Graphics drivers Linux Mint 17.2

[johnno56]

I recently installed STK (version 0.9.1-3 from the Linux Mint repository) on my Linux Mint 17.2 64 bit machine.

A message popped up, when I started the game, saying that my display drivers are too old.

The current version of Linux Mint is 17.3. Version 17.2 came out in October 2015 (approx).

I am curious to know, how it is, that my drivers would be considered 'old' when my OS is less than 6 months old.

Can someone offer a solution?

Machine stats:

Linux Mint 17.2 (Rafaela) 64 bit.
Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-38-generic x86_64
MATE 1.10.2
8 gig Ram
Intel Core i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20ghzx4
Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series Video card

Any assistance would be gratefully appreciated. Thank you.

J

[tux_peng]

Are you using the proprietary or free drivers? Can you run glxgears? glxinfo output? GFX Card?

[johnno56]

According to the 'Driver Manager':


The Manager, does not load nor recommend a method of loading said drivers.

Video card model is: GV-R545-1GI ( Radeon HD 5450)

I am beginning to think I should have looked up all this stuff earlier... I may be wasting your time... to continue...

As per your request (may be moot...)

Glxgears run smoothly 300 to 303 frames per 5 seconds. Ave 60 frames/sec

link to video card specs http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/pro ... id=4170#sp

Let me know if you need anything else?

J

ps: I just checked. The Synaptic Package Manager says that I already have the recommended driver installed... I am so confused...

[deve]

I am curious to know, how it is, that my drivers would be considered 'old' when my OS is less than 6 months old.

I don't use Mint, but AFAIK Mint 17.2 is based on Ubuntu 14.04, which has 2 years old mesa drivers (version 10.1) You can try to update your drivers to mesa 10.3. Maybe they are available in backports repositories, stable-updates or so...

You can also try to use proprietary fglrx drivers. It should give you better performance than mesa 10.1 and shadows will work in STK.

To get more information about your drivers version, you can run in terminal:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

glxinfo | grep Open

[tux_peng]

FGLRX will provide better GFX, it can be troublesome in other areas though- try it out (enable SSH first- so you can revert from another comp or your phone; just my recommendation)

[Arthur]

As deve said, for some features STK needs Mesa 10.3 or newer, or the fglrx driver. On your hardware running with shadows enabled might be slow, so continuing using Mesa could be your best course of action. Ubuntu 16.04 is about a month away, so the next Linux Mint version will probably be available soon after. Just ignoring the warning until you can upgrade would be my suggestion.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope you will continue to have fun with SuperTuxKart.

[johnno56]

tux_peng.

I went down the propriety fglrx path and it rendered my machine visually blind. My emergency recovery worked like a charm and avoided an unwanted OS re-install.

I forgot to mention that, after I clicked 'ok' when the 'too old' message came up, the game continued but the game display area was black.

Results of 'glxinfo | grep Open'
john@john-H81M-DS2 ~ $ glxinfo | grep Open
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CEDAR
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.1.3
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:

Arthur:

I will see if I can update Mesa and hopefully that will get things moving. Yes, I would probably imagine, that the next Mint will appear in April. I do not usually upgrade until a few months after. Allows for any unforeseen random options (bugs) to be ironed out...

'Continue using...' actually, the grandkids use it the most. I usually 'practice' when they are not here. I cannot remember NOT having STK on my OS's. Great fun! (..er.. um... so my grandkids tell me *chuckle*)

I have been wanting to use the stk-editor to try my hand at track building but have not been successful installing it. So many instructions from multiple sources. A step-by-step for Linx Mint would be great, probably unlikely, but great. Anyway another issue for another time.

I will attempt the Mesa upgrade.

-------------------------------------

Thank you to all who responded and offered suggestions. This noob is thankful and appreciative.

J

[johnno56]

Just checked. Linux Mint 17.2 comes with Mesa 10.1.3
Looks like I may have to wait after all...

Thanks for trying, guys.

J

[tux_peng]

In ~/.config/supertuxkart/0.8.2/config.xml
you can try
force_legacy_device="true"

[deve]

I have been wanting to use the stk-editor to try my hand at track building but have not been successful installing it. So many instructions from multiple sources. A step-by-step for Linx Mint would be great, probably unlikely, but great. Anyway another issue for another time.

