HOWTO: switch from XGL to the new ATI 8.2.3 driver with AIGLX

[jsully1]

Can a mod please update the thread title to 8.4.2? I'm not sure how I came up with 8.2.3

This is a brief guide for anyone who already has Compiz Fusion working with ATi and XGL. Switching from XGL to the built in AIGLX proved to be incredibly easy, and worked first try for me. I should note that right now I am *not* impressed with the performance so far - it's noticably slower and choppier, however I no longer have XGL sucking down 40% of my CPU when I rotate screens.

EDIT: Be warned that a number of people (link) are experiencing slow 2D performance.

Anyway - onto the HowTo!

A brief overview of the steps required:
- Remove XGL
- Reboot
- Download ATi's new driver, make it executable, and run it
- add the restricted driver manager's FGLRX driver to the disabled modules list
- edit xorg.conf to ensure compositing is no longer disabled
- edit the compiz-manager configuration file to allow all GPU types
- reboot
- enjoy!

The first step will be to remove XGL, so fire up Synaptic, search for xgl and remove xserver-xgl, or do a

sudo apt-get remove xserver-xgl

Reboot to be safe and make sure that you can still get back into X!

Next step, download the ATi driver from here.

Find the file in your terminal and issue this command to make it executable:

sudo chmod 755 ati-driver-installer-8.42.3-x86.x86_64.run

now run it with

sudo ./ati-driver-installer-8.42.3-x86.x86_64.run

Follow the on screen prompts and complete the driver installation. When finished we have a few more steps before we want to reboot.

We need to tell Ubuntu not to use the driver from the restricted manager, and to do that you'll want to add the driver to the disabled modules list by doing:

sudo nano /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

Here is the contents of my file - yours may have other modules listed as well however:

# This file is sourced from the linux-restricted-modules-common init
# script and is used to disable the link-on-boot feature, one module
# at a time.  This can be useful if you want to use hand-compiled
# versions of one or more modules, but keep linux-restricted-modules
# installed on your system, or just to disable modules you don't use
# and speed up your boot process by a second or two.
#
# Use a space-separated list of modules you wish to not have linked
# on boot.  The following example shows a (condensed) list of all
# modules shipped in the linux-restricted-modules packages:
#
# DISABLED_MODULES="ath_hal fc fglrx ltm nv"
#
# Note that disabling "fc" disables all fcdsl drivers, "ltm" disables
# ltmodem and ltserial, and "nv" disables the three nvidia drivers.
# You can also name each module individually, if you prefer a subset.

DISABLED_MODULES="fglrx"

Next we need to tweak xorg.conf to enable compositing - all those years of having it disabled, gone!

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Scroll to the bottom of the file and you should have a bit that looks like this:

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

Note that your specific setup may have "disabled" or something else other than 0. We want to disable this - I'm just going to comment it out however in case we need to go back to XGL for some reason. Simply add "#" before each line like so:

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

Now we need to make sure that Compiz is going to allow us to run with this new driver. By default there is a list of hardware that your GPU needs to show up on or Compiz won't let you run it. To get around this (AT YOUR OWN PERIL):

sudo nano /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager

and add the following line to the end of the file:

WHITELIST="nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx"

This will allow it to run on just about anything - you can likely just include the ATi bits.

That's it - now reboot, and cross your fingers! When you get back into X you should still have desktop effects, however you'll now be running without XGL. To confirm, do an "fglrxinfo" - your output should be similar to this:

$ fglrxinfo 
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon X1300
OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.0.6958 Release)

So to recap:
- Remove XGL
- Reboot
- Download ATi's new driver, make it executable, and run it
- add the restricted driver manager's FGLRX driver to the disabled modules list
- edit xorg.conf to ensure compositing is no longer disabled
- edit the compiz-manager configuration file to allow all GPU types
- reboot, and profit!

Update from flackmonkey
If you need to uninstall this new driver and roll back to the version in the Restricted Drivers Manager. I have not tested this personally - please give feedback if you do this!

#Remove fglrx from DISABLED_MODULES
sudo nano /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

#Uninstall 8.4.23 driver.
sudo /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

#Cleanup any left over stuff from restricted drivers. (Just in case apt thinks it's still installed.)
sudo apt-get remove xorg-driver-fglrx

#Reinstall restricted drivers.
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

#Reboot
sudo shutdown -r now

Then you should be able to install the driver again through the restricted manager.

[CalcProgrammer1]

I'm gonna try this now I have needed this for a LONG time (it was like a year ago that I bought my Radeon X1600Pro).

[IHateSnow]

is it the same if I have a 32-bit processor?

[jsully1]

This was done on the 32 Bit version of Ubuntu.

[CalcProgrammer1]

Umm...

Just rebooted with everything installed. Trying to run Compiz makes it whitescreen entirely and won't come out. I'm using an X1600Pro AGP with a 32 bit AthlonXP 2600+.

[ruscoe]

AIGLX at last. I got it working easily enough with your guide. Thanks.

I'm using a Radeon Xpress and noticing a slight choppiness as well. Videos are too choppy to watch full-screen with Compiz enabled, but just three clicks disables it and I can keep it on for normal PC use. Much less hassle than XGL.

[flawedreality5]

I got:

fglrxinfo
Xlib: extension "ATIFGLRXDRI" missing on display ":0.0".
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual!

I did not have xgl at all on my system I don't think. I did a fresh install of Gusty and tried to install the ATI drivers using your instructions.

[cywhale]

Thank you, worked like a charm, switched from the free radeon driver (radeon 9700 mobile) to fglrx.
BUT: Scrolling sites in firefox is really, really slow again (like in beryl one year ago), compiz benchmark shows ~200fps but scrolling and resizing gets slower every second - not usable on my 9700 mobile.
I'll try to find a solution but I think I'll be back to the free radeon driver (compiz benchmark shows ~50-100fps but everything works very, very smooth) until tomorrow...

Greets

[eternalperson]

Would this work with a Radeon XPRESS 200?

[jsully1]

Originally Posted by cywhale Thank you, worked like a charm, switched from the free radeon driver (radeon 9700 mobile) to fglrx. BUT: Scrolling sites in firefox is really, really slow again (like in beryl one year ago), compiz benchmark shows ~200fps but scrolling and resizing gets slower every second - not usable on my 9700 mobile. I'll try to find a solution but I think I'll be back to the free radeon driver (compiz benchmark shows ~50-100fps but everything works very, very smooth) until tomorrow... Greets

Yeah I'm having the same problem - disabling visual effects in the Appearance Preferences tab fixes it, but that's hardly a solution. I tried going back to xgl (apt-get reinstall xserver-xgl, uncomment those bits in xorg.conf) however on rebooting it seems that the poor scrolling is related to the driver. Time to roll back! Anyone know the best way of going about uninstalling this new driver?