[How-To] ATI open source driver installation - Overclock.net

Melcar · 05-19-09

This is a short guide on how to get the ATI open source drivers installed. This guide targets Ubuntu, but should work for any distro too.

There are currently 2 open source drives for ATI cards: radeon and radeonhd. Ubuntu comes with radeon installed by default, but radeonhd is easily obtained with Synaptic (just search for it and install it).
Depending on your distro a different version of the drivers may be available (Ubuntu Jaunty has radeon_6.12.1 and radeonhd_1.2.4), so check the respective driver's wiki for information on what is supported in what version.

(the following assumes a "virgin" xorg.conf)

If you need to generate a fresh copy of your xorg.conf (advisable) simply run the following from the terminal:

Code:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

1.- Open a terminal and type:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2.- Look for your Device section and append the following option:

Code:

Driver   "radeon"  #or radeonhd

3.- Save and close the file

4.- Reboot

Provided your card is supported by the driver, you should now have working 2D/3D.

Notes:

* These drivers do not have complete support for all cards. Check their respective wikis for support infortmation.

* These drivers tend to have much better 2D acceleration and accelerated movie playback than fglrx. Compiz and other composite managers are perfectly usable too.

* Don't expect awesome 3D performance. In my testing, radeon has 20-50% the speed of fglrx.

* Drivers are only OpenGL 1.3 (hardware accel.), so if you plan to run applications that need something higher (WINE for instance) these are not for you.

Links of interest:

radeon wiki
radeonhd wiki