How To Install AMD Catalyst Legacy Drivers in Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal)

Latest proprietary AMD Catalyst driver version 12.9 cannot be used with Ubuntu 12.10 If you have a AMD Radeon HD 2xxx-4xxx series card.

Drivers for these cards are now available in a separate branch called legacy series. Unfortunately these legacy drivers (version 12.6) have not been updated to work with Ubuntu 12.10. Ubuntu 12.10 comes with xorg 1.13 while these drivers have support for older xorg 1.12.So if you want to install these drivers in Ubuntu 12.10, you have to downgrade to xorg 1.12.

To install these packages open the terminal and run the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:makson96/fglrx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install fglrx-legacy

Remove these packages using the following commands

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:makson96/fglrx

Via Ubuntuvibes

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17 Responses

  1. Swifty says:

    I learnt a long time ago, if you want a linux desktop, don’t bother with ATI hardware, its a far bigger headache than neccessary.

  2. cYbercOsmOnauT says:

    This doesn’t work anymore. Yesterday a xserver Update come up and killed my desktop resolution. I had no chance to change it back to 1920×1080 like it should. So all I could do was to go back to 12.04 where xorg 1.11 is used which is officially supported by the last AMD legacy driver (12.6).

  3. Tomasz Makarewicz says:

    @cYbercOsmOnauT
    Bad luck. The update was on the server for one hour. When I realised that it breaks things I reversed changes.
    Best regards,

  4. cYbercOsmOnauT says:

    @Tomaz

    What do you mean? Was the xorg update from you? I had that problem for more than just an hour. It occured at sunday evening (GMT+1) and I reinstalled 12.04 on monday.

    Can I upgrade to 12.10 again now or what do you mean? And what happens if the next update kills my resolution again? Xorg 1.12+ is not officially supported by the legacy driver anymore.

  5. elChupaNibre says:

    I’ve also had issues installing the Catalyst 12.10 drivers for an ATI Radeon HD 6xxx series chipset.

    I’m hoping the xorg/driver downgrade will work.

    Will post back when done.

  6. elChupaNibre says:

    Nope… Didn’t work. Looking like I might have to revert back to 12.04.

  7. Tom says:

    The one thing I hate are the video driver problems I have with Linux. My goodness, why can they just get this solved by now??? Nvidia sucks. ATI sucks. The only video driver that works is Intel graphics. Period. The only choice is Intel… NO more nvidia. No more ATI. I’m tired of this BS!!!

  8. Stephan says:

    Works fine with Radeon HD2600 on 64bit 12.10

    Is there a way to lock this configuration so that the system will not update the driver or x.org?

  9. Terry says:

    This is brilliant. I went from a perfectly functional Xubuntu 10.04 to a command line.
    Here is a one step fix that would have taken me days.

  10. smithjohn says:

    I did this on my laptop, killed synaptics, made my touchpad …wonky. No more scrolling area or single tap. Double finger worked, but synaptics settings would not work. I didn’t look into changing the settings, went to an older and different distro on the laptop for now. My laptop is only 3 years old. Going to Intel based only in the future.

  11. Sebastian says:

    Excuse me noob here, do I have to do all six commands? I mean, do I have to remove those packages with the last two commands? or are they in case I want to remove the drivers I just installed with the first four commands?

  12. A visitor says:

    The last 5th and 6th commands will undo the changes by the first 4.

    The 5th install “ppa-purge”, a small program to remove all software from a given ppa (software source, aka repository).

    The 6th will purge packages from the ppa you added in command 1, and remove that ppa as active for your system.

  13. A visitor says:

    And to in fact answer your question:

    Only do the first 4 for installation.

    Only if you want to undo should you execute the last 2.

  14. Tom McM says:

    Hi Guy’s
    After searching for 2 days for the answer I finally have sound and can begging to enjoy my first linux experience.

    Thanks,

    Tom.

  15. Denstar says:

    Hello everyone!

    Wanted to let you all know that this fix worked like a charm for Acer Aspire 5100 laptop, with ATi Xpress 1100 chipset, but not for Unity (though KDE works great). Many thanks!

  16. Harm says:

    Hi everyone

    I found this while trying to solve my really big problems running Lubuntu 13.04 on an old maxdata-Laptop with sis chipset. I almost lost hope.

    But then…
    It worked very well. Now everything is running.
    Thank you!!!!!!!!

  17. Chris says:

    Can you please provide this package for Saucey as I get this error when trying to install;

    Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/makson96/fglrx/ubuntu/dists/saucy/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found

    I get past the ppa (first line) but when I do the update I get that!

    I really need this driver to stabilise my system…

    If a port over to Ubuntu 13.10 is created (I don’t mind downgrading and locking in place some things in place) I will create a full tutorial on how to get things working! (with some help and collaboration of course).

    If anyone needs any information from me I am willing to delve deep to help create a solution for this and any other related tasks that need to be accomplished to get things working for all of us!

    I think its abysmal that ATI/AMD have abandoned their customers, and left it all to use to code for their hardware but I am also getting right into this Linux open source stuff and I want to learn and contribute more and learn much more!

    Would anyone want to start a project to getting to understand the ins and outs of the graphics cards of this era and create a solution with me?

    I am willing to put the time in to study, understand and a working ppa for all instances and on all levels…

    I’ll leave it there for now… maybe I will get some decent responses, lets just wait and see!

    Kind regards all

    Chris

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