Hardware - Installing ATI Drivers

[andrewd18]

This tutorial was written by Vince4Amy in the Howto: ATI Radeon Driver thread. Please post all questions and comments there. This howto was reviewed and edited by andrewd18 on 2008-08-28.



There are many guides on getting ATI Drivers working on OpenSUSE on the Internet, however most of them are out of date and this one will cover the latest release.

Click Here to download the ATI Linux Driver, please save it as installer.sh, this will make the process easier later.

You will need some packages to be installed before you can proceed, these are requirements for the ATI Installer. To install the packages simply log in as root and paste the following command.

zypper in kernel-source gcc make

Once you have done this you can view the driver builds which are compatible with OpenSUSE to do this go to the directory where you downloaded installer.sh. Then input this command.

sh installer.sh --listpkg

You will then be presented with a list of all supported distributions, you will want to focus on the SUSE packages as this is what you will be using. You will also need to make a note of the version of your distribution, this guide is focusing on the latest 11.0 release.

You will see your distribution from the list shown after running the above command.

Now enter init 3:

init 3

Assuming you are using version 11.0 you would enter the following command

32 Bit:

sh installer.sh --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE110-IA32

64 Bit:

sh installer.sh --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE110-AMD64

This will generate an .rpm package based on the distribution which you decided to use. To install the .rpm run:

rpm -Uvh fg(press tab to autocomplete)

This will install the .rpm package which contains the drivers. Next you will have to run aticonfig which will set up xorg.conf to use the ATI Driver.

aticonfig -initial -f

Now you will need to reconfigure Sax2

sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

Now reboot

reboot

When you have rebooted you should be presented with a log in screen as normal, launch a command line and enter the command:

fglrxinfo

Ensure that ATI Technologies is shown as the OpenGL Provider. If it is not, please create a new thread asking for help in the Hardware Forum.