AMD video problems in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

I’ve had some issues with graphics in Oneiric Ocelot since the Alpha pre-releases.

There were issues with the AMD proprietary driver (“fglrx”) for both my 5770 and 5870 graphics cards and, since I would always prefer to use free software, I decided to revert to the free Radeon driver that does have some 3D support now.

The problem is that, even after removing the proprietary AMD driver, some residual issues still persist that stop the radeon driver from working properly.

The trick is to reinstall a few components after removing all the fglrx packages.  Then remove the xorg.conf file.

That was enough for me, I now have my dual monitor setup back in action with the compiz wobbly-windows effect that I like.

In a terminal, try these commands one-by-one and then reboot.

sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev* xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

 

The free software radeon drivers wins over the proprietary AMD software.

For more help with getting AMD cards working try reading this excellent guide for Natty.