Linux Desktop Hacks

Accelerate Your Gaming #100

Chapter 11, Hardware

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307

HACK

Installing the ATI Driver

ATI has made a number of drivers available for its Radeon range of cards.

You install these closed source drivers in much the same way you install the

NVIDIA drivers. You can download the drivers from http://www.ati.com/

support/driver.html.

The drivers are available as RPM files, and you can install the RPM with this

command:

foo@bar:~$ rpm -Uh --force driver.rpm

If you are on a system that does not use RPM as a package type, you can use

Alien to convert the package to another type, such as a tarball or Debian

package. Once you have opened the package, you can move to the directory

that contains the driver and run the main tool that completes the installa-

tion for you:

foo@bar:~$ ./fglrxconfig

Within the program, you are asked numerous questions about how you

want your video card configured (when in doubt, accept the default). Then

you are asked if an XF86Config-4 file should be generated. Select

Y to accept

this action and the installation is complete. If you are running the Xorg

server, you will need to rename this generated file to xorg.conf, and put it in

/etc or /etc/X11 on your system. Then you can start X:

foo@bar:~$ startx

Now run the fglrxinfo utility; it should say this:

OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.

If this is the case, the driver installation process is complete.