Installing AMD Legacy Drivers on 12.04 LTS

[mclark87]

I've tried doing this repeatedly, and I give up doing it through my own research. Every other page shows a different process and the one's I've tried haven't worked out. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. I reformatted my drive, had 12.1 installed, and installed 12.04 so I could use this driver, or so I thought. My Gateway nv52 uses the Radeon 3200 card so I need the legacy driver. I've been trying to use the newer 13.1 version. So far I've broke something a handful of times and just reinstalled ubuntu to start fresh. Main reason I want to get away from the open source driver is the boot/sleep problem and the only game I play one my computer, World of Tanks, runs at single digit frames per second with the open source card even with a low res pack installed. So, is there a definitive guide somewhere or where may I be screwing up? Thanks in advance.

[mclark87]

Bump...

I googled how to find out my xserver version and my kernel version. I am running 1.13 which I know is a problem. I thought 12.04 came with 1.12? Is it safe to downgrade to 1.12 and not cause problems later on? I had read that hacking ubuntu 12.10 into using xserver 1.12 may cause issues down the line which is why I uninstalled 12.10 and installed 12.04 instead. My kernel is 3.5.0. I haven't found out if that is compatible or not. Still working finding an answer for xserver.

[Mark Phelps]

I believe 12.04.02 comes with X-server 1.13, as does 12.10.

It's not simple to downgrade to X-server 1.12 and will carry lots of problems with it even if you do that.

[mclark87]

So I found out how to find out for sure what I got. The system screen says 12.04 LTS so I thought that's what it was, not 12.04.02. Did the 'lsb_release -a' command and it says 12.04.02. Damn, guess I gotta figure out how to get regular 12.04. I knew 12.1 and 12.04.02 came with xserver 1.13, just thought I had 12.04

[Cheesemill]

You can download 12.04.1 which still uses X server 1.12 from here...

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04.1/

[mclark87]

Thanks, downloading it now. Is there anything I need to watch for with updates? Like is the system going to try to update itself to the next version with x-server 1.13 at any time? And what is the definite guide for installing the legacy driver? I had tried a couple different ones that used different commands, of course now I know why they didn't work. Just want to get this driver installed and working so I can get my other programs installed. Not going to mess with putting them on again until after I know this works incase I need to reinstall ubuntu again and start over.

[mclark87]

Finally got around to getting 12.04.01 installed and now that is done. Before I try to install the 13.1 Legacy driver again I want to be sure I get the right commands. There is sooo many different sets of commands you should enter floating around online. Most of the one's I've been finding now involve downgrading x-server. Whole reason I installed 12.04.01 is so that I won't have to do that. There is a fglrx driver under Additional Drivers but it doesn't say which version it is or if it is a legacy type driver. Help?

[Mark Phelps]

Finally got around to getting 12.04.01 installed and now that is done. Before I try to install the 13.1 Legacy driver again want to be sure I get the right commands. There is sooo many different sets of commands you should enter floating around online. Most of the one's I've been finding now involve downgrading x-server. Whole reason I installed 12.04.01 is so that I won't have to do that. There is a fglrx driver under Additional Drivers but it doesn't say which version it is or if it is a legacy type driver. Help?

The one under additional drivers would be the version that was distributed with 12.4 -- probably a Catalys 10.x or 12.x version.

The 13.1 Linux legacy driver will work with your card and Ubuntu 12.04 -- but make sure it says Legacy Driver in the web page -- as the standard 13.1 driver will not work with your card.

[mclark87]

Yeah, I downloaded the 13.1 legacy driver from their site. Do I just extract the .zip file and click the .run file inside to run it like that? Just want to make sure it works this time, thanks. I figured I was looking for some commands to enter into the terminal.

[Yellow Pasque]

You should build .deb packages. If you need to remove the driver for some reason, that will make it a lot easier.

sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs dh-make dkms execstack dh-modaliases fakeroot libqtgui4 linux-headers-generic
cd ~/
wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/legacy/amd-driver-installer-catalyst-13.1-legacy-linux-x86.x86_64.zip
unzip amd-driver-installer-catalyst-13.1-legacy-linux-x86.x86_64.zip
chmod +x amd-driver-installer-catalyst-13.1-legacy-linux-x86.x86_64.zip
sh ./amd-driver-installer-catalyst-13.1-legacy-linux-x86.x86_64.zip --buildpkg Ubuntu/precise
sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb
sudo amdconfig --initial -f