Success report: Team Fortress 2 Beta on open source Radeon drivers

[cjplooy]

I finally managed to run Team Fortress 2 on my system, without installing proprietary drivers.

My system:
64-bit Linux Mint 13 MATE (corresponding to Ubuntu 12.04)
AMD Radeon R600 video card
(System information by Steam[www.ultimatestunts.nl])

To summarize what I had to do:
* install a package for S3TC texture compression
* compile and install new versions of libdrm2 and Mesa
* run Steam in an environment that sets localization to "C" and uses the newly compiled libraries
I don't know yet how to enable display of the frame rate, but I'd estimate it runs about 10-15FPS on my system.

So I'd say it's not quite ready yet to be run out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 12.04 or Mint 13, but with some "Linux hacking" it can be made to work. Maybe it will install smoother on newer distributions, if they already have a sufficiently new Mesa version.

To kick-start people who have a similar system, I prepared this archive[www.ultimatestunts.nl] which contains my compiled binaries for libdrm2 and Mesa.

If you want more information, please reply.

[cjm571]

If you could throw up a pastebin or some such thing with a more detailed command line process, that would be very helpful.

I'm working on following your process to see if I get some success also, but others may not be experienced enough to follow along without the actual copy-paste CLI stuff.

[Obikawa]

I run a distro based on Ubuntu 12.10, with xorg-edgers PPA. My Radeon HD4890 runs TF2 smoothly here. However, there is a single problem which makes the game not enjoyable - the GUI flickers and gets corrupted and disappears. In my opinion, Valve should take the free radeon driver seriously, as it is very good now and keeps getting faster.

[cjplooy]

Compiling Mesa and libdrm2 is a bit complicated - since I use 32-bit Steam on 64-bit Linux, I compiled these inside a 32-bit virtual machine. But you can skip that step if you use my archive.

I extracted the archive in /home/steam/mesaEnv, and then copied the following files to /usr/local/lib/dri:
r600_dri.so
radeon_dri.la
radeon_dri.so
swrast_dri.la
swrast_dri.so

I run TF2 with the following script:

#!/bin/sh

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/steam/mesaEnv"
export LANG="C"
export LC_ALL="C"

steam steam://rungameid/520

This basically works as follows:

• LD_LIBRARY_PATH adds directories to the library search path
  
• when TF2 starts, it finds the OpenGL library version compiled by me
  
• The OpenGL library searches for DRI drivers in /usr/local/lib/dri (this is the default; can be changed when you recompile the OpenGL library)
  
• The DRI drivers for Radeon are found and loaded, and these connect to the drm driver in the kernel for communication with the hardware.

[cjm571]

Following your previous post, TF2 is "working" but is definitely in the seconds-per-frame realm, rather than frames-per-second. My CPU usage for the hl2_linux process is spiked at 100%, so I suspect there is an issue with my Mobility Radeon 5650 not being recognized or some such driver fail shenanigans. But it's hard to be sure just yet.

Just two notes for others following the above:
- My steam folder was /home/<username>/.steam, rather than /home/steam
- My TF2 gameid is 440 rather than 520; 520 appears to be the TF2 Beta

I'll report back to this thread if I have any luck with getting a reasonable framerate.

Either way, cjplooy, you're awesome for posting this.

[gradinaruvasile]

İlk olarak cjm571 tarafından gönderildi:

Following your previous post, TF2 is "working" but is definitely in the seconds-per-frame realm, rather than frames-per-second. My CPU usage for the hl2_linux process is spiked at 100%, so I suspect there is an issue with my Mobility Radeon 5650 not being recognized or some such driver fail shenanigans. But it's hard to be sure just yet.

Just two notes for others following the above:
- My steam folder was /home/<username>/.steam, rather than /home/steam
- My TF2 gameid is 440 rather than 520; 520 appears to be the TF2 Beta

I'll report back to this thread if I have any luck with getting a reasonable framerate.

Either way, cjplooy, you're awesome for posting this.

You have a newer card, maybe the open source driver doesnt work that well with it yet. On my 7650D i get even 10 times more fps with fglrx than with radeon.
Anyway, being a laptop card, i suggest using fglrx because additionally to the performance increase you will most likely get a working power management=much better battery life.

[cjplooy]

İlk olarak cjm571 tarafından gönderildi:

Following your previous post, TF2 is "working" but is definitely in the seconds-per-frame realm, rather than frames-per-second. My CPU usage for the hl2_linux process is spiked at 100%, so I suspect there is an issue with my Mobility Radeon 5650 not being recognized or some such driver fail shenanigans. But it's hard to be sure just yet.

Sounds like either your card isn't supported yet, or you made some mistake so that Mesa can't find the drivers.
Maybe you can try to run the commands in the scripts manually in a terminal window, and see what it says on the output. I believe there is also some environment variable you can set so that Mesa gives you more information about what it's doing. I forgot the name of that variable; I think you can find it elsewhere on the forum, or otherwise the Mesa website.

İlk olarak cjm571 tarafından gönderildi:

Just two notes for others following the above:
- My steam folder was /home/<username>/.steam, rather than /home/steam

My steam folder is /home/steam/.steam. So, you should fill in "home/<username>/mesaEnv", or whatever place you used to extract my zip file.

İlk olarak cjm571 tarafından gönderildi:

- My TF2 gameid is 440 rather than 520; 520 appears to be the TF2 Beta

Oops, yes I only have the free beta installed. I fixed the title to say "Beta". Can we expect many differences in video driver support between TF2 and TF2 Beta?

İlk olarak cjm571 tarafından gönderildi:

Either way, cjplooy, you're awesome for posting this.

You're welcome.