One of the new things in Ubuntu 7.10 is the one-click enabling of restricted drivers (a.k.a. proprietary drivers). This is important because it will give users the best experience possible, and I’ve received several inquiries in our Ubuntu 7.10 from people wondering how they are supposed to enable these drivers in Ubuntu.
After you install Ubuntu 7.10 it will check to see if there is any hardware on your computer that has a corresponding restricted driver. If a match is found, you should see a little icon and balloon pop up in the tray notifying you of the available drivers:
If you happen to close out of the balloon, or you lose the icon there is still an easy way for you to get it back. You’ll find a menu option for enabling the drivers by going to System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager:
From there you can enable restricted drivers in Ubuntu, or you can also disable them by using the checkbox next to the respective device. When I tried to do this for my ATI X1400 graphics card I got hung up with an error message saying “xorg-driver-fglrx is not enabled“. I didn’t really have any idea what this meant, but I quickly found out that I had to enable a few more settings before I would be able to proceed. If you go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources you will see a checkbox that you can tick for “proprietary drivers for devices (restricted)“. I checked that box, and then I started receive an error “Could not apply changes, Please fix broken packages first“. So out of desperation I checked all of these boxes:
- Canonical-supported Open Source software (main)
- Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)
- Proprietary drivers for devices (restricted)
- Software restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse)
Low and behold I was able to go back to the Restricted Drivers Manager, and enable the proper drivers for my ATI graphics card (click screenshot to enlarge):
There were multiple reasons that I wanted to get the proprietary drivers installed, but the biggest one was that Ubuntu doesn’t recognize my native widescreen resolution without them. The other reason was to get the 3D support so that I could have some fun with Compiz Fusion, but that opened up another can of worms! I ended up getting Compiz Fusion to work, but I’ll save that story for another day.
Hopefully this solves any issues you may be having with trying to install the restricted drivers on Ubuntu. I was hoping that it would be a one-click solution, but it didn’t quite turn out to be that way. Luckily the workarounds necessary were not all that tedious.
I am actually using two out of three on my system, one for my video card, one for my wireless card, and one for the modem (which I didn’t even bother installing
).
In Kubuntu, run
restricted-manager-kde.Sabayon just does it all right out of the box. No questions,no checkboxes,nothing. It just installed the drivers for my nvidia card, flash9, java, everything.
Ya gotta love them Itialians.
I’ve always struggled with getting desktop effects enabled in Ubuntu, both in Gutsy and Fawn. Enabling the Nvidia driver on my machine results in errors during bootup which leaves Ubuntu in a low-res graphics mode stuck at 800×600 and 73Hz refresh rate.
It looks like Ubuntu can’t detect my Nvidia 6600GT graphics card correctly, and even if I try to configure things manually by doing a dpkg-reconfigure it still doesn’t seem to work.
I’ve thought about doing a clean install in case I have slightly borked upgrade, but if anyone else has any other suggestions I would be interested to hear.
I never worry about modems either. I haven’t used a modem port in over 5 years.
Thanks for pointing that out onlineapps! I’m sure our KDE friends will appreciate the tip.
I had never even heard of that distribution, but it looks really nice with its media center functionality, too. I will definitely give that a whirl. Thanks!
Have you tried to set the refresh rate to 60Hz?
73Hz is the only refresh rate available once desktop effects are switched on. I presume something needs tweaking in my xorg.conf file in order to enable other refresh rates? If you’ve got any ideas let me know.
Sabayon just does it all right out of the box. No questions,no checkboxes,nothing. It just installed the drivers for my nvidia card, flash9, java, everything.
Ya gotta love them Itialians.
I had never even heard of that distribution, but it looks really nice with its media center functionality, too. I will definitely give that a whirl. Thanks!
I couldn’t agree more! I’ve used Sabayon off and on for the last year or so, and it just works. (except for my wireless, but that’s another matter) Try it out, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Sabayon is new to me too. I’ll add it to my list of distros to try out. Should keep me busy for a few weeks
I see Sabayon do a 64-bit version too. Anyone tried that one out?
I haven’t tried out the 64-bit version even though all of my computers do support 64-bit operating systems. The support for 64-bit operating systems just isn’t there right now, so I normally stay away from them for the time being.
True. I tried 64-bit Ubuntu about a year ago and it lacked 3rd party support. I wouldn’t mind giving the 64-bit version a go though, so I can be on the bleeding edge of development
Sabayon however is a partially source-based distro based on Gentoo, so it’s for newcomers at least, it’s not that distro. Common packages are compiled, but all aren’t.
I’m using restricted drivers for my nvidia graphic card. But I’m actually looking for a driver for an ATI THEATER 550 TV Tunner, and I have no luck. There’s no oficial driver, and ther’s no drivers in forums, webpages and so on.
In the previous version of ubuntu I installed windows drivers for my Wireless card and work fine. Can I do the same with the tv tunner? how? Can anyone help me please? or maybe I must forget my tv tunner in ubuntu?
Unfortunately I’ve had issues with my ATI tuner in Ubuntu as well, and never managed to find a workaround. I just don’t think they extended the OS to support a wide variety of the tuners yet.