Revised: 7 May 2010

Description

openChrome is a free and Open Source video driver for the VIA/S3G UniChrome, UniChrome Pro and Chrome9 graphics chipsets: CLE266, KM400/KN400/KM400A/P4M800, CN400/PM800/PN800/PM880, K8M800, CN700/VM800/P4M800Pro, CX700, K8M890, P4M890, P4M900/VN896/CN896, VX800, VX855, VX900.

For more information, please visit http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Openchrome/

Ubuntu 8.04 , Debian 5.0 and newer releases

Since Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and Debian 5.0 the openchrome driver is installed by default, provided by the xserver-xorg-video-openchrome package. If this driver works correctly for your needs, there is no need to compile the driver yourself.

The openchrome manual page indicates which options can be used to configure the driver by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf. The xorg.conf manual page explains the structure of this file.

man xorg.conf
man openchrome

Manual Installation

These instructions will help you compile and install the openChrome driver in Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) and up. It should also work on Debian and other Debian-based distributions.

Before you start

openChrome 2D driver compilation

  1. Install needed dependencies

    • Get necessary tools to compile source code:
      sudo apt-get install build-essential
      sudo apt-get install autoconf automake1.9 libtool git xutils xutils-dev
    • Get all the dependency packages needed to build the driver. Run:
      sudo apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
      Recent openChrome versions may require additional packages:
      sudo apt-get install pkg-config xserver-xorg-dev libxext-dev libxv-dev libxvmc-dev
  2. Compile and install the 2D driver

    • Get the openChrome source code from the subversion repository:
      git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/openchrome/xf86-video-openchrome
    • Change into the newly created directory:
      cd xf86-video-openchrome
    • Run autogen.sh with the prefix option so that the driver is installed to the correct directory. You may enable debug options to troubleshoot the driver in case it doesn't work:

      ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --enable-debug --enable-xv-debug
    • Compile openChrome:
      make
    • Install openChrome:
      sudo make install
  3. Test the driver Restart your desktop manager by logging out and back in, or restarting your computer.

  4. If it doesn't work

    If the X Server does not start any more, that is, you have a black screen. Login into safe mode by choosing option during boot. After run and login create/edit xorg.conf file located at /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Then you could use generic vesa driver in order to boot and find another solution for your problem.

    Log into textual console (Ctrl+Alt+F1), open xorg.conf

    sudoedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

    and set Driver to "vesa":

    Section "Device"
            Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
            Driver          "vesa"
    EndSection

3D doesn't always work

The openchrome driver (and previously the via driver) only supports 2D acceleration, and most of the time it will work.

3D acceleration (Direct Rendering Infrastructure or DRI) is provided by a companion driver by the Mesa project and it is normally already installed on your system.

To avoid immediate crash of the X Server, from openChrome revision 749, DRI was disabled by default for Chrome9, thus making 3D applications run in Software Rasterizer mode. This solution helps to prevent system freezing, specially with OpenGL applications, games, screensavers, and Wine (see Launchpad bug #274340). With this solution you won't have 3D acceleration (3D applications will be slow), but your system won't freeze.

Keep in mind that:

VIA proprietary graphics driver for Chrome9

Note from the editor: Help clean up this section. It is not evident what exactly is being installed, or why the instructions ask to use some files for Ubuntu 8.10, and other files for Ubuntu 9.04.

There is a VIA proprietary driver for Chrome9 chipsets that should support most of the features missing with the openChrome driver, like video decoding acceleration and 3D hardware acceleration.

These installing instructions are for Ubuntu 9.04 and Chrome9 graphic series chipsets: CX700M/VX700/CN700/CN896/VN896/VX800/VX855.

1. Install some packages in order to be able to compile a kernel module

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake1.9 libtool linux-headers-generic xorg-dev

The driver can be found at the following website:

http://linux.via.com.tw/support/downloadFiles.action

Choose "OS: Ubuntu 8.10" and "Platform: VX800" and download the "Unified GFX driver Ver 85a-44597 for Ubuntu 8.10".

Install the libGL.so.1.2.via_chrome9 library:

tar -xzvf 5.74.33.85a-44597.tar.gz
cd 5.74.33.85a-44597
sudo ./vinstall

The previous step installs the libGL library for Ubuntu 8.10, and not Ubuntu 9.04; this seems to work to some extent. The other option would be to not install it, but then GL would not be available.

Choose "OS: Ubuntu 9.04" and "Platform: VX800" and download the "Unified 2D/DRM driver source version 86a-50283".

Install the via_chrome9 kernel module and the via xorg driver:

tar -xjvf /root/via-xserver-86a-50283_src.tgz
cd via-xserver-86a-50283_src/DRM/H5DRM_Independent_2.6.27_28
make
sudo make install
sudo depmod -a
cd ../../XServer
chmod a+x autogen.sh
./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install
cd Misc
chmod a+x vinstall_ubuntu
sudo ./vinstall_ubuntu

At this point, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to include the "via" driver in the "Device" section:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "X.org Configured"
        Option         "RandR"  "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
        Driver          "via"
EndSection

Mixing the latest 2D VIA open source driver (v86a) with the previous GFX driver (v85a) will crash your system when starting an OpenGL program that uses textures. So refrain from doing so until VIA comes with an updated version of the GFX driver.

Beta Drivers for Ubuntu 10.04

Supported Chipsets

Installation instructions

Since i had no 3D support with the current kernel, following instructions will install a newer kernel as the source directory in the driver package suggests ("VIA_Chrome9_2.6.33").

You may try installing the driver with the current kernel first.

Problems and solutions

General

Disabling 3D

Ubuntu 8.10

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

OpenChrome (last edited 2014-11-18 02:00:26 by staticline-31-182-66-25)