[Pkg-fglrx-devel] Using fglrx-driver and fglrx-legacy-driver together

[William Diehl]

Greetings Fglrx packaging team:

I have an HP Pavilion Dv7-4170us Entertainment laptop with a Phenom II
Triple Core N850 using an AMD/ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4250 Integrated
GPU and an AMD/ATi Manhattan Mobility Radeon HD 5470 Discrete GPU with
AMD/ATI Cedar HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5400/6300 Series].

The integrated Radeon HD 4250 needs the fglrx-legacy-driver.

The discrete Radeon HD 5470 needs the fglrx-driver.

Is there a way to use the fglrx-driver and fglrx-legacy-driver
together and switch between them as needed?

For over 3 years, I have been using the Wheezy
xserver-xorg-video-radeon driver, along with firmware-linux-nonfree
and controlling which video card is active with VGA_Switcheroo and
using power_profile for power management. With the 5470 card active,
some operations freeze, which requires the power be turned off then
restarting the machine.

I have been trying to resolve problems (such as, Iceweasel menu items
disappearing/reappearing, Iceweasel-release crashing while performing
certain operations, Libre Office items disappearing/reappearing) that
I believe could be related to the video cards and video driver(s).

For Windows 7, HP customized the AMD Catalyst driver to work with this
dual AMD/ATi 4250/5470 video configuration. While on AC power, the
5470 card is active. When on battery, the option to switch to the 4250
card is offered. Since the xserver-xorg-video-radeon driver may not be
optimal for this machine, using the fglrx driver(s) may be the only
way to fully use Debian on this machine.

After considerable searching, I have not found any posts for how to
use fglrx-driver and fglrx-legacy-driver together, if they can be.

This problem is preventing me from upgrading beyond Wheezy and/or
using newer kernels than provided in Wheezy as well as using release
versions of Iceweasel (currently stuck at 24.5-esr).

Could you please offer some guidance or point me to sources that will
clarify this issue for me? Is is possible to use the fglrx-driver and
fglrx-legacy-driver together and switch between them as needed?

Thank you.