Via Technologies

The proprietary VIA drivers (xf86-video-via) are not available since 2008 as they are considered unstable and insecure. The unmaintained xf86-video-unichrome driver is not packaged since 2012 either.

Installation

To get the OpenChrome driver, install the xf86-video-openchrome^AUR package.

The xorg.conf driver name is openchrome.

Troubleshooting

To enable any of the following options to fix issues, first create a new file 10-openchrome.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "My Device Name"
    Driver "openchrome"
EndSection

Artifacts

If your X Server shows artifacts and fails to redraw some windows, try disabling the EnableAGPDMA option:

Option     "EnableAGPDMA"               "false"

If your machine freeze at startup (GDM) or after login (SLiM), try adding the XAA option XaaNoImageWriteRect. Note that this only applies if you are using the XAA acceleration method (configured by the AccelMethod option). Since 0.2.906, the default acceleration method is EXA.

Option "XaaNoImageWriteRect"

If you experience significant CPU usage and low UI framerate, try adding:

Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"

Black screen when booting from LiveCD

If you experience a black screen when booting from Live-CD, add modprobe.blacklist=viafb on the kernel command line.

Note: The nomodeset option will probably not work here.

After installing the system you will need to blacklist the viafb module.

DPMS problems

If you experience problems with DPMS not turning off laptop's backlight, try adding:

Option "VBEModes" "true"

to the device section of xorg.conf.

Hangup on exit

If your computer crashes when closing X, you may try not using the vesa driver for the kernel console. Just delete the vga-related parameters from the kernel command line.