ATI Radeon HD 3450 & Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04

Driver radeon: I'm experiencing a lot of problems with this cheap card

VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 LE AGP [Radeon HD 3450]

using the driver radeon on Ubuntu 10.04: inability to use Compiz, slow flash videos, ridicolous performances in general. 

The main cause: KMS.
"Kernel mode-setting (KMS) shifts responsibility for selecting and setting up the graphics mode from X.org to the kernel. When X.org is started, it then detects and uses the mode without any further mode changes. This promises to make booting faster, more graphical, and less flickery."

Solution (for me):

1. Open /etc/default/grub in a text editor
2. Replace
   
   
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
   
   with
   
   
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1"
   
   
3. Update grub2: sudo update-grub
4. Reboot

Note 1: Pay attention to grub2: in my humble opinion it's the worst software I have ever seen on Ubuntu.

Note 2: Not tested yet but the following fix should work fine:

echo options radeon modeset=1 > /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf

If so,  don't modify /etc/default/grub.

Driver fglrx:  this fantastic installation guide explains all we need to know about the driver fglrx. I recommend to install the driver manually.

Note: if we installed the driver and, after the reboot, Xserver returns an error like this:

(EE) Can't load FireGL DRM library (libfglrxdrm.so)
(EE) fglrx: Failed to load module "fglrxdrm" 
(module does not exist, 0)
(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to load DRM library
(EE) fglrx(0): Preint failed
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

probably update-alternatives has not created symbolic links to the files in the fglrx directory because the very related gl_conf entry has been set to manual. we have to remove the driver, and change the gl_conf into automatic mode before a new installation with this command:

sudo update-alternatives --auto gl_conf

another lecture of interest about this argument here.

AFAIK, the unique issue for me with this driver regards the bttv driver: if I run tvtime, bttv returns a bunch of these messages:

bttv0: timeout: drop=29 irq=46/104431, risc=3261a4d4,
bits: VSYNC HSYNC OFLOW RISCI

Unloading and reloading bttv is a temporary fix that works for now.

Best regards.

Getting ATI Radeon 9500 PRO to work properly on Karmic 9.10

I have an old pc with an ATI Radeon 9500 PRO and Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic. I have experienced very slow flash videos, painful loading of wine programs and changing gtk2.0 themes. I have found a solution browsing the internet and unfortunately I cannot give the author the right credits at this moment ( I hope to do it soon editing this post). This solution works like a charm for me:

1. Run a terminal and type: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop to shut down Gnome.
2. Log in with your username and password
3. Now type sudo Xorg -configure to create xorg.conf.new in your home.
4. Type command sudo gdm stop to restart Gnome.
5. sudo gedit xorg.conf.new
6. Add these lines in Section "Device":

• Option "AGPmode" "1"
• Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
• Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
• Option "AccelDFS" "true"
• Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
• Option "EnableDepthMoves" "true"

7. Save as /etc/X11/xorg.conf
8. Repeat steps 1 and 4 to restart Gnome.

I discussed the matter at Ubuntu Forums.

Best regards.