The only reason for the creation of this blog is to help my fellow Linux friends out there with setting up a driver that works in Linux for the ill-famed SiS chipsets of the 671 / 672 / M672 / 771 / 772 & 717 family of video chipsets. These chips are notorious for not having decent drivers for Linux released by Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), which is surprising, given the numbers of chips sold by SiS worldwide and the fact that anyone migrating to Linux and pestered by the absence of support to their chipsets will surely think twice before ever buying any kind of product with any kind of chip produced by SIS - it is the kind of attitude that really destroy the reputation of any company.
My own history with these chipsets began about 3 years ago (2011) when I got sick of being robbed by Microsoft all through these many years of being a fateful paid $$$customer of their lousy products and which were getting worse and worse as the time went by, e.g, XP was worse than Windows 2000, Vista was worse than XP, Windows 7 was worse than Vista and I said to myself one day "I CAN'T TAKE NO MORE - let's get rid of this sh*tty OS" - easily said then done... To make short a long story it took me about 3 years of many testings, installings and deletions of many OS's and distros until I finally found my Linux, that is, Linux Mint 17 Xfce 64-bits: light, fast, flexible, nice-looking, logical, easy to migrate to coming from Windows and to top it all, free !!! Within 2 months I was able to become proficient with Mint and had already nicely configured three desktop PC's to run Mint, the first two still Dual-Boot Machines with full-blown Windows 7 and Vista respectively and the last one with dual-boot with a light-weight XP SP3 installation (installed only to provide the functionaly of making partition images backups of my many Linux and Windows partitions with a program called Macrium Reflect which is still only available to Windows although it will image ext2, ext3, ext4 and ReiserFS partitions). In all my my desktop PC's I had installed Virtual Machines (with Oracle VirtualBox) running as guest OS Win XP SP3 to run the two apps for which there are yet no substitutes in the Linux world, namely Irfanview and Microsoft Office 2010, the first one it is (among many other things) still the ONLY image editor and viewer worth mentioning, regardless of the OS, and the second because I was stupid enough in the past and did all my work-related Excel and Word files using VBA scripts. I trusted MS to keep development of VBA a trivial thing and was K.O.'d by Microsoft which stopped VBA support in Office 2013 - the "ribbons" of Office 2007 / 2010 were bad enough but cutting off VBA entirely in Office 2013 was the last screw-up I allowed to stand. From that point on Microsoft had to go...Thanks for the nice people of the Mint community I was able to (sigh) ... almost ... (sigh) get rid of Windows in ALL my machines. Unfortunely I still have (and love) one laptop which by my bad luck is equipped with that infamous SiS 672 chip... and for which SiS has steadfastly refused to issue a Linux driver (or alternately to release the code so enthusiasts can write and release one such chip-specific driver through a Linux repository). The only "official" driver supported by the repositories, as you sure by now know, is only capable of a resolution of 800x600 or 1024x768 and I balked of using it and so had to keep on that laptop the Windows OS it had. The problem is that after you get used to drive a brand new shiny Mercedes you get very dissapointed / desperate / dissatisfied / angry as hell / mad with the manufa672 linux hugo bastoscturer / raving beserked with angst and rage / completely out of our bonkers when you... have to drive a Ford Model T.
I tried everything I could find on the Internet (in English, French, Spanish and Italian) to fix that SiS chip on my Mint 17 but no solution worked and I was contemplating selling my old faithful for pennies on the local Ebay and shelling out US$ 1,500 to buy another laptop, money which would be sorely missed for my everyday life's expenses... until I came along three days ago on a solution (that worked as a charm !!!) on a blog written in portuguese from a guy in Brazil called "Hugo Bastos" and who is, in my humble opinion, the King of SIS !!!
So after being able to ...finally !!!... get rid of Windows, thanks to Hugo, I decided to be a good member of the Linux community and share his solution for the English world (solution which, if you speak Portuguese, can be viewed at Hugo's blog here http://diversosassuntosbrasil.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/solucao-video-sis-671-672-771-772-e.html ). The only caveat is that it DOES NOT work with Ubuntu 12.10 or later or any distro based on these (so it didn't work with Linux Mint 17...) but it works perfectly fine with Ubuntu 11.04 and 12.04 and ALL distros based on these (thus it did work with Linux Mint 13 Xfce that I had to install on my old faithful). Instead of a verbatim translation of his blog's relevant entries (and for which a draft turned out to be very confusing even for myself that wrote it) I chose to list the relevant commands [and added my own comments and commands with brackets like these].
