Thom,
Please don't <hmm> at me, I've been spending days trying out the various ATI drivers available, and methods to install, and documenting them in the forums as I can (and will put the resolution in the WIKI when I can and when it is back up). Think you can call this digging in. Or perhaps you haven't read the post in its entirety.
I'm not expecting UI3, I just know that there are issues with UI2 on ATI, and want to know what is the best path to getting them solved with the ATI video card.
If I didn't care, I'd just go into my BIOS, switch over to my Nvidia card (which I know works), and wipe my hands of it, saying "oh well its working for me, too bad for ATI support in LinuxMCE". As it is I've spent probably 20 hours tying combinations of repository and ATI proprietary drivers and installing and reinstalling LinuxMCE (I am getting pretty good at that
)
And I
did ask about the best way to get the problem resolved- it is likely to be an interaction between the ATI drivers and the graphics functions being used in LinuxMCE (e.g. overlay order is not correct). So at some point someone that knows the UI graphics programming in LinuxMCE has to talk to someone at ATI to figure out why it is crashing and not overlaying correctly. And that is not me. I can do scripting, documentation, testing, but if we want to fix this within the next 2 years (the time it would take me to become proficient to that depth) then this task is for someone else to do!
I am not asking for ATI support into LMCE as a seamless integration. Just want it not to crash when I try to use it, and be able to use UI2 with the ATI video and be able to actually see behind the "wall of black" that keeps getting painted over the UI (my previous posts document this- the UI is definitely running, but it "flashes" on for 1/4 sec or so when I toggle between virt console 1 and VT 7), and then the screen goes black again.
ATI have been a pain in the past (I know based on my Mythtv experience), but deserve some support now as they have opened up most of their programming doc to the open source community!
PS I actually have an Nvidia graphics card-6200 but it is so slow on UI2 that if I want to use UI2 I would either use ATI X1250 on the motherboard or buy a new Nvidia card.