Radeon x1950Pro success

Finally, after many days of research on how to install Ati proprietary drivers on Mepis 6.5 with 3D and dual-monitor enabled and my Radeon x1950Pro I have come to a successful install and i will share my method below.

My system specs are below.

I read a lot of documentation and tried many guides on Ubuntu/Mepis forums with no or limited results until I found a guide on a french Ubuntu forum that guided me to success.

I had to modify the guide to my needs since it was aimed at installing on Ubunto 7.04 Feity Fawn. Since Mepis 6.5 is based in part on Ubuntu 6.06 the core parts of the guide were adequate.

If you follow every step to the letter eveything should work right away, and fast. (Make a backup of your xorg.conf before you do this !!!!) Make sure your monitor(s) is setup or detected properly in xorg.conf

So here it is customized, adapted and translated to english:

1)Go here and download latest ati drivers: http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeon.html

In our present case these are:

2) If you tried installing previous versions of fglrx Use synaptics search function and remove everything with "fglrx" in its name before we start.

3)Open a console

su to root

cd /where/your/drivers/are/now

enter the following command followed with enter each time

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

apt-get install module-assistant build-essential 

apt-get install fakeroot dh-make debconf libstdc++5 gcc-3.3-base linux-headers-$(uname -r)

chmod +x ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run

ln -sf bash /bin/sh

./ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/feisty

ln -sf /bin/bash /bin/sh

dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.36.5-1_i386.deb

dpkg -i fglrx-kernel-source_8.36.5-1_i386.deb

dpkg -i fglrx-amdcccle_8.36.5-1_i386.deb

dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx-dev_8.36.5-1_i386.deb

rm /usr/src/fglrx-kernel*.deb

cd /usr/src

m-a update

m-a prepare

m-a build fglrx

m-a install fglrx

Here is a one liner you can use that does everything above in one shot:

wget https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run && apt-get update && apt-get upgrade &&  apt-get install module-assistant build-essential && apt-get install fakeroot dh-make debconf libstdc++5 gcc-3.3-base linux-headers-$(uname -r) && chmod +x ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run && ln -sf bash /bin/sh && ./ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/feisty && ln -sf /bin/bash /bin/sh && dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.36.5-1_i386.deb && dpkg -i fglrx-kernel-source_8.36.5-1_i386.deb && dpkg -i fglrx-amdcccle_8.36.5-1_i386.deb && dpkg -i fglrx-amdcccle_8.36.5-1_i386.deb && dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx-dev_8.36.5-1_i386.deb && rm /usr/src/fglrx-kernel*.deb && cd /usr/src && m-a update && m-a prepare && m-a build fglrx && m-a install fglrx && kwrite /etc/X11/xorg.conf

4)Reboot PC (Will probalby be command line logon with no GUI (X))

Login to your user and then su to root and enter:

aticonfig --initial

or in my personal case

aticonfig --dtop=horizontal --overlay-on=1 --force-monitor=crt1,crt2

I noticed on some of my tests that sometimes the xorg.conf files dissapears during this process. Seems like a bug. In such a case restore your backup and repeat the aticonfig routine.

type

reboot

5)When you are rebooted you will have a working gui but no 3D acceleration yet. So open a console and su to root

kwrite /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add:

Section "Extensions"<br />
  Option "Composite" "Disable"<br />
EndSection

To the end of your xorg.conf

CTRL-ALT BACKSPACE or Reboot

Test in console as root and you should have 3D

fglrxinfo

You can also run:

Enjoy!!!

Troubleshooting:

If for some reason you get stuck on a command line login because the install did not work you can revert to vesa drivers like so (as root):

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and selecting the "ati" driver, or simply restoring the previous /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, if you made a backup. (

cd /etc/X11

 cp xorg.bak xorg.conf

and reinstall the mesa driver:

apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa