Binary package hint: restricted-manager
My Dell Inspiron 1501 has a Radeon Xpress 200M graphics card [1] and the restricted driver manager informs me that the proprietary ATI driver (fglrx) is needed for 3D graphics. Since getting the laptop I have tried both the free and proprietary drivers to get accelerated 3D without success. However a Mandriva bootable USB drive gets it working straight away. I copied the contents of the graphics card device section from the Mandriva system's xorg.conf [2] to my Ubuntu xorg.conf and now have accelerated 3D. The restricted manager should sort this out automatically upon driver installation, as the proprietary driver recommended by the tool actually performs worse than the default free driver without these options. (I am not sure which combination of options is actually needed, but I am willing to try any suggested combinations to narrow it down)
[1] Output of lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 10)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 5a37
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 SMBus (rev 13)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]
05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
08:01.0 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
08:01.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
[2] Working xorg.conf graphics device section:
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Xpress 200M (RS482)"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "DPMS"
Option "FSAAMSPosY1" "0.000000"
Option "StereoSyncEnable" "1"
Option "FSAAMSPosX5" "0.000000"
Option "FSAAMSPosX2" "0.000000"
Option "FSAAMSPosY4" "0.000000"
Option "FSAAMSPosX4" "0.000000"
Option "FSAAMSPosY0" "0.000000"
Option "FSAADisableGamma" "no"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "GammaCorrectionII" "0x00000000"
Option "ForceGenericCPU" "no"
Option "VRefresh2" "unspecified"
Option "CenterMode" "off"
Option "FSAAMSPosY5" "0.000000"
Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "FSAACustomizeMSPos" "no"
Option "FSAAScale" "1"
Option "DesktopSetup" "0x00000000"
Option "HSync2" "unspecified"
Option "TVHStartAdj" "0"
Option "FSAAMSPosX0" "0.000000"
Option "no_dri" "no"
Option "GammaCorrectionI" "0x00000000"
Option "BlockSignalsOnLock" "on"
Option "FSAAMSPosX1" "0.000000"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "MonitorLayout" "AUTO, AUTO"
Option "UseFastTLS" "0"
Option "no_accel" "no"
Option "Capabilities" "0x00000000"
Option "FSAAMSPosY3" "0.000000"
Option "TVColorAdj" "0"
Option "TVVPosAdj" "0"
Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
Option "FSAAMSPosY2" "0.000000"
Option "NoTV" "yes"
Option "TVHPosAdj" "0"
Option "TVHSizeAdj" "0"
Option "Stereo" "off"
Option "ScreenOverlap" "0"
Option "FSAAMSPosX3" "0.000000"
Option "TVVSizeAdj" "0"
EndSection
Sorry I forgot to mention that this is on an amd64 Gutsy system (the fglrx driver doesn't give 3D on Edgy or Feisty either, anything before that doesn't work with this lapop's harddrive and 32bit versions wont run due to a BIOS error, so I can't test on them sorry)