Ati drivers unmanagable.

[akirablaid]

I recently switched to Kubuntu from Ubuntu, and trying other versions of Linux, in hope that if it wasn't easy, it would at least be possible to install graphics drivers.
I have an ati radeon hd 4850.
As soon as I installed Kubuntu it worked fine. Graphics were flawless. Even after a few restarts this was fine. But at one point, every time I start up the screen begins getting sketchy, distorted. This gets gradually worse until after 5 minutes I can barely see items and I can't see my mouse. Obviously I need drivers. But with the screen degrading so quick, I only have 5 minutes before I need to restart the pc to get even remotely usable display. That said, I've tried many methods.
The primary one I'm trying to complete is documented here http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...ivers_manually
The problem is, the american ubuntu server is so slow, that when trying to do these operations in terminal, and it calls for a download, the download slows to a dead stop.
How can I possibly get to USING my pc, if I can't access anything needed to actually install the drivers?
Is there a more efficient method I haven't tried? I'm at my wit's end.

[aged hippy]

Re: Ati drivers unmanagable.

Hello akirablaid.

I don't know if this will be any help to you, but i have an ATI Radeon 9800, and installed xserver-xorg-video-ati, xserver-xorg-video-radeon, and xorg-driver-fglrx via the CLI.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-radeon

sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

It worked on this installation, YMMV.

[quarkslot]

Re: Ati drivers unmanagable.

I have an ati radeon hd 4850.
As soon as I installed Kubuntu it worked fine. Graphics were flawless. Even after a few restarts this was fine. But at one point, every time I start up the screen begins getting sketchy, distorted. This gets gradually worse until after 5 minutes I can barely see items and I can't see my mouse. Obviously I need drivers. But with the screen degrading so quick, I only have 5 minutes before I need to restart the pc to get even remotely usable display. That said, I've tried many methods.
The primary one I'm trying to complete is documented here http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...ivers_manually
The problem is, the american ubuntu server is so slow, that when trying to do these operations in terminal, and it calls for a download, the download slows to a dead stop.
How can I possibly get to USING my pc, if I can't access anything needed to actually install the drivers?
Is there a more efficient method I haven't tried? I'm at my wit's end.

Strange, it looks like there is something going wrong with your graphics card and yet.....

It could be something else that is interfering with your display, did you change anything or install some other program and only notice the problem afterwards, possibly after a reboot? I also have the Radeon 4850 and have been using it without problem since 8.10 was released, both with and without the proprietary ATI drivers.

Kubuntu should recognise the 4850 and make the proprietary drivers available but it won't enable them by default, you have to do this yourself:

- open the KDE start menu, select Applications then System and choose Hardware Drivers.
- you will be prompted to enter your password.
- the hardware drivers window will open and you should see ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver listed. It should show as deactivated.
- click it to select it and then click the Activate button and after a short while the driver will be activated on your system.
- you will need to reboot to make it fully active.

I hope this helps though I still suspect your problem lies elsewhere.

Nick

[akirablaid]

Re: Ati drivers unmanagable.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-radeon

sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

These all ran through fine, except the last one, which begins downloading and then slows to a stop. Can't actually get the fglrx driver.

- open the KDE start menu, select Applications then System and choose Hardware Drivers.
- you will be prompted to enter your password.
- the hardware drivers window will open and you should see ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver listed. It should show as deactivated.
- click it to select it and then click the Activate button and after a short while the driver will be activated on your system.
- you will need to reboot to make it fully active.

This behaves oddly.
Half the time the fglrx driver is grayed out, and always when I hit the activate button it simply remains gray, unmoving or changing. It seems that I can't activate it.


Also, it's become apparent that sometimes I can boot into Kubuntu with no problem at all, and no display dysfunction. Mostly, however, it gets this degenerative distortion.

[sithlord48]

Re: Ati drivers unmanagable.

I just built a system w/ an ati hd4850, i installed my "restricted" driver w/ envy-ng
look in you package manager for envy , works for me every time

[kbunt]

Re: Ati drivers unmanagable.

See if any of these pages/links help:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ng_ATI_drivers

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._r700_2d&num=1

I could be mistaken but the 'how-tos' for ATI card driver installs in Linux don't seem to be as widespread or cohesive as the corresponding Nvidia ones. ATI/AMD open source ones sound simple enough but I'm not sure that's the case with the binary/proprietary driver. I could be mistaken but I found it difficult to find step-by-step instructions.