Category: Ubuntu

How To Install AMD Catalyst Legacy Drivers in Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal | Ubuntu Geek

I upgraded (grrr) to Ubuntu 12.10 and lost 3d video support. Looks like the ATI Mobility radeon HD 4250 driver is no longer support by AMD/ATI. The laptop is only 3 years old. So that really frustrates me.

Anyway, looks like I had to revert to the legacy drivers just to get the thing half way operational.  This has killed Minecraft for my son on this laptop.  #bummer.

Latest proprietary AMD Catalyst driver version 12.9 cannot be used with Ubuntu 12.10 If you have a AMD Radeon HD 2xxx-4xxx series card.

Drivers for these cards are now available in a separate branch called legacy series. Unfortunately these legacy drivers (version 12.6) have not been updated to work with Ubuntu 12.10. Ubuntu 12.10 comes with xorg 1.13 while these drivers have support for older xorg 1.12.So if you want to install these drivers in Ubuntu 12.10, you have to downgrade to xorg 1.12.

To install these packages open the terminal and run the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:makson96/fglrx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install fglrx-legacy

Remove these packages using the following commands

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:makson96/fglrx

Thanks Ubuntu Geek.

Making Amazon Prime work with Ubuntu

Amazon Prime won’t play most of it’s videos on Ubuntu. It was giving me an error about Upgrading the Player.  Most of this stems from the slow death of Adobe flash, I susspect.  But the reasons why are less important to me than the fix.. and thanks to the link below, it’s a very very easy fix.

Just enter the following in Terminal and enter your password and you should be good to go (at least I was):

sudo apt-get install libhal1 hal

Read the full post which has more things to try, if this didn’t fix it for you.  BTW: If this did work for you, please let me know in the comments below.

Windows 7: What happens if I just keep the trial?

For those of us with a full cup of Windows Vista hate, the answer is to run to Windows 7.  The release candidate (RC) is out and I too plan to overwrite Vista with this as soon as I can get my head above water.   But this article from Lifehacker made me laugh this morning.  What will happen when you get the Windows 7 RC and fail to upgrade to the paid version?  At first (in March 2010) you’ll get a nag/pop up.  I’d expect that.  Then in June, you’d expect to be locked out, right.  But no, even funnier.  You can use it for 30 minutes. Then it auto-reboots – without warning.  🙂  Maybe it’s just me, but that’s funny and worse than a total lockout.  Like what you see?  Too ba(reboot).

It’s all fine.  They don’t have to give you a nag-free year to begin with. If you don’t want to pay for your operating system, then get Ubuntu (or some other flavor of Linux).

Amarok2: The Weekend at Bernie’s 2 of Software

Amarok 1.4 WAS by far the best music player I had ever seen.  So many options, a great functional layout with nearly everything you wanted no more than a single click away… I did say was. My recent upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 automagically left me with Amarok 2.  Not only was it not playing out of the box, I seem to have lost all ability to customize it or control it.  They say it’s the future of media players.  Of course they do because, it’s sure not the present.  I haven’t seen a sequel this bad since Weekend at Bernie’s 2.  Continue reading “Amarok2: The Weekend at Bernie’s 2 of Software”