Radeon 9250 in Ubuntu

[Vincent Trouilliez]

smithveg <smithveg at gmail.com> wrote:
> I order a CD Ubuntu 6.06, and it ship me, then i installed it in GUI. I just
> click the install icon and follow the steps. I'm not sure, whatever ubuntu
> has install a correct driver for my system or not, Can you tell me how to
> check it?

You don't have anything to do: if you can see anything at all on your
monitor, then it's using the correct driver for the card ! :-)


> The reason that make caused me to install the driver is,
> I'm guessing that ubuntu did not install the correct graphic driver for my
> system, because, when i try to plan a game, the graphic like a stone, that's
> not smooth, not like a 3D graphic. So, i caused me to do...

Ahhh, I see ! This a different problem.
By default, Ubuntu installs a "2D" driver for the card, which is the
right choice for most applications. If however you want/require 3D,
then you must indeed install the appropriate driver manually.

There are two drivers that can provide 3D for this card. A "free" one,
and the one from ATI, the "proprietary" one.
>From my experience so far, the free driver works well, but the
performance is so bad that I can't play any of the games I like
(X-Plane mostly).
On the other hand you have the ATI driver, which has much better
performance, but is buggy, it has ill effects here and there, so I gave
up on it.
The other problem with the ATI/proprietary driver, is that from now,
they have just DROPPED support for the 9250 and all previous
cards ! So even if you intended to use the ATI driver, that would force
you to keep using Dapper forever.

So, in practice, what I do is use the Free driver, because although the
performance is not good enough for games, it's still good enough for
other applications, like Google earth for example, or the 3D desktop
stuff ("compiz"), or just about anything that isn't a 3D heavy game.

To install this driver, it's very easy:

open a terminal a type:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

then scroll down to the "Device" section, and in the "Driver" line,
replace "ati" with "radeon". Save the file, restart the machine and you
will be good to go.

TO check that 3D is working, open a terminal and type: 

glxinfo |grep rendering

it should say : "direct rendering: Yes"


HTH


--
Vince