Ubuntu

General Status

• Included with Distribution
• Native Installer Support contributed by Aric Cyr

Installation

• Breezy (5.10) Installation Guide
• Dapper (6.06) Installation Guide
• Edgy (6.10) Installation Guide (Warning: untested guide!)

Tips and Tricks

• 64bit users should note that there is a problem in Breezy with the libdri.a library and fglrx. There is also a problem with the package generation scipts in the 8.18.8 ATI installer. The workaround for both of these problems can be found in the install guide. [resolved]: Both problems are fixed in 8.19.10 release. Always use the latest drivers when possible.
• To build your own .deb packages for Ubuntu you will need to install at least the following packages from the apt repositories:
  • fakeroot
  • debhelper
  • build-essential
  • make
  • module-assistant
  • gcc-3.4
• I found the generated packages for Breezy x86_64 broken in 8.21.7. The package xorg-driver-fglrx includes a libdri.a that is supposed to replace the original one from xserver-xorg-core. However the installation with dpkg fails, refusing to overwrite the existing libdri.a. If I run dpkg --force-overwrite the installation succeeds but the new libdri.a is saved as libdri.a.distrib. I had to manually copy it to libdri.a in order to get 3D acceleration working. Something weird going on with diversions.

• If you have linux-restricted-modules installed, you may want to disable the l-r-m packages fglrx kernel module because it will invariably get in the way of your more recent drivers. To do this edit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common and disable fglrx.

Related Resources

• Ubuntuforums.org Video forum