By, default the laptop has installed some old video drivers for the Radeon 6490m graphics card and with java-1_6_0-sun pre-installed. You can play minecraft with these settings, but the game will be laggy, and will have some graphics glitches which will make the game unplayable. The magic happens if you use the variable LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT, without this, the game will exit before entering the game.
I) How to play on default setup, I do not recommend to play on the default setup:
I) Steps (not recommended):
1) Make sure that the Radeon video card is activated. Go to "Catalyst Control Center" and select the high performance GPU:
"Computer" -> "More Applications..." -> "System" -> "AMD Catalyst Control Ce... (select the one that tooltip says: Allows the configuration of the AMD graphics hardware settings that requires administrative access.) " -> Type your root password -> Select "High performance GPU for optimal graphics performance", then reboot if required.
2) Now you can open terminal and type the following command on a single line:
env LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 java -cp /home/your_path_to/minecraft.jar net.minecraft.LauncherFrame
The option LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT will lower your framerate. If you are not satisfied with the low framerate you can try with the drivers from www.amd.com:
II) How to play on the setup with the latest Radeon drivers, the recommended way:
II) Steps (recommended):
1) Download the latest drivers from www.amd.com -> select "Support and drivers" -> on the left select the following options:
Component Category - Notebook Graphics
Product Line - Radeon HD Series
Product Model - Radeon HD 6xxxM Series
Operating System - Linux x86
Click "View results" and Download.
At the time I am writing this, the file is called "amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.zip" you will find a more recent version. The version I have downloaded works very well on Hp4530s + Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 11.
2)Remove the existing drivers:
Go to "Computer" -> "Install Software" -> type in your root password.
Uninstall the following 2 packets: "ati-fglrxG02-HP" and "x11-video-fglrxG02-HP", or the packets which have a similar name.
3) Install the downloaded driver:
Extract the content of the previously downloaded archive with your favorite archive manager to a known location, then open a terminal, change directory ("cd") to that location and launch the installer with "sudo":
cd
chmod +x *.run
sudo ./amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.run
sudo aticonfig --initial
sudo ./amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.run
sudo aticonfig --initial
(note that you have to adjust the name of the *.run file with the name of the file you downloaded and extracted)
The installation will request a reboot.
4) Make sure that the Radeon graphics card is activated in "Catalyst Control Center". (like described above) Reboot if required. Each time you want to switch between the Radeon and the Intel graphics card, you have to reboot the laptop.
5) Launch minecraft:
java -jar /home/your-path-to/minecraft.jar
Enoy the high FPS !!!
I observed that the game has a bit more FPS in Suse Linux Desktop Enterprise 11 than in Windows 7 and it feels more fluent and fast.
