openswitch

No, not those kind of drivers. Today, as I was setting up my brand new computer with Ubuntu … wait, let me start by saying that installation went perfectly smoothly and my computer worked just fine after the install. The problem lay in that while Ubuntu is EXTREMELY good at detecting and configuring graphics cards, it struggles a little bit with 3D support (at least, that’s what I’ve read). After the installation I did have a perfectly functioning computer but the 3D graphics weren’t up to par. Things were jerky, scrolling (like on web pages) was … well … present, but not smooth at all. Turns out I needed to install some proprietary drivers for my ATI Radeon x1300 256Mb graphics card. After I performed the following steps my new computer is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. The graphics are tremendous and the whole thing rocks my socks.

OK, enough with the chit chat, here’s what I did to install the proprietary drivers for my graphics card.

First, I enabled all of the repositories in Synaptic Package Manager.

Then I opened up a terminal and used this command to install the drivers:

$ sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx-control

My previous instructions, which I deleted in order to keep this post somewhat clutter-free, were evidently unnecessary. I’ve been told by the engineering for the graphics driver team that after installing the correct drivers for your ATI graphics card, all you need to do is open up a terminal and run this command:

$ sudo aticonfig --initial

If you try this method please do let me know if it worked for you.

UPDATE 2/26/07: I was curious if the above method would work for me so I reinstalled Ubuntu and tried the above method. The drivers downloaded and installed correctly but the sudo aticonfig —initial command didn’t work for me. That’s not to say it won’t work for you, just sharing my experience. But if you find that after installing the fglrx drivers from xorg you’re still not getting 3D acceleration I found the following workaround on the ubunut forums; this workaround worked like a charm for me. Since, as far as I know, it was first suggested by Jewo on the forums I’m officially dubbing this workaround the “Jewo workaround”. Note that this has only be tried on my graphics card (ATI Radeon X1300 256Mb).

Step #1- Download and install the drivers from xorg:

$ sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx-control

Step #2- Open up your xorg.conf file with this command:

$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Step #3- Find the “Device” section and make sure it contains this code:

Driver "fglrx"
Option "mtrr" "off"
Option "UseFastTLS" "2"
Option "EnablePrivateBackZ" "on" # Gentoo Ati Driver Howto recommends this for X1300
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no" # allow xorg to use the intel_agp module

Step #4- Now scroll to the very bottom of the xorg.conf file and add this code:

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "false"
EndSection

Save the file and restart your computer. No promises, your mileage may vary. Good luck!