Richard Hemmer's Bookmarks tagged installation →  View Popular

Configure the Driver

• Note Method 2 Users: Before you carry out this step you must reboot your machine. Or else the fglrx driver will not be in use on xorg.conf and using the aticonfig options will cause a memory dump and not intialise the Driver properly.
  
• Note: An alternative to the aticonfig --initial command is to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the string "ati" with "fglrx" in the "Device" section. This way you won't lose your old "Screen" and "Monitor" settings. Afterwards you can use aticonfig for setting overlay etc. Another alternative is aticonfig --initial --force if you encounter issues with the first command.
  

sudo aticonfig --initial

Then:

sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

• Note: Alternative in the overlay-type to "Xv" can be "opengl" or "disable" if the TV-out makes problems in videos.
  

[edit] Alternative: Configure the Driver, The Manual Way:

An alternative to the "sudo aticonfig" commands is to edit "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" and change the "Device" section for the video card as shown below. This way you won't lose your old settings.

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
	[...]
#       Driver          "vesa"
	Driver		"fglrx"
	Option		"VideoOverlay"		"on"
	Option		"OpenGLOverlay"		"off"
	[...]
EndSection

[edit] TV - Out

The composite TV-Out is not working simultaneously with the VGA on my System. To use it I have turned the VGA off and only the TV on. Attention! This command turns off your Monitor!!

sudo aticonfig --enable-monitor=tv

To change back to VGA:

sudo aticonfig --enable-monitor=crt1

Some have had luck with both mirrored.

sudo aticonfig --force-monitor=crt1
sudo aticonfig --enable-monitor=crt1,tv

reboot after that and it should mirror the CRT1 onto the TV.

Installing the driver

Make sure the restricted repository is enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list or this guide will not work!

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r) #Okay if it is already installed
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a
sudo aticonfig --initial
sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

Now Reboot your system:

sudo shutdown -r now

An alternative to the aticonfig --initial command is to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the string "ati" with "fglrx" in the "Device" section. This way you won't lose your old "Screen" and "Monitor" settings. Afterwards you can use aticonfig for setting overlay etc.

Confirm that it works

fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9600 Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6011 (8.28.8)