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No, seriously. Putting these two together really can end in love and happiness! I figured out by trial and error how to get this to work, and the magic seems to be with rebooting between steps. No more tearing hair out and embarassing bald patches.
These instructions will get an ATI X1600Pro 256Mb PCI Express video card working with full 3D acceleration in PCLinuxOS 2007. At least, it did on my AMD Sempron 3 Ghz, 768 Mb RAM + ECS 761GX-M754 mobo. I’m hoping the many who ran into difficulty using ATI cards in PCLinuxOS will find this useful.
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Download the Radeon X1600 driver package from ATI Driver Downloads. Save it to the /home folder. The filename is
ati-driver-installer-8.38.6-x86.x86_64.run.
I use this one because I found it worked best for me. -
Open Synaptic and uninstall any and all ATI and fglrx driver related packages – this includes the ati and ati_legacy packages.
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Make sure the bootloader is set to clear /tmp at boot. I did this just to make sure there was nothing of previous steps left floating around after each boot.
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Restart the system. Enter the BIOS and check to make sure the Aperture setting is at 128Mb. Exit the BIOS and continue the PCLinuxOS bootup.
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The X server should fail to initialize for the login screen, and you should see a text login prompt. (If not, reboot into Failsafe mode.) Log in as Root.
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If any ATI graphics drivers from ati.amd.com were previously installed, remove them now by typing the command
sh ./fglrx-uninstall.sh
The uninstaller will indicate that the system environment has been restored. Reboot again after removal and log in again as Root.
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Navigate to the /home directory containing the downloaded ATI package, e.g. type the path “cd /home/[your username]” and run the installer script by typing the command
sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.38.6-x86.x86_64.run
The driver installer dialog box will appear. Agree to the license, etc.
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Select the Automatic option, not Custom or the Generate Distribution Specific Driver Package options. Let the installer run its course.
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When finished, type the command
aticonfig –initial -f
and reboot again, logging in again as Root.
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Type the command
video
and in the video settings dialog box, select the ati-fglrx driver (reply ‘Yes’ when asked to use the proprietary driver), and if possible, select a screen resolution with a refresh rate greater than 60Hz but still within your monitor’s range (I had to set mine to 1280×1024 @ 16bpp, 60Hz since the other rates were out of range for my monitor). Select to test the settings. At this point the screen will go dark for a moment as the X server is initialized. If you do not see colour bars with the “Are these the correct settings Y/N?” box, just wait until the screen returns to the video config dialog and try new settings. Once you have these set right, reboot again. [EDIT Jan '08: Recent updates to PCLinuxOS 2007 have altered the way the ATI driver options are listed both using the "video" setup and in the PCLinuxOS Control Centre: the card is now only identified as "Radeon X1300 and higher". The fglrx option has been removed.]
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Log in as your usual user. Open a terminal and type the command
glxgears
If all is well, a small window will pop up with an animation of spinning gears, and the terminal window will start listing timed frames per second (FPS) rates.
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If you check your video card settings in the PCLinuxOS Control Centre, it will show ‘ATI Radeon (fbdev)’, but the Xorg driver will still be fglrx, so don’t worry about that.
I have also seen it recommended on the PCLinuxOS forums to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to include the following:
Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection
You can adjust the gamma of the screen by opening the ATI Catalyst Control Centre which is now in your start menu and adjusting the locked color sliders to the right.
Enjoy your working graphics.
See also my post, “Update: Radeon X1600 and PCLinuxOS 2007″.
If anyone has any comments or finds any errors in my method, speak up! Leave a comment.
Posted by thecleverlynamedpage 
