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By default Ubuntu will use the open source 'ati' or 'radeon' driver for cards made by ATI. Many users however prefer the proprietary 'fglrx' driver, provided by ati.com. The instructions on this page will tell you how to use this driver.

Prerequisites

Make sure the following things are true about your video card:

• It is a 'Radeon' card
• The model of the card is in the 9xxx series, 9500 or higher, or it is in the X series (e.g. X300), or it has TV-Out capability. The 'fglrx' driver does not support cards earlier than the 8500.
• The command lspci reveals a card with "ATI" in its name
• You need hardware-accelerated 3D support, or display refresh rates higher than 60 Hz. The open source drivers are fine for all other areas.

Note that if you own an ATi card from the R400 series or below, you already have accelerated 3D with the default drivers. These cards include:

• R400 series Xnnn (X800, X750, etc)
• R300 series (9300+)
• R200 and R100 series (9200 and below)

The TV-Out functionality may not work with the open source drivers; if you don't have TV-Out or don't want to use it, however, then you probably don't need to use fglrx.

Install instructions for Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake)

{{{sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r) sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx sudo aticonfig --initial sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv}}}

Then you need to manually edit the xorg.conf file. So:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Under Section "Screen" The Identifier line needs to be changed to:

     Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"

Reboot.

Confirm it worked: {{{$ fglrxinfo display: :0.0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9700 Generic OpenGL version string: 2.0.5755 (8.24.8)}}}

Source: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Dapper_Installation_Guide

If you receive a message Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":1.0, edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the line load "dri" in Section "Module"

Install instructions for Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) and Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

There are 2 ways you can get 3D acceleration working. The preferred way is to use the drivers provided by Ubuntu. More advanced users can also try the drivers from ati.com. Both approaches are documented below, you need to take only one of them. The Ubuntu-provided ones are the safest bet, the ati.com ones however sometimes are needed (eg: when you need hibernation)

Ubuntu provided drivers

1. Install the kernel drivers. These drivers should be installed by default, but it's better to make sure they are installed. You need the package linux-$arch, where you replace $arch by the CPU architecture for the machine. This is 386 for Intel Pentium, 686 for Celeron, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium 4 without Hyper-Threading. 686-smp for Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading, or k7 or k7-smp for AMD athlon. On 64-bit systems, this may be amd64-generic, amd64-k8, amd64-k8-smp, or amd64-xeon.

   sudo apt-get install linux-686

2. Install the xorg-driver-fglrx package:

   sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

3. Add fglrx to /etc/modules (optional, the advantages/drawbacks of this are: ......):

   echo fglrx | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

4. Reconfigure Xserver:

   sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

   If ati is auto-selected at the video card selection screen, then go down to select fglrx. Leave other settings to their default value. Or, if you really know what you're doing, do the following instead:

   sudo sed -e 's/"ati"/"fglrx"/' -i /etc/X11/xorg.conf

5. Restart your computer

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!

1. Download the apropiate drivers from [https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=3380 ati.com]. You will need the ATI Driver Installer, not the seperate XFree86/X.org rpm packages. Save the installer into an empty directory (or at least one containing no *.deb files), since it will create several new files.

2. Make sure the universe section of the Ubuntu repositories is enabled (See the AddingRepositoriesHowto)

3. Perform the following commands (where <version> is the version number of the installer):

   sudo apt-get install fakeroot gcc-3.4 module-assistant build-essential debhelper
   chmod +x ati-driver-installer-<version>.run
   fakeroot ./ati-driver-installer-<version>.run

Choose "Generate distribution specific packages" and "Ubuntu" and the Ubuntu version you use. If your window is too small for you to see all of the options use Alt+LeftMouseButton on the window to move it out of the screen's boundaries. (Gnome, and KDE)

sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo module-assistant build,install fglrx-kernel
reboot

You do not need to take all these steps if you run an up-to-date Breezy installation on a 32 bit system. Dennis Kaarsemaker provides these packages in a repository. Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://mirror.ubuntulinux.nl/ breezy-seveas drivers

Then you can simply install the ubuntu-fglrx-$arch (see above for the meaning of $arch) package.

When you install from ati.com drivers or the breezy-seveas repository, you still need to change xorg.conf and add the fglrx module to /etc/modules as described under "Ubuntu provided drivers".

Notes

• If the ATI driver installer complains about your Xorg 7.0.0 (Dapper flights) being too new, use following:

  X_VERSION=x690 fakeroot ./ati-driver-installer-<version>.run

• 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"

• If you're using an AMD64 configuration and your Xorg.0.log mentions a 'duplicate symbol rol_long' message, comment out the 'Load "int10"' line in the Module section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• If you are using an ATI Radeon Xpress 200M on an AMD64 CPU and the fglrx driver crashes with a blank screen on startup, change your BIOS settings to use the UMA+Sideport Video Mode with 128MB of Shared Video Memory. See http://ensode.net/ati_radeon_xpress_200m_linux.html

• If you are going to compile 3d applications, you will want to install the fglrx-driver-dev package

• The fglrx doesn't support 16 bit colour on some chip sets, if you have problems with X locking up on boot try setting this in your xorg.conf file to 24

• 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 installed either linux-$arch or ubuntu-fglrx-$arch.Another reason for either this error message, or incorrect driver information when running fglrxinfo (reports that the mesa driver is still being used) could be that the (K)Ubuntu fglrx drivers were not uninstalled before installing the ATI driver, or that the restricted-modules package is installed. To fix this issue, start Adept or Synaptic and remove the fglrx packages supplied with (K)Ubuntu as well as the restricted-modules package. Quit KDE and go to a console.

  sudo modprobe -r fglrx
  sudo gedit /etc/X11R6/xorg.conf

  Change the driver for the device to 'ati' instead of fglrx to use the standard Xorg supplied driver.

  startx

  Now re-run the ATI driver installation

• If there are no obvious error messages in Xorg.0.log but 3D acceleration is still not working, you should look at glxinfo output in debug mode:

  LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo

  Possibly there are some errors in the beginning concerning not found drivers in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/. This could be the case if you used the driver from ATI and are now using again the provided fglrx driver. ATI's fglrx driver installs a script in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx which changes the search path for libraries, causing 3D-related errors. In this case just remove the script:

  sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx

• Sometimes 2D acceleration with xv is not enabled. You need this for smooth video playback among other things. In this case you should check if your /etc/X11/xorg.conf contains the line Option "VideoOverlay" "on" in the corresponding section:

  Section "Device"
          Identifier      "ATI Radeon"
          Driver          "fglrx"
          Option          "VideoOverlay" "on"
          BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
  EndSection

• 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) and TV out.

Verified install from repository & install from ati to work on Kubuntu 6.06 by the WikiTeam - RichJohnson

CategoryDocumentation