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by w1ntermute 5799 days ago
If you have only tried the closed source ATI drivers (fglrx), you might find it well worth your time to give the open source xf86-video-ati drivers a shot: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati/

As long as you don't need 3D acceleration, they are the best choice. In distributions like Ubuntu, they are built into the default install, so your display will be working perfectly even on the live CD. Also, their multi-monitor support is fantastic.

2 comments

As long as you don't need 3D acceleration, they are the best choice.

That is a pretty big thing to be missing.

This makes it pretty pointless to have discrete ATI graphics under Linux. I have an integrated ATI graphics card in my desktop and discrete ATI graphics card in my laptop. They both have the same use cases; they can handle basic desktop functionalities (which is a huge step from fglrx) but not any serious 3d.
Sorry to rain on your parade - but for recent cards I thought http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd/ was the preferred driver ?
No, I have 2 recent cards, both running Radeon. From what I understand, the 2 projects have mostly merged, and in the future, Radeon is the driver to be used for all cards.