STEP-BY-STEP INSTALLATION OF THE SIS 671 672 M672 771 772 717 MIRAGE 3 DRIVER ON LINUX DISTROS BASED ON UBUNTU 11.04 AND 12.04 (LINUX MINT, UBUNTU, XUBUNTU, MEDIBUNTU, KUBUNTU, ETC):
01) [UPDATE YOUR UBUNTU-BASED SYSTEM !!! - otherwise some packages may NOT be installed and the compilation and installation of the driver will fail if even one package is missing] <<-- ATTENTION -->>
Typical command:
sudo apt-get update
02) [OPTIONAL TO SOME DISTROS - INSTALL synaptic]
If your distro does not include Synaptic Package Manager, install it.
Typical command:
sudo apt-get install synaptic
03) INSTALL THE REQUIRED PACKAGES TO DOWNLOAD AND COMPILE THE DRIVER
Open synaptic and search for and install the following packages [WARNING: YOU MUST SEARCH FOR EACH PACKAGE BY USING THE SEARCH BOX - DO NOT USE THE ICON OF A MAGNIFYING GLASS NEXT TO THE SEARCH BOX AS IT WILL NOT ADD ALL THE DEPENDENCIES REQUIRED AND THE INSTALLATION WILL FAIL].
Packages to download and install:
git
xorg-dev
mesa-common-dev
libdrm-dev
libtool
build-essential
03) DOWNLOAD THE UNCOMPILED DRIVER TO YOUR PERSONAL DOWNLOAD DIRECTORY
Command:
git clone git://github.com/hellnest/xf86-video-sismedia-0.9.1.git
04) [IN TERMINAL EMULATOR, GET LOGGED AS ROOT IN THE DOWNLOAD DIRECTORY OF THE UNCOMPILATED DRIVER]
Open your file manager (Thunar, Nautilus, etc), navigate to the directory of the downloaded uncompilated driver, right-click and choose to open directory as root, right-click on that new directory window and choose to open a terminal in that directory.
<<--WARNING: FAILURE TO EXECUTE THE COMMANDS BELOW IN TERMINAL LOGGED AS ROOT MAY CAUSE YOUR INSTALLATION & COMPILATION TO FAIL, ESPECIALLY IF YOU INSTALLED LINUX IN MULTIPLE PARTITIONS, e.g, one partition for "/" [root], another for "/home", etc -->>
05) CONFIGURE YOUR DRIVER
In terminal (logged as root as explained above) run the command to precompilate your driver in your system.
Original Command:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
[ I myself prefer to be double-sure and use the following command.
Alternate Command:
sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
as a precaution not to precompilate the driver as user instead of root ]
06) COMPILE YOUR DRIVER
In the same Terminal of above compile your driver as root.
Original Command:
make
[Alternate Command:
sudo make
as a precaution not to compile the driver as user insteado of root ]
07) INSTALL YOUR COMPILED DRIVER
In the same Terminal of above install your compiled driver into your system.
Command:
sudo make install
08) REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM AND CHECK YOUR VIDEO RESOLUTION
In 99% of the cases the system will reboot using your highest resolution and/or allow the user to configure the desktop to the available resolution supported by your system and you may go to step 10 to configure your video output to your player.
09) IN CASE YOUR SYSTEM ONLY BOOT IN 1280x800 AFTER YOU REBOOT AND YOUR SYSTEM SUPPORTS A HIGHER RESOLUTION OF 1366x768
- Create an empty text file called "xorg.conf" in the directory "/etc/X11" [and it is better for you to be logged as root].
Typical Command:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- Add the following command lines to that text file:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "UseTiming1366" "yes"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
- Save the file xorg.conf and reboot
10) CONFIGURE YOUR VIDEO OUTPUT TO WATCH MOVIES AND VIDEOS
One caveat of this driver is that it only supports one kind of video output, namely "xwindow" (x11/xshm/xv) and which by the way is NOT supported by some default video players that come preinstalled in some distros, e.g, TOTEM and BANSHEE. In case your system have one of these video players you will have to uninstall them (including any Firefox plugins such as totem-mozilla and which may be exchanged to gecko-mediaplayer for example) and install one of the video players which offer support for X11, such as VLC, SMplayer or Gnome-mplayer. When you configure your player DO NOT FORGET to "Preferences" (or "Options" or "Settings" depending on your video player) and choose as video output "X11", "X11 (slow)", "xwindow" or "xwindow (x11/xshm/xv)" as the case may be.
