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Note: Currently, ATI Drivers for AMD64 are only available in Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) and Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Install the ATI (fglrx) Driver if any of these are true:

• You know you own a "Radeon" card
• Your card model is an entire number in the 9xxx series, and is equal to or above 9500 (e.g. 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800), or your card model begins with 'X' (e.g. X300, X600, X700, X800)

• cat /proc/pci reveals a card with "ATI" in it

• You need hardware-accelerated 3D support; bearing in mind that the standard driver does 2D perfectly fine.
• If you own an ATI card that is not on this list, you already have accelerated 3D.

Hoary Hedgehog (Ubuntu 5.04) and Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Note: Currently, ATI Drivers for AMD64 are not available in Breezy (Ubuntu 5.10)

1. Install the xorg-driver-fglrx package:

   sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

2. Add fglrx to /etc/modules:

   echo fglrx | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

   • This command won't have any effect until you reboot. To load the kernel module immediately, run sudo depmod -a ; sudo modprobe fglrx, but this will only work if you have already rebooted since upgrading the kernel. If it doesn't work, perform the next step (below) and then reboot.

3. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change "ati" to "fglrx", perhaps with a command like: sudo sed -i -e 's/"ati"/"fglrx"/' /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Alternatively, just use your favourite text editor, or use sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and select "fglrx" instead of "ati".

4. Restart your machine

Warty Warthog (Ubuntu 4.10)

1. Install the following package for Warty:

   sudo apt-get install fglrx-driver

2. Add fglrx to /etc/modules:

   echo fglrx | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

   • This command won't have any effect until you reboot. To load the kernel module immediately, run sudo depmod -a ; sudo modprobe fglrx, but this will only work if you have already rebooted since upgrading the kernel. If it doesn't work, perform the next step (below) and then reboot.

3. Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and change "ati" to "fglrx", perhaps with a command like:

   • sudo sed -i -e 's/"ati"/"fglrx"/'/etc/X11/XF86Config-4. Alternatively, just use your favourite text editor, or use sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 and select "fglrx" instead of "ati".

4. Restart your machine

Using the drivers from ati.com

As of november 2005, ati provides usable, properly packaged drivers which can be used on Ubuntu. They can even be installed easily! Note: the installer does not seem to be compatible with the Live CD (Ubuntu crashes while unpacking the installer)!

1. Download the drivers from [https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=300 ati.com] (this link is for i386, i686 is available too) into an empty directory (or at least one containing no *.deb files).

2. Make sure the "Universe" versions of the Ubuntu repositories are enabled.
3. sudo apt-get install fakeroot gcc-3.4 module-assistant build-essential debhelper
4. chmod +x ati-driver-installer-8.19.10-i386.run
5. fakeroot ./ati-driver-installer-8.19.10-i386.run
6. Choose "Generate distribution specific packages" and "Ubuntu" and the UBuntu version you use
7. After the installer has run, do: sudo dpkg -i *.deb
8. then do: sudo module-assistant build,install fglrx-kernel
9. Make sure you use fglrx in xorg.conf and reboot

10. Enjoy

Notes

Common issue: If you have an nforce2 chipset motherboard or if your Xorg.0.log reveals troubles when initialising AGP, put this in the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"

Note (optional): If you are going to compile 3d applications, you will want to install the fglrx-driver-dev package

Note If you are having problems related to DRI or 3d acceleration and the following lines show up in your /var/log/Xorg.0.log

(WW) fglrx(0): Kernel Module version does *not* match driver.
(EE) fglrx(0): incompatible kernel module detected - HW accelerated OpenGL will not work

then make sure you have linux-restricted-modules installed for your kernel (type sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)).

Note (optional): You might want to install the fglrx-control package, which provides a control panel to configure graphics card options such as dual-head display (two monitors).

Note If your screen goes blank after the reboot and your card has two outputs... try connecting your monitor to the other output. Or you can make the card send the same image to both outputs by adding the following line in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, in the same section where you put fglrx: Option "MonitorLayout" "Auto,Auto"

ATI driver version 8.12.10 is available in breezy, which should fix this problem + have a decent performance improvement.

Troubleshooting

execute the command:

fglrxinfo

Something like this should appear:

display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON X800 PRO Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.3.4769 (X4.3.0-8.8.25)

If it doesn't, something is wrong. One solution is to try installing the drivers while X is stopped.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to bring up a command-line terminal.

2. Execute the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

3. Make sure the fglrx module isn't loaded with the command:

sudo modprobe -r fglrx

4. Reinstall the drivers using apt.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-restricted-modules-2.6.10-5-<your architecture here> xorg-driver-fglrx

replace <your architecture here> with your architecture (386, 586, etc..)

5. Restart X with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

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