You can download our linux package:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertu ... z/download

It is designed to run on as much distributions as possible, so it should work on Mint too. The package contains stk-editor.

In ~/.config/supertuxkart/0.8.2/config.xml
you can try
force_legacy_device="true"

The force_legacy_device="true" parameter indeed should allow you to play the game, but atm. it's not supported and looks rather buggy

[johnno56]

tux_pen and deve,

STK 0.9.1-3 is already loaded. It was available in the Mint repository. Following the 'instructions' for the stk-editor did not go so well. Probably my fault... as usual...

I am downloading 0.9.1 from the link provided. I will un-install 0.9.1-3 and install 0.9.1 (with the editor). I am confident both will install, but still dubious, about the graphics problem. After all, I am running with Mesa 10.1, for crying out loud... *sigh*

Wow. Download from Sourceforge was quicker than I thought...

I have decompressed the file to my user game directory... best not let 'system' get its grubby little hands on it ... lol

Ok. As suspected, the game displayed the 'too old' message. This time I ran it from a command terminal and the errors were quite interesting. Apparently OpenGL drivers are too old.

Here are the messages:

john@john-H81M-DS2 ~/games/supertuxkart-0.9.1-linux/bin-64 $ ./supertuxkart
[verbose ] main: Error messages and other text output will be logged to /home/john/.config/supertuxkart/0.8.2/stdout.log.
[info ] [FileManager]: Data files will be fetched from: '../data/'
[info ] [FileManager]: User directory is '/home/john/.config/supertuxkart/0.8.2/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Addons files will be stored in '/home/john/.local/share/supertuxkart/addons/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Screenshots will be stored in '/home/john/.cache/supertuxkart/screenshots/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: User-defined grand prix will be stored in '/home/john/.local/share/supertuxkart/grandprix/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 0 will be loaded from '../data/challenges/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 1 will be loaded from '../data/fonts/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 2 will be loaded from '../data/gfx/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 3 will be loaded from '../data/grandprix/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 4 will be loaded from '../data/gui/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 5 will be loaded from '../data/library/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 6 will be loaded from '../data/models/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 7 will be loaded from '../data/music/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 8 will be loaded from '../data/tracks/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 9 will be loaded from '../data/sfx/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 10 will be loaded from '../data/shaders/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 11 will be loaded from '../data/skins/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 12 will be loaded from '../data/textures/'.
[info ] [FileManager]: Asset 13 will be loaded from '../data/po/'.
[verbose ] translation: Env var LANGUAGE = 'en_AU.UTF-8'.
[verbose ] translation: Language 'English (Australia)'.
[warn ] tinygettext: no.po: warning: ignoring, unknown language
[warn ] tinygettext: no_NO.po: warning: ignoring, unknown language
Adding language fallback en
[warn ] tinygettext: no.po: warning: ignoring, unknown language
[warn ] tinygettext: no_NO.po: warning: ignoring, unknown language
Irrlicht Engine version 1.8.0
Linux 3.16.0-38-generic #52~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 8 09:43:57 UTC 2015 x86_64
[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 2: X Error: GLXBadFBConfig

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 2: From call : unknown

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Vertex shader compilation failed at position -1:

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Pixel shader compilation failed at position -1:

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Vertex shader compilation failed at position -1:

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Pixel shader compilation failed at position -1:

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Vertex shader compilation failed at position -1:

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Pixel shader compilation failed at position -1:

[info ] IrrDriver: OpenGL version: 3.3
[info ] IrrDriver: OpenGL vendor: X.Org
[info ] IrrDriver: OpenGL renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CEDAR
[info ] IrrDriver: OpenGL version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.1.3
[info ] GLDriver: AMD Vertex Shader Layer Present
[info ] GLDriver: ARB Base Instance Present
[info ] GLDriver: ARB Texture Storage Present
[info ] GLDriver: ARB Uniform Buffer Object Present
[info ] irr_driver: GLSL supported.
[info ] GUIEngine: scale: 0.512000
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : texturedquad.vert
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : texturedquad.frag
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : texturedquad.vert
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : uniformcolortexturedquad.frag
[info ] HTTPRequest: Downloading http://addons.supertuxkart.net/dl/xml/news.xml
[warn ] track: Music information file 'amazon_jungle.music' not found for track 'Amazonian Journey' - ignored.

[warn ] track: Music information file 'Ethereal_Spectrum.music' not found for track 'Old Star Track' - ignored.

[warn ] track: Music information file 'dance_cleopatra.music' not found for track 'The Old Island' - ignored.

[info ] GrandPrixManager: Loading Grand Prix files from ../data/grandprix/
[info ] GrandPrixManager: Loading Grand Prix files from /home/john/.local/share/supertuxkart/grandprix/
[info ] addons: Using cached addons.xml.
[info ] ClientNetworkManager: Host initialized.
[info ] ClientNetworkManager: Ready !
[warn ] OpenGL: Driver is too old!
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : coloredquad.vert
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : coloredquad.frag
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : colortexturedquad.vert
[info ] shader: Compiling shader : colortexturedquad.frag
[info ] STKHost: Listening has been stopped
[info ] Singleton: Destroyed singleton.
[warn ] STKHost: Packet logging file has been closed.
[info ] Singleton: Destroyed singleton.

I hope this helps.

The stk-editor executes without error, but the initial screen where you are prompted to locate the 'data' directory, is very difficult to read. The font size is soooo small I could barely read it. After the directory is found the rest of the editor behaves normally. Except for my mouse. (not a fault of stk or the editor) Logitech mouse is renouned for the centre wheel/button not being detected. But, that's hardware, and not for you guys to worry about.

Good luck with deciphering the errors... all Greek to me...

J

[johnno56]

I just checked Linux Mint 17.3 (latest version) and the Mesa drivers had only a minor update but nowhere near 10.3+

My Linux Mint (17.2) uses OpenGL 3.3. My graphics card is capable of running up to 4.1

Conclusion:
As far as the current version of STK and STK_Editor goes, until Ubuntu and Mint get there act together and upgrade Mesa and OpenGL, I will have to give it a miss. Thankfully, I can still run them both, on my wife's Win 7 laptop. STK and Editor run without issue.

(I thought about regressing to the version I had sometime ago (STK 0.8.1) but even after downloading it, there were too many dependency issues, to install on Mint 17.2 It just never ceases to rain... *sigh*) I am destined not to play/create on Mint...

But, more importantly, I want to thank you guys for the excellent assistance. You are a credit to the Forum.

J

(I do not know how to close this thread. Probably a moderator or admin thing...)

[Arthur]

You could probably run 0.8.1 downloaded from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/supert ... 2/download

It is a bit sub-optimal, but you can ignore the "driver is too old" message from STK, as we try to disable the graphical options that are buggy/non-working on Mesa older than 10.3. So if it works and looks reasonably fine you can probably do that as well.

[johnno56]

Arthur,

Just a quick reply. The link you provided was for a Linux 32bit system. Mine is a 64 bit system. It was easy to find the right architecture. By the way, the 0.8.1 version, ran flawlessly... and NO 'too old' message. The grandkids will be happy!!

I am yet to figure out how to install the editor. There was something about the editor would need compiling... as also the irrlicht engine as well... are there any step-by-step instructions on how to install both?

J

[deve]

ReHi johnno56,

Using stk-editor for STK 0.8.1 is a bit complicated... Generally tracks exported for STK 0.9 and newer are not compatible with older versions.

If you really want to compile older stk-editor version, you should use revision older than this commit (which btw. had a typo splatt/splat):
https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-edi ... d5c12f9dee
and then manually apply this patch to avoid a crash on startup:
https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-edi ... 7e43f1a3a2
Instructions for compilation process are available on github. I don't know if they are complete:
https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-edi ... /README.md

Or you can just try to use stk-editor from our STK 0.9.1 static package. And when you will export the track, you can change in materials.xml

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

<material name="splatt.png" shader="splatting"

to

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

<material name="splatt.png" graphical-effect="splatting"

and in track.xml

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

        version        = "6"

to

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

        version        = "5"

and have the hopes that this will work ;-)

Or maybe someone has already compiled stk-editor for STK 0.8.1...

Regards,
Deve

[tux_peng]

When I had and ATI card, I used this
https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Take a look at
https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archiv ... org-update