Alberto Milone's Home

AMD released new driver (8.01) which still lacks the symlink to libfglrx_gamma.so.1.0. Envy gets around the problem now. Let me know if you have further problems.

Here’s the changelog:
* Fixed: Upstream Bug - missing symlink to libfglrx_gamma.so.1.0 (libfglrx_gamma.so.1)
* Fixed: "Envy" was not the title of the legacy dialogues on Debian
* Added: AMD Catalyst driver 8.01
* Removed: AMD Catalyst driver 7.12

Make sure you check both the solved and the known issues before you install the new driver.

As you might already know, the latest release of the Nvidia driver includes the CUDA driver. Unfortunately the packages generated by Envy lacked the new files which made it possible to use the CUDA Toolkit (on both Debian and Ubuntu). This is no longer the case in envy_0.9.9-0ubuntu6 which I released about two days ago (but I was too busy and tired to announce it). Furthermore the wfb module of the NVIDIA driver wasn’t included in the packages generated by Envy because of a stupid typo.

Here’s the changelog:
* Changed: nvidia-glx-dev was not installed on Debian
* Fixed: Bug #180144 missing CUDA support on Ubuntu
* Fixed: Bug #180144 missing CUDA support on Debian
* Fixed: Bug #178291 Nvidia wfb module missing on Debian

NOTE: unless you need CUDA or you use Debian and the latest NVIDIA driver you will have no reason to install this new release.

On another note, this week I’ve been working on a website and I had to learn a bit of HTML DOM, Javascript, PHP, which I had *never* used. It was quite (painful but) interesting. Just to mention a problem I had, I was struggling with Internet Explorer when I discovered that it had a problem with Javascript’s array method indexOf(), which I had to create with “protoype” just for IE since it works well in Firefox. And of course making a website look good (and yes I do use CSS) in IE, Firefox and Opera at the same time can be a pain. If Firefox’s Firebug extension didn’t exist I think I would have never completed that website.

Here is the changelog of Envy’s new release:
* Changed: backported xparse and xorgconfig from Envy's unstable branch so as to
switch to the guidance backend
* Changed: backported improvements to Shutilities from Envy's unstable branch
* Changed: the latest release of the ATI driver is automatically installer for
ATI FireGL cards
* Added: objects.restorexorg()
* Fixed: Bug #179746 xorg.conf couldn't be modified because of a bug in xparse
* Fixed: nvidia-settings is no longer installed for the legacy driver because of
Ubuntu's Bug #156730

As you can see, this new release should solve a few problems and includes some backported parts of Envy’s next major release (0.9.10). Unfortunately the package “nvidia-settings” can no longer be installed because of Ubuntu’s Bug #156730. This problem affects only nvidia-glx-legacy (driver 7xxx) while the other two flavours of the driver are not affected since they already include “nvidia-settings” and therefore don’t need “nvidia-settings” to be installed. If you use the legacy driver, please use Ubuntu’s “Screens and Graphics” application (in the “System/Administration” menu) if you need to set up your screen resolution (or multiple screens).

As some of you might have noticed I have recently changed Envy’s web page since some users complained about its length and about its confusing structure. I’m not a web designer therefore don’t expect to see a masterpiece. If you have further suggestions regarding its usability, please let me know. I have also updated the FAQ for both Ubuntu and Debian.

NOTE: if Opera is your browser you will have to select the “Fixed Table Layout” option in the “View/Style” menu, otherwise the table on my web page will be as large as the entire page. I don’t know why this is happening since I can’t reproduce the problem using Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Internet Explorer 6 (yes, even IE 6!!!)

A new release of Envy is available. Here’s the changelog:
* Added: Nvidia driver 169.07
* Removed: Nvidia driver 100.14.23
* Added: AMD Catalyst driver 7.12
* Removed: AMD Catalyst driver 7.11

ATI’s Catalyst driver 7.12 uses DKMS (thanks to Mario Limonciello), and I’m planning to add DKMS to the NVIDIA driver in Envy’s next release (0.9.10) (as well as other cool features). Thanks to DKMS you won’t have to reinstall the driver every time the kernel is updated.

Make sure you read the Release Notes and (especially) the Known issues of both the ATI and the NVIDIA driver before you install any of these drivers.

You can get the driver here.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year or, if you’re not a Christian, I simply wish you a good time 😉

EDIT: if you need Envy’s previous release you can get it here:
Envy New
Envy Legacy

This new release of URandR will finally allow you to save your settings without touching your xorg.conf (except for the virtual resolution).

URandR can now check if you’re using independent screens or cloned screens as you can see in the following screenshot:

Furthermore you can now save your current settings to a profile. Currently there are four profiles which you can use to store your settings (home, office, conference, other). You might wonder what you can do with such profiles?

1) you can save your settings to a profile (e.g. your DVI screen is set to a resolution of 1600×1200 and is to the left of your laptop screen) and load them whenever you want without having to set the resolution and screen position every time.
2) you can choose to set a profile by default. so that when you enter your desktop your screens will be configured exactly as you want, without having to use URandR every time.

URandR doesn’t write your settings to the xorg.conf but uses profiles. Profiles are scripts containing all your settings. If you set a profile as the default profile, such script will be executed every time you enter a desktop session.

NOTES:
1) Only GNOME, KDE, XFCE are supported (therefore setting a default profile might not work with other desktop environments).
2) Only two screens are supported.
3) Your graphic driver must support RandR 1.2
4) The new packaging scripts will make URandR easy to install on Debian (thanks to Cyril Brulebois).
5) You will find URandR in the System/Preferences menu in GNOME and in the Settings menu in KDE.

You can get URandR here.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

P.S. Yes, I will give you a version of Envy with Nvidia’s beta driver before Christmas.

EDIT: Thanks to Alex Launi now URandR works well with ldap

Here is the changelog:
* Fixed: the detection of installed packages failed in certain cases
* Fixed: a few mistakes in the Norwegian and Russian translations

If Envy complained about the lack of some packages which it said it couldn’t install but which were already installed then this release will solve your problem.

Special thanks to cwillu, who made notice that I should have used dpkg --get-selections instead of dpkg --list. I’ll read the fine manual to the end in the future.

Envy Release Notes

• Desktop Effects with NVIDIA cards
∘ Try to enable the Desktop effects, let Restricted Drivers Manager install the driver again, then (don’t reboot) use Envy again and finally reboot.

• The ATI module couldn’t be loaded at times.
∘ usually a depmod -ae solved the problem but I’ve tried to fix the problem.
∘ I even managed to get the driver to work on Gutsy’s livecd (I had to log out and log in after the installation of the driver instead of rebooting, which I couldn’t do, but I warmly recommend you to reboot). The desktop effects worked also on the livecd (they were a bit slow though).

• The new ATI driver is available in Envy

• NVIDIA’s new BETA driver is not included in this release.
∘ I might release an unstable version of Envy for this. Later…

• Envy no longer depends on “nvidia-xconfig” to set up your xorg.conf
∘ Envy has its own Xorg parser now.

• The list of ATI/AMD cards has been updated
∘ Radeon HD cards should be automatically detected.

• You can either use Envy or Restricted Drivers Manager. Please don’t use them together.
∘ Should you decide to use Restricted Drivers Manager after using Envy you will have to undo what Envy did, by typing:
∘ sudo envy –uninstall-all

P.S. I’ll set up the repositories as soon as I have the time. In the meantime you can get Envy here.