Atidrivers

The latest fglrx driver supports Radeon 9500+ and the X-series cards up to X1900.

Contents 1 Disable Composite Extension 2 Installation 2.1 Install the Driver the Pardus Way 2.2 Configure the Driver 2.3 Finish the Installation 3 Post-Installation Checks 3.1 Verifying 3.2 Additional configure with aticonfig tool

Disable Composite Extension

The Composite extension is enabled by default, however, fglrx does not yet support Composite with DRI. In order to disable Composite you have to edit the xorg.conf file:

sudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and add these lines at the end of the file:

Section "Extensions"
       Option  "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Another option is to use nano directly from the terminal.

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Installation

Install the Driver the Pardus Way

 sudo pisi it http://paketler.pardus.org.tr/pardus-2007-test/ati-drivers-8.40.4-21-24.pisi

Configure the Driver

• Note: An alternative to the aticonfig --initial command is to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the string "ati" with "fglrx" in the "Device" section. This way you won't lose your old "Screen" and "Monitor" settings. Afterwards you can use aticonfig for setting overlay etc. Another alternative is aticonfig --initial --force if you encounter issues with the first command.

sudo aticonfig --initial

Then:

sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

• Note: Is there an alternative to the previous step?

Finish the Installation

Now save any open document and reboot your system:

sudo shutdown -r now

• Note: An alternative to rebooting is to restart the X Server by pressing your CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE keys. But it doesnt work all time. So a real restart of computer is the best way.

Post-Installation Checks

Verifying

Run the following command to check its output to ensure the fglrx driver is installed properly:

$ sudo fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600/9700 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6650 (8.40.4)

The OpenGL vendor string should read ATI and not Mesa.

If you see a message like 'Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":1.0"' then you may have to add the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Extensions"
   Option "Composite" "0"
EndSection

Additional configure with aticonfig tool

You can even more configure the driver with the aticonfig tool.

For example:

• use powerplay option to switch power state for battery friendly or performance mode
• use dual head or one big desktop mode
• turn second monitor on/off on the fly