ATI & Gnome 3 problems on Ubuntu 11.10

[emptycoder]

Hello everyone, I wanted to switch from Unity to Gnome 3 shell, and no matter how hard I try it seems I can't get it to work!
I have installed my ATI graphic driver via Additional Drivers then installed Gnome 3 shell and when I rebooted I found my desktop broken, strange fonts with blur color on Gnome bar, I tried to install Gnome 3 first then graphic driver and I got the same thing.
I also tried amd catalyst 11.09 instead of Addinonal Drivers (Which ATI says they fixed Gnome 3 Problems) and yeah, Gnome worked but with Gnome 2 interface not 3?! (Gnome, Gnome Classic, Gnome Classic With No Effects are all the same interface!??)
When I installed Gnome 3 alone, with no drivers, it works with no problem at all, but I really need to install graphic driver, I use so many 3D apps.
I have heard that ATI open-source driver probably will work better, but I have no idea how to install it.
I'm sorry for my bad English, and yes... I'm still n00b.
Please help me, I really hate Unity!
Thanks.
By the way! My Graphic Driver is Radeon HD 5470

[crdlb]

The default driver that works with GNOME Shell is the "radeon" driver. Until ATI fixes their proprietary driver (aka "fglrx" or Catalyst), you can't have both GNOME Shell and full 3d performance.

[emptycoder]

Sorry. is there a difference between Radeon. ATI and fgkrx?
and what option do i have to have full 3d performance? using another shell?

[foppeh]

The ATI catalyst 11.09 driver from their website should be the same as the fglrx found in the Ubuntu repositories. This is the restricted proprietary driver.
If you do not install this driver (or uninstall it) your desktop will fall back to the built in Radeon driver. This is the free software reverse engeneered driver built into the kernel.

Unfortunately ATI is always slow to update their (fglrx) drivers. That may take several weeks (a couple of month) after a new kernel arrives or X11 has had some changes.

I'm happy with the Radeon drivers since I switched to Gnome 3. I've had several unfortunate tries with the proprietary drivers. It will al work some day.

Hope this helps you understanding the situation better.

have fun,

[emptycoder]

I got it, so right now I have no other choice but waiting for ATI to release an update to fix this problem.
But I'm wondering, is Radeon good enough for 3D graphics? Or do I have to give up on Gnome 3 and choose another Desktop Environment?
Thanks again!

[kaldor]

I got it, so right now I have no other choice but waiting for ATI to release an update to fix this problem.
But I'm wondering, is Radeon good enough for 3D graphics? Or do I have to give up on Gnome 3 and choose another Desktop Environment?
Thanks again!

Depending on your needs, the Radeon driver might be just fine. What sorts of things do you need?

In Ubuntu 11.04 I got about 50-60 FPS on average with Urban Terror. With the proprietary driver I get about 120. Catalyst is much ahead of Radeon in terms of performance, but I recommend against its use unless it's actually needed.

The open source drivers tend to be much more stable, albeit with less features.

[emptycoder]

If Catalyst is much better than Radeon then I'm afraid that I will abandon Gnome 3, because I use Blender, and playing video games.
I guess that I will stick with Gnome 2 classic until ATI fix the problem, I just hope they won't take so long.
Thanks everyone for your help.

[ubupirate]

I've also experienced massive problems when I tested 11.10 with Gnome-shell. 11.9 drivers fixed the rainbow colors, but the graphical corruption of gnome-shell is still there.

Hope 11.10 drivers fix the graphical corruptions that so many AMD/ATI people have been experiencing. Sent AMD an email asking if 11.10 would fix it, but they weren't at liberty to tell me and said I had to wait until changelog was posted. lol

Radeon HD4200 here.

[kaldor]

If Catalyst is much better than Radeon then I'm afraid that I will abandon Gnome 3, because I use Blender, and playing video games.
I guess that I will stick with Gnome 2 classic until ATI fix the problem, I just hope they won't take so long.
Thanks everyone for your help.

Well there you go. I'm in the same situation as you are

In the future I'll probably just dual boot two separate Ubuntus. Catalyst installed for gaming on one partition, and a default Radeon for everything else.

Someday the Radeon drivers will catch up, though. Can't wait for the day that I will never have to use a proprietary driver.

[emptycoder]

It seems that Windows has priority over Linux, and that's totally unfair! ATI drivers work fine on Windows, but on Linux... we have to wait for updates and fixes.