Ubuntu

Installing ubuntu on Dell laptop with ati mobility radeon card

Asked by sameer

Hi,

I'm installing Ubuntu 7.10 on my Dell Inspiron laptop having ati mobility radeon X1400 graphics. But it's not supporting the full resolution (1680x1050) of my laptops LCD. I've found out (by searching on the forum here) that I need to install the ati driver first and then do some configuration with some .conf files. Can anybody help me find out the full sequence of installations/configurations I should do in order to make it work.

-sameer

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Bhavani Shankar (bhavi) said : 		#1

hello sameer,
You can use the following command in a terminal to set your video card up (adjusting the various factors (like resolution and so on)..
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

And if you do not want to answer all the questions but only those which are rated with high priority:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

br,

Bhavani Shankar.

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sameer (sameerbh) said : 		#2

Hi Bhavani,

Thanks for your reply. And I did run this command,

$sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

on my Dell laptop and got the devices setup. I went through all the screens of this setup. But still couldn't set the resolution of my laptop to the desired value.

I tried the setup twice, first time i chose the display card vendor as 'ati' and the second time I tried 'fgrlx'. Both the cases it didn't work. It still doesn't recognize my graphics card.

-Sameer

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Andreas (register-rez2000) said : 		#3

Hi Sameer,

have you already installed the ATI driver?

Please check in the menu System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager
The "ATI accelerated graphics driver" should be enabled and in use.

If not, just install, ticking the check box.

Once I did this, I was able to change the screen resolution again via the menu (System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution)

I am using also a Dell notebook with the same video card but a different screen resolution. And the procedure was working fine with me.

If you want to use the new desktop effects you have to install in addition xserver-xgl.

Andreas

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sameer (sameerbh) said : 		#4

Thanks Andreas. with your directions and the HowTo given at the following URL, I was able to get the problem fixed.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI