the Arch Linux thread

hellknight

BSD init pwns System V
3 years old installation. But it will be reinstalled again this month because I'm getting a new processor and motherboard upgrade. Can't wait to see how Arch performs on Haswell.
 

sharang.d

Youngling
Which DE and Window Manager do you guys use?
I plan to install Arch today/tomorrow. I want to use my existing grub2 as the boot loader so I hope there is an option to NOT install any boot loader from arch during the setup.
Would be keeping my Windows 7 and Linux Mint as well.

No DE. simple text login, and openbox.
Installed openbox.. but meh :p

Anyway, successfully up and running with gnome3 now :)
Sometimes titlebars act weird [show up completely black] so I'm thinking of trying out the proprietary drivers.
eg : *i.imgur.com/JCLk60g.png
Anyone here on AMD HD 7xxx series?
Also, what do I do after this:
Code:
sudo yaourt -S sublime-text

==> Downloading sublime-text PKGBUILD from AUR...
x sublime-text.desktop
x subl
x sublime-text.install
x PKGBUILD
Comment by hongster  (2013-10-09 01:54)
@zancarius Thanks for the suggestion. It works for me, on XFCE.

Comment by graydsl  (2013-11-07 14:06)
@hellerbarde Thank you, Sir! :)

Comment by sg0  (2013-11-20 15:15)
@hellerbarde Thanks a bunch! Works like a charm! (:

Comment by th0th  (2013-12-02 19:34)
@hellerbarde's link looks like broken :( Can someone who already downloaded it re-upload it?

Comment by masolit  (2013-12-12 20:41)
@hellerbarde
link broken :(

sublime-text 2.0.2-1  (Wed Sep 28 23:10:03 IST 2011)
( Unsupported package: Potentially dangerous ! )
==> Edit PKGBUILD ? [Y/n] ("A" to abort)
==> ------------------------------------
==>

Why am I being prompted to edit PKGBUILD and what do I edit in it? Lol
EDIT: ^nvm that. got it working!

Someone gimme /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist please.
Mine's terribad even after doing
Code:
reflector --verbose -l 200 -p http --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
 
Last edited:

skeletor

Chosen of the Omnissiah
I have posted a screenshot just above your post.
Which driver are you using? Proprietary or open source?
Sorry missed the screenshot as I was on mobile. I don't have have a HD 7000/SI card. Only HD 6950. HD 7000 cards use a different driver.

So, RadeonSI open source driver isn't in a good shape really. But it is improving immensely. There is one weird bug in X.org relating to GTK Lines which leads to very slow 2D/GLAMOR performance. 2D in RadeonSI is implemented via a library called GLAMOR. May be I guess, those black boxes are a result of this slowness

One thing I will recommend is update your kernel, mesa, X.org and xf86-video-ati (the whole system) and then add radeon.dpm=1 as the kernel parameter in the grub.cfg file. This will enable dynamic power management with your card allowing it to switch to high frequency/power state which might fix this. Give it a shot.

Also give me the output of:
Code:
glxinfo | grep renderer

Just want to confirm that you're using RadeonSI, not LLVMpipe.
 

sharang.d

Youngling
Sorry missed the screenshot as I was on mobile. I don't have have a HD 7000/SI card. Only HD 6950. HD 7000 cards use a different driver.

So, RadeonSI open source driver isn't in a good shape really. But it is improving immensely. There is one weird bug in X.org relating to GTK Lines which leads to very slow 2D/GLAMOR performance. 2D in RadeonSI is implemented via a library called GLAMOR. May be I guess, those black boxes are a result of this slowness

One thing I will recommend is update your kernel, mesa, X.org and xf86-video-ati (the whole system) and then add radeon.dpm=1 as the kernel parameter in the grub.cfg file. This will enable dynamic power management with your card allowing it to switch to high frequency/power state which might fix this. Give it a shot.
Too late. Already removed mesa :p
Installing the catalyst drivers from Vi0L0's repository.
I was having the exact same problem in Gnome3/Cinnamon Linux MInt too. Xfce4 somehow renders everything perfectly in both arch and mint with the open source driver
Using the proprietary drivers in mint solved my problem so I hope the same happens here too. Of course installing catalyst in arch is a long procedure. Let's see what happens! :D
I'll add the parameter in any case

Also give me the output of:
Code:
glxinfo | grep renderer

Just want to confirm that you're using RadeonSI, not LLVMpipe.
Code:
bash: glxinfo: command not found
Lul. Let this install get over first..

UPDATE:
- Installed proprietary drivers 'catalyst'
- Blacklisted 'Radeon'
- Added 'fglrx'
- Added 'nomodeset' to load line

Now I can't start Gnome 3 anymore :evil:
Xfce4 starts fine but there's terrible lag when I even try to move a vlc window.

What am I supposed to do now?
I heard RadeonSI drivers are decent but I can't find any info regarding how to install them. Help would be appreciated!

Also, when I DO begin installing RadeonSI with your help I should first revert the changes I made, right?
 

skeletor

Chosen of the Omnissiah
Catalyst is only good for Ubuntu and Debian based distributions. It's really good for those these days but not for a distro like Arch. Though I can also tell that Catalyst is working very fine in my friend's AMD APU + dGPU laptop on Arch + GNOME. But I had installed it 1 year back and still the same installation is running without any package updates.

yes, you need to revert the changes you made most importantly nomodeset. Using RadeonSI means simply using xf86-video-ati. :) Also install mesa-demos for utilities like glxinfo, glxgears.
 

sharang.d

Youngling
yes, you need to revert the changes you made most importantly nomodeset. Using RadeonSI means simply using xf86-video-ati. :) Also install mesa-demos for utilities like glxinfo, glxgears.

Lol never knew xf86-video-ati = RadeonSi :p
xf86 is causing problems for me though.. Anyway I'll revert the changes and add the parameter you mentioned. Let's see what happens :)


UPDATE:
OK, I'm back to the default xf86-video-ati and I'm using the radeon.dpm=1 parameter as well.
Xfce4 and Gnome3 are both working now but the problem with Title/Menu bars and sometimes even the whole window rendering improperly still persists.
Can you tell me any other Kernel parameter?

I think it's time to register on Arch forums now..

Also,
Code:
$ glxinfo | grep renderer
    GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_query_renderer, 
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD PITCAIRN
 

krishnandu.sarkar

Simply a DIGITian
Staff member
I had arch linux on vm for years. But now thinking of putting it into mainstream. Bored with updating Ubuntu all the time.

Can you gurus please suggest which video driver should I install? I have HD6770.

Also I will be dualbooting with win 8. Do I need to take care of anything? Secureboot and fastboot needs to be disabled?
 

skeletor

Chosen of the Omnissiah
^ use xf86-video-ati with HD 6770.

Secureboot should be disabled and also whatever that Fastboot or Fast Shut Down for Windows. Both should be disabled.
 

hellknight

BSD init pwns System V
Intel Core i5 4570 arriving tomorrow.. Super excited.. But I'll have to reinstall Arch Linux after three years.. or can I clone the partition, reformat it in GPT format and then transfer the image to the new partition? Will that work?
 

skeletor

Chosen of the Omnissiah
Intel Core i5 4570 arriving tomorrow.. Super excited.. But I'll have to reinstall Arch Linux after three years.. or can I clone the partition, reformat it in GPT format and then transfer the image to the new partition? Will that work?
"Image transfer" won't work as MBR and GPT partitions have different metadata in the beginning. Using dd to create a dump for a partition will also save that metadata along with it. And then dding it back to a GPT partition means trouble.

gdisk can convert MBR to GPT properly. *wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GUID_Partition_Table#Convert_from_MBR_to_GPT But make sure you have some amount of space left at the end and the beginning. Otherwise it might/will have trouble. Not talking in terms of gigabytes, just a few megabytes. But then you will also need an EFI partition. I'll suggest keeping the last 250 MB on your disk empty. You can fit in the EFI partition later there.

But then few UEFI firmwares prefer having the first partition of the disc as EFI partition. So, Resize the first partition and have 250 MB space before it and also resize the last one to have 5 MB space after it. Both needed. This should be done before converting.

Also when you make the EFI partition, it should be FAT32.

Or you can go the noob way. Create tarballs of each partition. Then extract them after freshly partitioning.

Anyway do take back up before doing anything.
 

skeletor

Chosen of the Omnissiah
This link also says the same thing - 11.10 - How can I change/convert a Ubuntu MBR drive to a GPT, and make Ubuntu boot from EFI? - Ask Ubuntu
 

skeletor

Chosen of the Omnissiah
@sharang.d

There has been a new release of xf86-video-ati. Update your system and tell whether your problem is fixed or not. :)
 

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
Why use an abstraction layer when you can port a game to opengl? An abstraction layer won't give good performance.
 
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