ubermix Forums

Technical => Hardware Specific => Topic started by: urkomasse on October 29, 2012, 07:20:03 AM

Title: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on October 29, 2012, 07:20:03 AM
Hi,

I'm experimenting a bit with creating an interim update of our image. Since our netbooks are AMD-based, I was thinking about trying the AMD graphic drivers, but the instructions in the Wiki seem to be for a previous version of Ubermix.

What's the recommended installation process now? Boot into generic and run "Restricted Drivers"?
I'll be trying out different approaches anyway, but no harm in asking.

Thanks.
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on October 29, 2012, 11:48:37 PM
Ok, so installing the restricted drivers by doing "apt-get install fglrx-updates" did not work. It does an update-initramfs that ignores the -aufs initramfs.

I'm open to suggestions now :)
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: jnetman1 on November 07, 2012, 10:53:53 PM
Should be able to just do a "sudo apt-get install fglrx" to get it to work. I don't thing the aufs initrd update is necessary. What is happening when you reboot after install? No video, or...?
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on November 08, 2012, 05:10:09 AM
I think I used the fglrx-updates package. I will try again with fglrx and let you know.

To be honest, I can't remember exactly what happened, so I'll let you know about everything tomorrow :)
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on November 09, 2012, 06:30:09 AM
Ok, I've tried with an Asus 1225B. I installed fglrx, and lost 3D acceleration on reboot.
I ran aticonfig --initial, and then I had black screen on reboot.

This was all using -generic. I don't know if it would work on -aufs, but I'm happy to try on Monday.
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: Cytochromec on November 16, 2012, 09:55:10 AM
On my AAO 722 with AMD I downloaded Catalyst 12.10 from the AMD website and ran the install script. Suspend works, but I am not sure if I am getting the performance/battery life boost I had from earlier attempts to install catalyst, so perhaps it isn't really installing. Any idea how to test, or some graphics benchmarks to run to measure performance?
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: jnetman1 on November 16, 2012, 02:21:27 PM
I can confirm that there is a bug in the default fglrx packages in the Ubuntu repos that causes it to fail on systems running kernel version 3.5.x (like ubermix). Download and install from AMD is the best way to get it installed. You should have a catalyst control center icon under system that will tell you if it is running. It's hard to tell the difference between the proprietary driver and gallium (the default open source driver) in terms of performance, but you will notice a difference in battery life - the AMD proprietary driver supports all the power saving modes that the generic driver does not. Problem with the proprietary driver is that it's not always reliable with "C" class fusion processors.

I'll build some updated packages and put together a download for the latest fglrx, then post them to the wiki.
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: jnetman1 on November 16, 2012, 04:13:46 PM
A new, easy to install driver package is now available for the latest stable AMD/ATI release. See http://wiki.ubermix.org/page/AMD_Video_Acceleration (http://wiki.ubermix.org/page/AMD_Video_Acceleration) for details.
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: Cytochromec on November 21, 2012, 12:43:29 PM
In testing so far with these new drivers I am getting at least an extra hour of battery life (6.5 hours instead of 5+) on the C60 based Acer Aspire One 722. Great stuff!
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on November 21, 2012, 07:00:46 PM
Wow. I really need to get that working.

I'm still running into trouble, but maybe is due to my customizations. I'm going to experiment more.

On the Asus 1225B, which was happily running with the Radeon drivers, when I install the AMD drivers, I reboot to a black screen :(
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: jnetman1 on November 21, 2012, 09:21:16 PM
Are you using the new package described above? The old driver in the Ubuntu repos doesn't work with the newer kernels in ubermix 1.06x+. Black screen is the symptom. Also, if you've been experimenting with driver versions, try removing the battery to reset the whole thing.
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on November 22, 2012, 01:45:29 AM
I'm using the new package, yes, but on our customized Ubermix image, which has a lot of changes, including hibernate enabled.

I'm going to go back to an image that I have without hibernate enabled, and see if it works then.
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: urkomasse on November 22, 2012, 08:06:15 PM
It seems that blacklisting the radeon driver was the fix for me.

Add the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-radeon.conf

with this inside:
blacklist radeon

It should be "safe". Why would you want to load the radeon driver after installing fglrx?
Title: Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?
Post by: jnetman1 on November 23, 2012, 05:53:05 PM
Interesting. I'll add that to the package installer. Thanks for sharing!