As I previously posted i
switched my Inspiron 8600 to Ubuntu and been loving Ubuntu ever-since, however I do have my gripes. Of particular concern is driver installation - Graphics drivers mostly. But before I get to that I did a clean install of Ubuntu on the weekend. Previously I let the installer handle the installation completely (it was too easy) and most of hte time that was happenning i was playing Nibbles, so I let nothing worry me apart from trying to get the cherries and food for my Snake (btw speaking of Snake I went and saw Snakes on a Plane... Its horrible! SLJ's rep went -1 anywhoo) this time however I've taken a stab at doing it my way... So instead of the default Ext3 partitioning - after several days of reading up on this - I decided to partition it using ResizerFS. Heres the layout:
/dev/hda6 = / (Root)
/dev/hda7 = /home/ (Users)
Now this baby's screaming along! Next up was migrating from my old Ubuntu install to the new one, after you boot into your system go and copy the downloaded packages from
/var/cache/apt/archives/ to the same location (
sudo nautilus /var/cache/apt/archives/) on your new system. This way you dont need to redownload the updates you already have downloaded. But I installed my graphics driver first and man was that a mess... In Window's we'd grab the latest Catalyst, uninstall the existing one and get
DriveCleaner to cleanup any nasties left by the uninstaller. In Ubuntu however I've had a whale'n-***-OMG-This-Is-Gahay of a time getting the latest ATI drivers (
v8.28.8) installed.
Being a n00b i followed the guide from ATI exactly when I first installed and apon reboot I got the dreaded Mesa drivers:
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.4.1)
So after several hundred reboots (including ten times the amount of cursing at each reboot) I finally got it working and for your sake I'll tell you how.
- Download the driver from the ATI site, save it into your home folder
- Bring up the terminal
- Run
sudo chmod 777 ati-driver-installer-8.28.8.run to the file executable
- Run the installer,
sudo sh ati-driver-installer-8.28.8.run
- Install with default options (Install Driver -> Automatic -> Agree -> Next -> Blah)
- *AFTER* the install you have to reconfigure xorg with this:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
- Accept all the defaults but make sure you select
fglrx as your driver! Then make sure that glx and dri are enabled.
- reboot:
sudo shutdown -r now
- after reboot make sure your running the latest driver:
fglrxinfo which should print out (something similar to this):
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON 9600 Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6011 (8.28.8)
- Just to make sure its all good run some tests, my scores are included, these were lower than what I got with the original ATI drivers that came with ubuntu:
thushan@NOTEBOOK04:~$ fgl_glxgears -fbo
Using GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
619 frames in 5.0 seconds = 123.800 FPS
624 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.800 FPS
624 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.800 FPS
625 frames in 5.0 seconds = 125.000 FPS
624 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.800 FPS
625 frames in 5.0 seconds = 125.000 FPS
624 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.800 FPS
thushan@NOTEBOOK04:~$ glxgears -printfps
627 frames in 5.0 seconds = 125.213 FPS
622 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.391 FPS
621 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.094 FPS
625 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.992 FPS
622 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.392 FPS
621 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.192 FPS
Finally, heres some pages I tried before (and wasted several hours on), there were lots more but I cant find them:
If you do have problems and/or you've done alot of the tutes/how-to's out there its best you start off clean. Boot in with Mesa installed and...
- Open Terminal and run
sudo rm /usr/src/flgrx-kernel*.deb
- Then goto Synaptic Package Manager, search for "fglrx" and remove 'fglrx-control', 'fglrx-kernel-source', 'xorg-driver-fglrx' & 'xserver-xorg-driver-ati' if any are installed (right click, 'Mark For Removal' click Apply!)
-
- Run
sudo modprobe -r fglrx
Best of luck!