Ubuntu How To

Yes, you can go to hardware center and just pick the drivers ubuntu finds for you. I just tend to like manually installing Catalyst from ati. To do so, go to http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx and download the drivers for your graphic card. Then save it, go to the folder in terminal and type:

sudo sh ati<tab>

<tab> meaning press the tab key to autocomplete the file name since I am not sure which version you got. 🙂 Now you should have the latest version of Catalyst and drivers running on your system. Got to love ATI for Ubuntu. Worked perfectly for my radeon hd 4870.

Now if you want to configure it, open terminal window and type:

aticonfig

Good luck.

So, just an update to previous post regarding ubuntu screen flickering, I was not able to completely get rid of flickering after 5 hours of trying. I tried a dozen of solutions after searching all over Ubuntu forums and none of them resolved it for me. I gave up.

In the end I just plugged in my ati radeon hd 4870 and it worked like a charm from start. I ended up updating the drivers manually from ATI and it works even better now.

apt-get (apt stands for advanced packaging tool) is used to install the packages on your system.

To install a package use (in terminal):

sudo apt-get install <packagename>

To remove:

sudo apt-get remove <packagename>

where <packagename> is the name of the package you need to install.

Once I install the new Ubuntu, I usually do:

sudo apt-get update

and

sudo apt-get upgrade

which updates the local package list and upgrades to the latest versions from Ubuntu repositories.

You can also upgrade the entire distribution of your Ubuntu by typing:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

if you need more information, type

sudo apt-get help

Tried to install Ubuntu 11.04 on my other computer today and ran into a ton of problems.  Once I inserted a CD and started to install, I couldn’t even get to the main menu. The purple screen just kept on flickering so much that I couldn’t see anything. I am still battling with it, but I got it to install. Right now I am trying to update the drivers for nvidia geforce 8200 which seem to be the problem.

Anyway,I was able to get the flickering down to the extent where I could at least see the installation screen and progress. It still flickered a little, but not as much. Here is what I had to do:

1) Press “Shift button” while it loads from the cd – it should give you configuration screen.

2) Press F6 for additional options and select “nomodeset” option.

3) Pick Install Ubuntu and you should be good to go.

As far as I can tell, your graphic card drivers are not supported if you run into this problem. Hope this will help you to install Ubuntu and get into the next phase of configuration. 🙂