Cannot get open source ATI driver working ACER AL1916w & Radeon 9000. Ubuntu 7.10

[Rocket2DMn]

Posting on bug reports and/or creating your own is a good step. You can help confirm already existing bugs. It seems like that bug report has already been confirmed, triaged, and assigned a high priority which means a fix will probably be released in the next few months upstream, so you will have to download the updated driver manually or from another repository (debian or ubuntu intrepid ibex repos when they go online). You can check back on that report or subscribe to changes in it so you will know when a fix has been released. I wouldn't bank on the driver being released under the Hardy repos, except maybe through hardy-backports.

The proprietary driver will never be written and packaged to work for cards this old. They drew the line at Radeon 9500 or so, which means support will never be implemented for older cards.

[showgun22]

Ubuntu Hardy
Is there a link to that bug?
I have the same type of problem Radeon 8500LE Acer x193w connected VGA
Afetr the boot up screen I get the floating box input not supported than no signal than a green screen and finally Ubuntu loads very nicely. At shut down I get the same annoying floating box Input not supported.

I did try I did install the Proprietary drivers as per the Howto seems to be working fine but still have the same problem....

According to Acer website the "Input not supported" is cause bu to hight resolution but my setting is exactly as per the specification. 1440 X 900 @ 60Hz.

It sure would be nice to have a link to this bug report they might need more info?

This seems to be happening to more than just a couple persons...

Thanks

[frandy]

Radeon 9000 Pro here

Same issue with installing ATI drivers

Saw this :

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?p=29844

Says you need PURE etch install -

I'm off to find out what etch is and try it. Any help appreciated.

[showgun22]

Etch is a version of Debian an other flavor of Linux which Ubuntu is base on.

[steefjeqv]

Hi,

As showgun22 says, Etch is the stable version of Debian.

Debian Etch = stable, which means that this version is frozen. No new versions of programs are uploaded to this version. Therefore this version is rocksolid stable. There are of course security updates.

Debian Lenny = testing. This version is used for further testing before these program versions are "ready" to be used in the next stable version.

Debian Sid = experimental. This version contains the newest version of all programs. Cutting edge, but may be somehow buggy. Ubuntu is partially based on this version (with a lot of work from Ubuntu to gain stability).

If you want the xorg version of Etch, you'll have to change your Ubuntu repositories to the Etch repos (temporarily). This may result in a working ATI card, but can give you other incompatability problems.

In terminal :

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Put a comment(#) in front of all the ubuntu repos.

Now add the following repos to this file :

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

Save the file.

Start up synaptic and remove xorg-core.

Then in terminal :

sudo apt-get update

Back to synaptic again to install the etch version of xorg. Don't forget to freeze this xorg version in synaptic.

Uncomment the ubuntu repos in the sources.list file and comment the Etch repos.

Ctr-alt-backspace should give you an Ubuntu OS with an Etch version of xorg.

Greetings,
Steven

[Rocket2DMn]

If you decide to use steefjeqv's method, PLEASE be sure to remove the Debian Etch repositories as soon as you get what you need, and make sure you run

sudo apt-get update

afterward to refresh your repositories. DO NOT run upgrade or install anything else with these repositories enabled or you will put your system at risk for instability.
I just wanted to reinforce this for you as it is rather important.