To configure the video output of your system, use the following command.
Typical Command:
gstreamer-properties
and on the window that will open go the "VIDEO" TAB and choose as your default video output the plugin "Xwindow System (X11/Xshm/Xv)"
My own history with these chipsets began about 3 years ago (2011) when I got sick of being robbed by Microsoft all through these many years of being a fateful paid $$$customer of their lousy products and which were getting worse and worse as the time went by, e.g, XP was worse than Windows 2000, Vista was worse than XP, Windows 7 was worse than Vista and I said to myself one day "I CAN'T TAKE NO MORE - let's get rid of this sh*tty OS" - easily said then done... To make short a long story it took me about 3 years of many testings, installings and deletions of many OS's and distros until I finally found my Linux, that is, Linux Mint 17 Xfce 64-bits: light, fast, flexible, nice-looking, logical, easy to migrate to coming from Windows and to top it all, free !!! Within 2 months I was able to become proficient with Mint and had already nicely configured three desktop PC's to run Mint, the first two still Dual-Boot Machines with full-blown Windows 7 and Vista respectively and the last one with dual-boot with a light-weight XP SP3 installation (installed only to provide the functionaly of making partition images backups of my many Linux and Windows partitions with a program called Macrium Reflect which is still only available to Windows although it will image ext2, ext3, ext4 and ReiserFS partitions). In all my my desktop PC's I had installed Virtual Machines (with Oracle VirtualBox) running as guest OS Win XP SP3 to run the two apps for which there are yet no substitutes in the Linux world, namely Irfanview and Microsoft Office 2010, the first one it is (among many other things) still the ONLY image editor and viewer worth mentioning, regardless of the OS, and the second because I was stupid enough in the past and did all my work-related Excel and Word files using VBA scripts. I trusted MS to keep development of VBA a trivial thing and was K.O.'d by Microsoft which stopped VBA support in Office 2013 - the "ribbons" of Office 2007 / 2010 were bad enough but cutting off VBA entirely in Office 2013 was the last screw-up I allowed to stand. From that point on Microsoft had to go...Thanks for the nice people of the Mint community I was able to (sigh) ... almost ... (sigh) get rid of Windows in ALL my machines. Unfortunely I still have (and love) one laptop which by my bad luck is equipped with that infamous SiS 672 chip... and for which SiS has steadfastly refused to issue a Linux driver (or alternately to release the code so enthusiasts can write and release one such chip-specific driver through a Linux repository). The only "official" driver supported by the repositories, as you sure by now know, is only capable of a resolution of 800x600 or 1024x768 and I balked of using it and so had to keep on that laptop the Windows OS it had. The problem is that after you get used to drive a brand new shiny Mercedes you get very dissapointed / desperate / dissatisfied / angry as hell / mad with the manufa672 linux hugo bastoscturer / raving beserked with angst and rage / completely out of our bonkers when you... have to drive a Ford Model T.
I tried everything I could find on the Internet (in English, French, Spanish and Italian) to fix that SiS chip on my Mint 17 but no solution worked and I was contemplating selling my old faithful for pennies on the local Ebay and shelling out US$ 1,500 to buy another laptop, money which would be sorely missed for my everyday life's expenses... until I came along three days ago on a solution (that worked as a charm !!!) on a blog written in portuguese from a guy in Brazil called "Hugo Bastos" and who is, in my humble opinion, the King of SIS !!!
So after being able to ...finally !!!... get rid of Windows, thanks to Hugo, I decided to be a good member of the Linux community and share his solution for the English world (solution which, if you speak Portuguese, can be viewed at Hugo's blog here http://diversosassuntosbrasil.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/solucao-video-sis-671-672-771-772-e.html ). The only caveat is that it DOES NOT work with Ubuntu 12.10 or later or any distro based on these (so it didn't work with Linux Mint 17...) but it works perfectly fine with Ubuntu 11.04 and 12.04 and ALL distros based on these (thus it did work with Linux Mint 13 Xfce that I had to install on my old faithful). Instead of a verbatim translation of his blog's relevant entries (and for which a draft turned out to be very confusing even for myself that wrote it) I chose to list the relevant commands [and added my own comments and commands with brackets like these].
