KDE cannot start when HDMI TV is connected

[SpectrumDT]

Hello.

I have this problem: My Linux does not accept my TV when I try to connect it to the computer. I posted about it in this thread and got no replies. Since this is really a new problem, I figured I would start a new thread about it.

I have a TV that I want to use as a secondary computer monitor (connected via HDMI). My Linux does not like this. In fact, KDE will not start up at all if I even have the TV connected. I get past the "Fedora 13" loading screen and then the screen turns black with a little bit of flicker. (It spams a lot of error data to a log file, which I can post if anyone wants them.) I have to disconnect the TV to get my monitor to behave.

I am running Fedora 13 and KDE 4.5.3 on a 64-bit machine. My video card is an ATI Radeon HD5750.

I believe this has to do with my ATI driver. Right now I am using the rawhide driver, which Fenrin helped me set up in the thread I linked to above. But when using this driver, I cannot use the TV.

If I install ATI's driver instead, my TV works, but everything in Linux runs very slowly.

Is there any way to be able to use my TV as monitor and have my Linux run smoothly? Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

[fdnbgonds]

The proprietary driver works with HDMI, but I'm afraid the radeon driver does not work with HDMI on your card (ATI cards in the HD5xxx series do not work well under Linux just yet). A new version of the radeon driver is coming soon that does support HD5xxx cards well.

The problem is reading EDID data through HDMI, it currently can't do that. Lots of people (including myself) have been having problems with it.

It's odd the proprietary drivers run slow, they're normally faster but buggier. Perhaps they're not installed correctly? Check output of glxinfo; it should mention ATI's drivers if it's working. If you see something about 'software rasterizer' then the drivers aren't working. Also check lsmod for the fglrx module... It could be your kernel is too new for the current version of fglrx and the module isn't loading (which would explain less than great performance). ATI often falls behind the kernel.

Your best bet is to either run without your TV, connect to your TV through S-Video (might work... I think...), run with fglrx or run with vesa (which will likely restrict your supported resolutions as well as run less-than-great...).

The new radeon drivers are on their way and are much better. If you can't wait, you could try installing them from rawhide or compiling from source, but I don't recommend that.