had to boot  openSUSE in rescue mode(graphical login) and had to uninstall the AMD - fglrx  corresponding drivers. Now everything is running as per normal in graphical mode.
But AMD drivers are not present,so image/pic.  clarity has suffered a bit. 
Please guide me to install AMD Radeon HD drivers properly so as to increase the clarity of image under openSUSE-13.2 ,in my DELL Inspiron 14 5447  laptop.


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## $hadow (Nov 19, 2014)

In linux you can always find issue when it comes to dual graphics I am yet to know how to solve the issue so I will wait for others to clarify in about solving the issue.


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 19, 2014)

$hadow said:


> In linux you can always find issue when it comes to dual graphics I am yet to know how to solve the issue so I will wait for others to clarify in about solving the issue.



Yeah,so I am remaining satisfied with Intel GPU and its drivers,despite a discrete AMD R7 265M GPU present.


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## ico (Nov 20, 2014)

Don't use AMD drivers on Linux. Use only Intel. Infact you won't even be playing games in Linux so why do you need AMD. Disable it completely in Linux because otherwise you're wasting battery life unnecessarily.

Create this file /etc/modprobe.d/radeon.conf with the follow contents:

```
blacklist radeon
```

One more thing is, open source AMD drivers are better than Catalyst. I don't recommend anyone to install Catalyst in Linux these days.



kg11sgbg said:


> But AMD drivers are not present,so image/pic.  clarity has suffered a bit.


That bit is only a bit actually. 19.99999 vs 20.00000.

Intel works fine.  My primary OS is Linux and I also have an Intel CPU + AMD GPU laptop.


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 20, 2014)

ico said:


> Don't use AMD drivers on Linux. Use only Intel. Infact you won't even be playing games in Linux so why do you need AMD. Disable it completely in Linux because otherwise you're wasting battery life unnecessarily.Create this file /etc/modprobe.d/radeon.conf with the follow contents:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Great  advice from a Friend. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.Actually I am such a noob and so ordinary in thoughts...I thought that installing AMD HD Radeon  drivers,would enhance my video viewing experience. In fact Intel HD 4400 graphics is well above to accomplish this task.Thanks,again [MENTION=26711]ico[/MENTION],shall definitely follow your instructions to blacklist the AMD radeon.Priority is to save the laptop's battery and increase its life as much as possible.


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## $hadow (Nov 22, 2014)

So looks like one should avoid using AMD and stick to intel on linux


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 22, 2014)

$hadow said:


> So looks like one should avoid using AMD and stick to intel on linux



 Is it that? No,my Friend.
This is an issue with openSUSE only.
No problems with Ubuntu,Mint or Fedora.
What happens if one uses an AMD APU based laptop? In that case,the laptop should run/function with issues in graphics or picture clarity. Isn't it?


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## ico (Nov 22, 2014)

kg11sgbg said:


> Is it that? No,my Friend.
> This is an issue with openSUSE only.
> No problems with Ubuntu,Mint or Fedora.
> What happens if one uses an AMD APU based laptop? In that case,the laptop should run/function with issues in graphics or picture clarity. Isn't it?


By default, the open source driver runs on AMD APU laptops. There are no issues in graphics or picture clarity. Infact, the open source driver is outperforming Catalyst these days in games on Linux.


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 22, 2014)

ico said:


> By default, the open source driver runs on AMD APU laptops. There are no issues in graphics or picture clarity. Infact, the open source driver is outperforming Catalyst these days in games on Linux.



You mean to say the MESA drivers.


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## ico (Nov 22, 2014)

kg11sgbg said:


> You mean to say the MESA drivers.


in simple words, yes.


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## sling-shot (Nov 22, 2014)

I had some time to think over your question again.

Yes it is possible to have different graphics drivers installed simultaneously.

It is possible that your system is getting setup to use the AMD graphics chip but it is not enabled in BIOS. May be the on-board Intel graphics is being made available to the OS by BIOS. Please check in BIOS to see if the discrete graphics is actually enabled. (I have never seen a modern DELL BIOS page. If possible please capture a few photos of the relevant sections of BIOS and post here)

Let us go from there.


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## $hadow (Nov 22, 2014)

kg11sgbg said:


> Is it that? No,my Friend.
> This is an issue with openSUSE only.
> No problems with Ubuntu,Mint or Fedora.
> What happens if one uses an AMD APU based laptop? In that case,the laptop should run/function with issues in graphics or picture clarity. Isn't it?


Looks like I need to find a amd based laptop and see through this by myself now to understand it better.


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## sling-shot (Nov 23, 2014)

I have one that uses E450. It runs just fine. In fact without the proprietary drivers battery backup goes down. And machine heats up.


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 23, 2014)

sling-shot said:


> I have one that uses E450. It runs just fine. In fact without the proprietary drivers battery backup goes down. And machine heats up.


You mean *mesa* drivers are not enegy friendly/efficient in laptops/notebooks?


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## ico (Nov 23, 2014)

sling-shot said:


> I have one that uses E450. It runs just fine. In fact without the proprietary drivers battery backup goes down. And machine heats up.





kg11sgbg said:


> You mean *mesa* drivers are not enegy friendly/efficient in laptops/notebooks?


This was true till ~2 years back. The open-source drivers now support Dynamic Power Management (DPM) under latest kernels, or basically in any Linux distribution of 2014. They're energy friendly and efficient now.

If by any chance DPM is not turned on for your chip, enable it by adding *radeon.dpm=1* in the kernel boot line in *grub.cfg*.


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## prudhivisekhar (Nov 23, 2014)

I followed the "Building the rpm yourself" steps in the below link.
*en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 23, 2014)

prudhivisekhar said:


> I followed the "Building the rpm yourself" steps in the below link.
> *en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx



Sebastian's link. Did it work for you?


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## sling-shot (Nov 24, 2014)

ico said:


> This was true till ~2 years back. The open-source drivers now support Dynamic Power Management (DPM) under latest kernels, or basically in any Linux distribution of 2014. They're energy friendly and efficient now.
> 
> If by any chance DPM is not turned on for your chip, enable it by adding *radeon.dpm=1* in the kernel boot line in *grub.cfg*.



Thank you for that info. I never knew that. Got to read some more about that.

--------------

I understand that the driver itself is called radeon or ati while MESA is the underlying architecture/support libraries. Is that correct?


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## ico (Nov 24, 2014)

^ yeah, MESA is the open-souce OpenGL library. It is being used by a lot of open source drivers. Even Intel's official driver is using it. So, there is no such useless thing as "reduced video quality, colour reproduction". These are not the things to worry about imo.

The driver is called radeon for HD 2000 to HD 6000 cards. It is called radeonsi for HD 7000 and Rx cards.

xf86-video-ati is the wrapper for both drivers. Contains them both.


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