Please help,
∘ For 2 months and over 100 hours, I have been trying to get my new HP Envy 2195ca laptop fully working in Ubuntu with the Swichable discrete AMD/ATI HD 6850m graphics card and not the embedded Intel hd3000 low end card, with no success. I think perhaps I am missing something basic and don't know what it is??? I am posting a new thread as my questions in previous threads are not getting any attention - so thanks in advance. Here is what I have tried (part thereof) :

‣ Installed using additional drivers - seemingly successfully - ie. says enabled, and active and green dot, but
• running ATI's CCC gives:
∘ There was a problem initializing Catalyst Control Center Linux edition. It could be caused by the following.
∘ No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly.
∘ Please install the AMD driver appropriate for you AMD hardware, or configure using aticonfig.

‣ Installed from the amd website: amd-driver-installer-12-1-x86.x86_64.run, (previous version over the past 2 months as well)
• created the 3 debian packages seemingly successfully and installed all three:
∘ fglrx_8.930-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb, plus 2 similarly named ones
• For the first time using 12.1 today I seemingly successfully ran:
∘ aticonfig --initial -f, with no errors BUTTTTTT
‣ after a reboot just a black screen with a few tiny white dots flicking around
• and safe mode works fine
• I can get back into Ubuntu Normal mode by deleting
∘ /etc/X11/xorg.conf (perhaps I just need the right file contents for switchable graphics)
‣ Again PLEASE HELP. and Thanks in advance

‣ Here is some additional information
• lspci -nn | grep VGA
∘ 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0116] (rev 09)
∘ 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Broadway [ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6800 Series] [1002:68a8]
• Recommended configuration for X.org
∘ No configuration is necessary for ATI driver in the modern versions of Ubuntu. You can safely take away your xorg.conf and your computer will run fine.
• To see if your driver uses KMS (Kernel Mode Setting), run command
∘ ack@Arawn:~$ dmesg | grep drm
[ 9.153946] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[ 9.400960] [drm] MTRR allocation failed. Graphics performance may suffer.
[ 9.402250] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 1 (10.10.2010).
[ 9.402255] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[ 13.040646] fbcon: inteldrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 13.040932] fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[ 13.040935] drm: registered panic notifier
[ 13.049332] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0


• vgaswitcheroo
∘ Never has worked and probably because there is NEVER a file called
‣ /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
‣ root@Arawn:/home/ack# echo DIGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
• bash: /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch: No such file or directory
∘ root@Arawn:/home/ack# grep -i switcheroo /boot/config-3.0.*
‣ /boot/config-3.0.0-16-generic:CONFIG_VGA_SWITCHEROO=y
∘ To test if vga_switcheroo is enabled, look for the switch file:
‣ ls -l /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
• ls: cannot access /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch: No such file or directory
∘ never once had this switch file with or without open source/fglrx/ or no driver at all
‣ If you are not using the open-source radeon driver (or the nouveau driver in case of nvidia hardware), there won't be a /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch file. (ignoring hacks like asus-switcheroo and byo-switcheroo). Disabling KMS ("modeset=0") turns off this functionality too.
• hmmmmmm
‣ Soooo
• The last thing in my many attempts was to reinstall ubuntu to install the amd/ati driver thru additionhal drivers (post release) as I read that this was the only one to work with vgaswitcheroo. Oddly after the reinstall of Ubuntu and no updates I saw the switch file (/sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch) for my first time (Ubuntu 3.0.0-12) (no additional driver yet). Then I tried to install the ati driver no luck - errors so I thought I should update Ubuntu - restart and try again. After the restart my kernel was at 3.0.0-16 from 12, and no /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo folder at all

I will quickly respond to any troubleshooting tips - THANKS
Mark