How can I get the AMD driver running on Ubuntu 12.10 (AMD Radeon HD 7310& AMD Vision E1-1200 APU)

I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on the Lenovo S206 of my brother and already spent hours on trying to get the graphic driver to work.

No matter which solution I used, in the end Unity crashes, after the login I can see files on the desktop and also open folders and so on, but there is neither a window manager nor any sign of Unity (no panel on the top, no sidebar).

I used this instruction to install the driver and I also tried generating distribution-specific packages.

My Brother wants to go to France in two days, I hope you can help me out.

Solution 1:

I had the same issues but I finally found a way to use AMD drivers while keeping the Unity launcher working.

First in the terminal update your kernel with

   sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.5.0-17-generic

Next go to the AMD website and download the 12.11 Beta drivers

Download the drivers and place the drive file (.run file) on the desktop

In the terminal run the following:

cd /home/yourname/Desktop (Replace yourname w/ your Ubuntu login username)

Followed by

sudo sh amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.11-beta11-x86.x86_64.run

The AMD driver/catalyst installer should open, follow the step by step and restart!

Your unity bar should work while you have the latest drivers! WOo!

Also - to remove the watermark (For AMD testing only) simply open the terminal and run

sudo gedit /etc/ati/signature

Then replace "Unsigned" with 9777c589791007f4aeef06c922ad54a2:ae59f5b9572136d99fdd36f0109d358fa643f2bd4a2644d9efbb4fe91a9f6590a145:f612f0b01f2565cd9bd834f8119b309bae11a1ed4a2661c49fdf3fad11986cc4f641f1ba1f2265909a8e34ff1699309bf211a7eb4d7662cd9f8e3faf14986d92f646f1bc

Solution 2:

The new AMD 12.11 beta drivers (released 2012.10.23) work with Ubuntu 12.10. However to install them you must first install linux-headers-generic. Hence:

    sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

Slainte!

P.S. This script will get rid of the watermark.