Getting ATI cards to work in Fedora

  • 4 min read
    • Ensuring that your graphic card works the way you want it to in Linux can be a long and tenious task if you are encountering problems. This guide will show you how to setup the radeon or the proprietary fglrx driver with your ATI graphics card to make sure your card is functioning as it should.

    Getting ATI cards to work

    Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.
     

    Requirements

    • Yum configured to use the 3rd party Livna repository
    • If building the drivers using the packages directly from ATI/AMD's site, please install a few packages first:
      su -c 'yum install qt-devel compat-libstdc++-33 -y'

     

    The 'radeon' driver

    Radeon is an open-source alternative to the proprietary fglrx driver, offering support for many (but not all) ATI cards including some that aren't supported any longer in the latest fglrx drivers! While it's performance may not match exactly that of fglrx, its performance is still very decent. It is included in part of the standard Xorg driver packages in Fedora, so it requires almost no configuration at all! Simply edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and in the "Device" section you will come across a line like this:
    Driver "DriverNameHere"

     Change this line to:

    Driver "radeon"

    Once you restart the computer everything should be functioning.

    Please remember that if you previously were using another driver, you may need to use the livna-config-display tool to switch back to the 'AIGLX' configuration:

    livna-config-display --tui -a

     

    The 'fglrx' driver

    To install the fglrx driver, simply run the following commands:
    su -
    yum install kmod-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx
    fglrx-config-display enable
    service fglrx restart

    Please note that for a xen kernel, 'kmod-fglrx-xen' will need to be installed. This rule is applied to all the kernel variants, such as PAE (kmod-fglrx-PAE) and so on. 

    Additionally, if you are running a x86_64 (a 64-bit) operating system the 32bit libraries can be installed for compatibility reasons:

    yum install -y xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs.i386

    Common Questions

    Q: How can I test if the driver works now that it's installed?

    A: Simply run 'glxgears' like this:

    glxgears 

    Alternatively you can also check the output of 'glxinfo':

    glxinfo | grep direct -i
    glxinfo | grep OpenGL -i
    It should return "direct rendering: yes" and also various OpenGL information concerning "ATI Technologies" and not "Mesa".
     
    Q: Help! I followed the instructions and DRI still isn't working!
    A: If you're using the drivers from the ATI/AMD website or if you've previously installed them, please see this post on the RedHat mailinglists as to why it could be a problem. In short, those drivers tend to overwrite other system files which can cause problems, where as the packaged drivers from Livna or other third party repositories do not. If you think this is your problem, pease reinstall all Mesa GL and Xorg server packages to restore the replaced system files.
    Q: What if it still doesn't work?
    A: If you are not using the Livna drivers, then your xorg.conf may not be automatically edited for you. You may need to add this option to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf under the "Device" section:
    Option "VideoOverlay" "On"
     
    Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.