STEP-BY-STEP INSTALLATION OF THE SIS 671 672 M672 771 772 717 MIRAGE 3 DRIVER ON LINUX DISTROS BASED ON UBUNTU 11.04 AND 12.04 (LINUX MINT, UBUNTU, XUBUNTU, MEDIBUNTU, KUBUNTU, ETC):
01) [UPDATE YOUR UBUNTU-BASED SYSTEM !!! - otherwise some packages may NOT be installed and the compilation and installation of the driver will fail if even one package is missing] <<-- ATTENTION -->>
Typical command:
sudo apt-get update
02) [OPTIONAL TO SOME DISTROS - INSTALL synaptic]
If your distro does not include Synaptic Package Manager, install it.
Typical command:
sudo apt-get install synaptic
03) INSTALL THE REQUIRED PACKAGES TO DOWNLOAD AND COMPILE THE DRIVER
Open synaptic and search for and install the following packages [WARNING: YOU MUST SEARCH FOR EACH PACKAGE BY USING THE SEARCH BOX - DO NOT USE THE ICON OF A MAGNIFYING GLASS NEXT TO THE SEARCH BOX AS IT WILL NOT ADD ALL THE DEPENDENCIES REQUIRED AND THE INSTALLATION WILL FAIL].
Packages to download and install:
git
xorg-dev
mesa-common-dev
libdrm-dev
libtool
build-essential
03) DOWNLOAD THE UNCOMPILED DRIVER TO YOUR PERSONAL DOWNLOAD DIRECTORY
Command:
git clone git://github.com/hellnest/xf86-video-sismedia-0.9.1.git
04) [IN TERMINAL EMULATOR, GET LOGGED AS ROOT IN THE DOWNLOAD DIRECTORY OF THE UNCOMPILATED DRIVER]
Open your file manager (Thunar, Nautilus, etc), navigate to the directory of the downloaded uncompilated driver, right-click and choose to open directory as root, right-click on that new directory window and choose to open a terminal in that directory.
<<--WARNING: FAILURE TO EXECUTE THE COMMANDS BELOW IN TERMINAL LOGGED AS ROOT MAY CAUSE YOUR INSTALLATION & COMPILATION TO FAIL, ESPECIALLY IF YOU INSTALLED LINUX IN MULTIPLE PARTITIONS, e.g, one partition for "/" [root], another for "/home", etc -->>
05) CONFIGURE YOUR DRIVER
In terminal (logged as root as explained above) run the command to precompilate your driver in your system.
Original Command:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
[ I myself prefer to be double-sure and use the following command.
Alternate Command:
sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
as a precaution not to precompilate the driver as user instead of root ]
06) COMPILE YOUR DRIVER
In the same Terminal of above compile your driver as root.
Original Command:
make
[Alternate Command:
sudo make
as a precaution not to compile the driver as user insteado of root ]
07) INSTALL YOUR COMPILED DRIVER
In the same Terminal of above install your compiled driver into your system.
Command:
sudo make install
08) REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM AND CHECK YOUR VIDEO RESOLUTION
In 99% of the cases the system will reboot using your highest resolution and/or allow the user to configure the desktop to the available resolution supported by your system and you may go to step 10 to configure your video output to your player.
09) IN CASE YOUR SYSTEM ONLY BOOT IN 1280x800 AFTER YOU REBOOT AND YOUR SYSTEM SUPPORTS A HIGHER RESOLUTION OF 1366x768
- Create an empty text file called "xorg.conf" in the directory "/etc/X11" [and it is better for you to be logged as root].
Typical Command:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- Add the following command lines to that text file:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "UseTiming1366" "yes"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
- Save the file xorg.conf and reboot
10) CONFIGURE YOUR VIDEO OUTPUT TO WATCH MOVIES AND VIDEOS
One caveat of this driver is that it only supports one kind of video output, namely "xwindow" (x11/xshm/xv) and which by the way is NOT supported by some default video players that come preinstalled in some distros, e.g, TOTEM and BANSHEE. In case your system have one of these video players you will have to uninstall them (including any Firefox plugins such as totem-mozilla and which may be exchanged to gecko-mediaplayer for example) and install one of the video players which offer support for X11, such as VLC, SMplayer or Gnome-mplayer. When you configure your player DO NOT FORGET to "Preferences" (or "Options" or "Settings" depending on your video player) and choose as video output "X11", "X11 (slow)", "xwindow" or "xwindow (x11/xshm/xv)" as the case may be.
To configure the video output of your system, use the following command.
Typical Command:
gstreamer-properties
and on the window that will open go the "VIDEO" TAB and choose as your default video output the plugin "Xwindow System (X11/Xshm/Xv)"