I've been using this computer to play Kerbal 1.05 without any problems. Before installing version 1.1, I uninstalled version 1.05. The uninstall and installation seemed to go smoothly but, now, when I launch Kerbal, the screen goes black for twenty seconds or so before crashing.

I launched Kerbal via command line to catch any errors, but all I got was a weird error about support/gog.com.shlib before the core dumped. I will post the error text below. There are some messages about controller support right before the crash, but I do not have any controllers plugged in.

I thought I would try the forum before I go to official support. Any help or insight would be valuable and appreciated and I can provide more info if necessary. Thanks!

My specs (via sysinfo):
Xubuntu 14.04
AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 4450B
4945 MiB Ram
AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6570 using proprietary drivers

The relevant error message:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
displaymanager : xrandr version warning. 1.4
displaymanager : trying .X11-unix
client :0 has 1 screens
displaymanager screen (0): 1280 x 768
Using libudev for joystick management

Importing game controller configs
support/gog_com.shlib: line 94: 17715 Aborted (core dumped) ./"${bin_64}"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have same issue on Debian as well and Launcher is not working, it's downloading Patcher thats it.

KSP 1.0.5 was performing extremely well with opensource radeon driver at 1920x1080 on HD5850.
The only caveat, is requirement to install libtxc-dxtn (s3 texture compression), which is part of the driver in proprietary drivers.

Thanks for this. Turns out, much to my surprise, AA was the issue.

Now I'm having weird glitches where the ground isn't rendering, but I can work out the kinks as long as the game runs! I'm actually extremely pleased with how much better the game is running now on my limited hardware. I knew 1.1 was supposed to introduce some optimization, but it's way more effective than I was expecting (well, aside from the ground not rendering lol)!

Anyways, blah blah blah. Thanks again, immi, and everyone who took the time to respond.

The problem in this thread so far - is that either proprietary graphics driver from AMD has problems with antialiasing, or there is a problem with antialiasing on Linux version of KSP.

In your case, you have a completely different problem. I suggest you open the new thread, go to KSP directory (../KSP/game/), open a terminal there, and then run the KSP executable directly.

The amd64 bit version is called "KSP.x86_64", so run "./KSP.x86_64" if you want 64 bit version.
The x86 32bit version is called "KSP.x86", so run "./KSP.x86" if you want 32bit version.

Then copy-paste the output.
Also specify your distribution, your architecture, your graphics card and type of the driver. The fairings were also rendered incorrect with open drivers (1.0.5), I wonder if this hangs together. This wasn't a big issue though, as they were just rentered with some visual trash, were usable, and were not major part of the game.

I'm not sure what fairings are or what they're talking about in this thread, to be honest, so I don't know if this is connected or not.

However, as I mentioned before, the ground only appears the first or second time I go to the launchpad, then vanishes. I thought it would be a minor kink, but it actually makes the game unplayable. I now think it may be related to outdated drivers and I wonder if the AA crash is related.

According to this incredibly helpful thread, the proprietary drivers I'm using are out of date since I used the Alternative Drivers utility, thinking it would automatically update my drivers (which it frankly should do). I'm probably not the only person who's made this mistake.

I'm debating now if it's worth risking manually updating the drivers, which seems somewhat daunting and dangerous, in the hope it fixes the issue, or revert to 1.05.

I use HD5850 since forever with opensource driver. It works mightly fine with 1.0.5. Why would you need catalyst? Ok, if it were nvidia - they consider noveau - trash, but AMD treat it as equal. I imagine it only pays of on very recent AMD hardware. Also, they recently completely changed the driver - its kernel part (hardware driving bits) is shared with open driver (radeon), its only userspace part (basically opengl to hardware translation library) which matters.

I can easily imagine 6570 to give at least 90% performance of proprietary driver, if not on same level. Just make sure the kernel is 4.xx series and you have libtxc-dxtc installed. Just read the thread a bit, this thing made my day!
"Welcome to the space center"... Center which is literally floating in space!

Is that right? I suppose I just assumed it was a Nvidia situation in terms of proprietary vs open source. I don't have a lot of experience with AMD.

That said, I tried before to switch back to the open source drivers via the Additional Drivers utility, but after it asks for my password, it just reverts to the proprietary driver and nothing changes. Do I need to uninstall the proprietary drivers? I've done a little research, but I haven't found much which usually means I'm missing something obvious.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

EDIT: Actually, I just checked: my kernel is only 3.16 and libtxc-dxtc doesn't show up in my Aptitude search (only dxtn).

Opensource currently misses/lacks:
- crossfire (proprietary never shined here)
- performance on newest generation cards and some corner cases
- support on very old hardware, like pre HD3000

Its OpenGL4 capable driver (opengl3.3 was fully accelerated half-year ago), with video acceleration, reclocking etc.
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
Its development began around 2012 and it skyrocketed in 3 years from software rendering to near complete hardware implementation across all cards.

NVidia is completely different thing, its proprietary driver is top-notch, but when you have an issue - they are hard to reach, and when your hardware is few years old, its quickly moved into legacy driver. Then you have to use noveau, and noveau was and is a hit or miss, which is not nearly close to consistency with opensource "radeon/amdgpu".

Yes, you have to uninstall fglrx, and yes plan for the worse. =)

Have a live bootable media ready, which has access to internet.

Look for things you need to clear up upfront, print them out. Then just uninstall fglrx packages and make sure those files and links are really clean. Make sure you have some VESA mode for Xorg installed or basic amd drivers just for 2D.

If Xorg refuses to boot - because proprietary driver might live a file or link here and there, which can confuse Xorg and it won't start. Also, remember to backup and clean/check your /etc/X11/Xorg.conf or however this is/where it is in your system to be "fglrx"-free.

