How do I tell if my graphics card can handle gnome 3?

leonardevens · #1 29th August 2012, 10:14 PM

Gnome 3 requires hardware accleration. Gnome 3 worked fine but recently it keeps going into fallback mode. The reason given is that supposedly my graphics card can't handle gnome 3. It is possible that some recent change led to that, but I would like to determine just what the problem is.

How do I determine, under Fedora 17, if my graphics card has hardware acceleration? If that is not it, what else might I do to troubleshoot the problem?

System settings identifies my graphics as Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV620. My compuer is a Dell Precision 3500 purchased in January, 2011. The invoice says the graphics is 256 MB ATI FireMV. As best I can tell, that card does have hardware acceleration, but pperhaps the driver is not using it.

What iw the easiest way to determine which driver my system uses? I think it iss the default driver.

BBQdave · #2 29th August 2012, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leonardevens

Gnome 3 requires hardware accleration. Gnome 3 worked fine but recently it keeps going into fallback mode.

If Gnome 3 worked well before, than perhaps recent updates broke your system - in regards to graphics.
Which is a puzzle, because if the Linux Kernel of F17 supported your graphic hardware before, what caused the graphic break?

Not to offer as an answer, but an experience. With F17 Gnome 3, I had buggy performance from time to time with the OH No Something Has Gone Wrong phrase popping up. I have mainly used F16 Xfce (64-bit) spin since it's release, with no issues.

***Gareth Jones*** · #3 29th August 2012, 11:57 PM

If you boot an older kernel from the GRUB boot menu, does GNOME Shell work then?

leonardevens · #4 30th August 2012, 12:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gareth Jones

If you boot an older kernel from the GRUB boot menu, does GNOME Shell work then?

I think I tried that, and it made no difference, but I should double check just to be sure. However, the only kernels I have are fairly recent, the oldest, dated June 18, 2012, numbered 3.4.2-4.. It could be that I was running an even older kernel, numbered 2.4.xxxx, when gnome 3 was working.

nonamedotc · #5 30th August 2012, 12:58 AM

I am not sure if this will work - but, you could try disabling any GNOME shell extensions you have installed and try to login to the shell. It could be a case of incompatibility between some update and an extension - don't ask me what it would be though.

P.S. Fedora 17, if I remember correctly, was shipped with 3.3.4 version of the kernel.

leonardevens · #6 30th August 2012, 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nonamedotc

I am not sure if this will work - but, you could try disabling any GNOME shell extensions you have installed and try to login to the shell. It could be a case of incompatibility between some update and an extension - don't ask me what it would be though.

P.S. Fedora 17, if I remember correctly, was shipped with 3.3.4 version of the kernel.

I disabled the extensions by renaming the extensions directory, and then I logged out. When I logged in again, I was still in fallback mode.

My earliest available kernel is 3.4.2-4. Perhaps I was still running an earlier version before my recent reboot caused the prooblem.

---------- Post added at 01:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:18 AM ----------

I misspoke. It iss 3D acceleration that gnome 3 requires and I'm pretty sure my card has it.

JamesNZ · #7 31st August 2012, 12:50 AM

Have you tried the proprietary drivers? Last time I used mesa (the default FOSS driver) it didn't support 3D acceleration.

deanej · #8 31st August 2012, 03:31 AM

Is it possible that the card got dropped from the open source radeon driver? My desktop can't run Gnome 3 even though the card has 3D acceleration because there's no good linux driver for it (the card is six years old).

adamk75 · #9 31st August 2012, 12:18 PM

The radeon driver has not (intentionally) dropped support for any radeon GPUs.