The opensource driver consists of kernel driver (which is included in kernel by default) and optional firmware (read - highly recommended). The firmware is used to drive the GPU, just like Nvidia (noveau also extracts firmware from nvidia proprietary driver). Intel has firmware written in the chip, so technically it also loads. Without firmware your 3d might not work well, or you have issues with video acceleration and power management.

Then the userspace part - consists of libdrm (drm as in Direct Rendering Manager), xserver fake thin driver xserver-xorg-video-radeon (because most of functionality went inside kernel), libgl1-mesa-dri (mesa opengl implementation, which calls radeon driver). Also make sure to install libtxc-dxtn, the S3 version, since this is the method textures are loaded into graphics hardware. The S2 version is obsolete, as its patent-free alternative but S3 patent stopped being an issue.

You'll have to clean the driver. The other way, is to install new system.
The new AMD proprietary driver is nicely packaged and should play along nicely with radeon - as in "not breaking stuff" on installation/removal. Should you want it. I never had to.
Yeah, its S3TC aka DXT1/5, mistyped the "lib(rary)t(e)x(ture)c(ompression)-d(irect)xt(exture)n(n=1... n)....

You need 4.x series kernel, the 3.xx series is too early one. I think the power management switched to fully dynamic only since around 3.13. Thats pretty important. If there is no newer kernel available, grab fresh-er OS.

Man ... this forum... I had this long post ready and keep trying to post it for a couple of hours now, it always gets stuck at Processing.

Anyways, will try to just write less ...

It's really the AA that is giving me trouble. I have to turn it off in the config.txt. Additionally, I have to manually delete the Unity3d folder in my .config EVERY TIME I want to run the program. What's up with that?

Also, I get the missing ground and ocean bug as well. What can I do?

My Specs are as follows:

OS: Linux 3.13 Ubuntu 14.04 64bit
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 7750 Dual-Core Processor (2)
RAM: 3952
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5450 (905MB)
SM: 30 (OpenGL 4.5 [4.5.13399 Compatibility Profile Context 15.20.1013])
RT Formats: ARGB32, Depth, ARGBHalf, Shadowmap, RGB565, ARGB4444, ARGB1555, Default, ARGB2101010, DefaultHDR, ARGBFloat, RGFloat, RGHalf, RFloat, RHalf, R8

Any thoughts?

Edit:
Still not able to execute the program in a terminal. It keeps giving me "Command not found" even though I'm in the right folder. Double-Clicking on KSP.x86_64 in Nautilus works. And is actually the only way for me to start, as going through the start.sh with the desktop icon is not working either way.

Ok, since you refused to do what I asked you - namely to open a new thread and publish all the data, lets continue from what it is.


This happens predominately when you publish a post, which has illegal uses of BB code. Notably the "bracket"quote"bracket" are incorrectly nested or illegal, or there are any illegal BB code.

If you are on Firefox, you can use TextareaCache extension to remedy for lost text.


Please read this post to the end, then follow THIS link, open the HIDDEN sections are read carefully step for step.

If you are using opensource radeon driver, your kernel is outdated. Consider installing fresh version, the ideal kernel is 4.xx.

If you are using proprietary closed source fglrx driver, you need to remove it completely and then decide:
- to migrate to opensource radeon driver, or
- to migrate to new proprietary closed source catalyst driver

Both are officially developed by AMD.

Catalyst is advisable only if you have a trouble with open driver. Typically, its the high-end recently made AMD gpu - as closed source driver offers not many benefits and more maintance problems, because its an external package.

The open driver is maintained using standart linux parts, partially in kernel, partially in libraries and updates transparent over the OS life like any other package.

Personally, I am using SolydK, which is Debian Stable (and it easily migrates to newer release).

Your hardware is pretty low-level for KSP. I say this, because I had issues with athlon II x4 and 5850 on 1.0.5, having 8gb of ram and had to upgrade the CPU.
Consider grabbing a used graphics card and upgrading CPU (2500k, i7 9xx or 8xx, phenom II etc).
The memory should suffice to run unmodded game, without going into swap.

This indicates you are using proprietary graphics driver. Combined with the fact of using older kernel, you are very probably in same situation as OP.
Now please open the link (which OP provided) and read the steps to upgrade the driver.

The old FGLRX driver was developed for ATI/AMD FireGL graphics cards and had no driver parts from windows driver. This is in contrast to Nvidia, which uses the same code base (windows driver) for all drivers on all OSes.

Because of that FGLRX was very unstable and troublesome when used on with software, it was not tested this. Its OpenGL implementation was also fragile.

Radeon opensource driver was developed from ground up using native Linux interfaces and is currently about the same in terms of performance with FGLRX. The newer proprietary driver - catalyst, uses part of opensource driver (in kernel) and other closed part is in userspace (not OS kernel, regular system files).

Either way FGLRX is outdated and will not be fixed.

To list files in current folder, type:
ls -alh
to show all files.


To run the file, type:
./xxxxx

where xxxx is the file name. For example, for "KSP.x86" you type:
./KSP.x86

The dot slash in front is required, because it denotes the file in current directory rather than in common location for binary programs (type "echo $PATH" without quotes to see those common locations)

To short-cut, you can type dot slash, followed by first few characters, then press [TAB] key to autocomplete the name.

Quick answer as I'm on my way to work.

Even though I didn't do what you asked me to you still gave a polite, comprehensive and extensive answer to my question.

+1 for this poster, thank you very much. Is there a button I can press to give you props for that?

As you gave me quite a laundry list of things to remedy I'll have to get back to you in the future. I'll try to tackle the driver /kernel issue first.

Thanks again! Great poster.