Finally Got 3D Desktop Effects in My Ubuntu Gutsy (ATI Hardware)
Yesterday’s sad revelation : VMWare Guest Tools don’t work with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. And I was thinking earlier that it might be one of the quirks of the RC version of Gutsy and was hoping that it will all work well when the final version gets released but no such luck.
So I decided to install it on the real hardware. To get something more out of my efforts, I decided to also try out Gutsy’s support for the Compiz desktop effects. The installation itself went smoothly in typical Ubuntu installation method.
As soon as Ubuntu gutsy was installed, it prompted me if I want the restricted drivers to be installed. I graciously accepted the offer but received an error in response saying “xorg-driver-glrx is not enabled.”
When I had installed Ubuntu Gutsy RC1, it had automatically prompted me to enable certain repositories, took me to “Software Sources” dialog box, and after I had enabled the repositories(and refreshed the package list), it had continued installing the restricted drivers. It was a seamless process - everything was handled automatically and I only had to just keep clicking the “OK” buttons.
I don’t know what has changed between RC1 and the final release but I had to dismiss the above mentioned error window, manually go to Administration -> Software Sources and enable the repositories listed there.
It failed to refresh the packages and I realised that Internet is actually not working on the Gutsy yet. So I looked around a bit, changed Password Type in Network Settings from “WEP Text” to “WEP Personal” and felt relieved to finally be able to load the Google in the web browser. After successfully refreshing the package contents this time, the restricted drivers got installed without giving me any more errors.
The desktop effects were still absent though. I checked System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and tried to select something like “Normal” or “Extra” effects there, but got the error “The composite extension is not available” on both the occasions. I then checked the output of ‘compiz ––replace’ which indicated to me that I probably need to install the xserver-xgl drivers, so went ahead and installed it from the command line:
And while I was at it, installed the compiz configuration tools too:
In summary, the following command now informs me that everything is already there and nothing needs to be installed:
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
As you can see, everything is already installed. Now I went to System -> Preferences -> Appearance and selected the “Normal” radio button. Success! So I went ahead and selected “Custom” radio button this time and started playing with different settings by going to System -> Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.
Where to go from here? If you get lucky like me with your ATI hardware(my graphics card is ATI Mobility Radeon X300), you can learn more about Compiz by going to Desktop Effects with Compiz
If you are unable to get the 3D effects enabled even after installing the xserver-sgl driver, first try this ATI thread on Ubuntu forums, and in case you don’t find any success there, you can search the web for your ATI card or try asking for help on Launchpad Answers, Ubuntu Forums or Ubuntu IRC channel(#ubuntu at irc.freenode.net). I recommend you keep the output of the following commands handy with you when asking for help:
lspci | grep VGA
compiz ––replace
glxinfo | grep direct
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep Composite
Update: Here is a nice how-to by Ubuntu Forums member michael37 on how to get 3D Desktop effects for ATI cards for fresh Gutsy installation or an upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy.
Another ATI success story I came across: Compiz for ATI X1950XT
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QuotePingback by rapidoda » Blog Archive » Finally Got 3D Desktop Effects in My Ubuntu Gutsy (ATI Hardware) — October 31, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
Sure, you got Gutsy to do 3D effects with your ATI X300 card, but now you’re using fglrx. Gutsy Gibbon switched over to SLUB instead of SLAB memory allocation in the kernel and now you can’t suspend while using fglrx in Ubuntu.
QuoteComment by anon — November 1, 2007 @ 5:35 am
@anon,:
yes, I am aware of bug #121653. Timo Jyrinki provides the best clarification:
tabrez on November 2, 2007 at 7:55 pm said:
Yep, I am waiting for the day when open source drivers will be available for X300. I don’t always install compiz in my GNU/Linux distros, so this is not a serious issue for me.
QuoteComment by tabrez — November 2, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
Very helpful, thankyou
QuoteComment by Matt — November 5, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
Heya. Very nice write up and the links you added are treasures :)
But 1 question: did you have any problems with VLC?
QuoteAs soon as I reboot and the XLG server takes over the red color shifts when playing AVI’s. Not all AVI’s though.
Comment by Wim — November 7, 2007 @ 12:32 am
Wim,
Glad that the links were useful to you :)
Regarding the media playback in VLC, I have tested it with almost my entire AVI/XviD/DivX/MP4/etc collection of video files and did not come across any colour shifts at all. You can perhaps post messages on Ubuntu forums and the VLC forum along with a couple of screenshots and see who responds to it first and take it from there. Good luck!
QuoteComment by tabrez — November 10, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
This was very helpful. I’d been struggling awhile to get Compiz working on Gutsy with a 9600XT and following the instructions on your page did the trick. Thanks!
QuoteComment by Chris Lamke — November 24, 2007 @ 5:43 am
Good to hear that it worked out for you and thanks for noting it here.
Other Gutsy users who are using ATI 9600XT graphic card, here is a success story for you :)
QuoteComment by tabrez — November 24, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
Excelent.
Mine is an ATI Mobility Radeon X600 and your recipe worked amazing (after trying a hundred ways, and completely crushed my first ever Ubuntu).
Thank you very much.
PS: Sorry for my English.
QuoteComment by Pablo — November 29, 2007 @ 9:18 am
You are welcome Pablo, and thanks for reporting that it worked for your X600 card - I am sure it will be very encouraging to the other Gutsy users of ATI X600 cards who want to try 3D desktop effects. Your English is fine but I am no expert at it either ;)
QuoteComment by tabrez — November 30, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
Hi guys
QuoteI have installed Ubuntu 7.10 on an XP Pro SP2 machine. I am using VMWare Player Version 2.0.2 build-59824. I clicked on System -> Preferences -> Appearance then I click on Visual Effect Tab. then I choose between Normal, Extra and Custom, I get same error for all three optoins: Errot Messege is : “DESKTOP EFFECTS COULD NOT BE ENABLED”
I have tried all the options mentioned in above blogs and threads. did not help. What am I missing here? I have P4 3.06GHz 2GB RAM, Integrated ATI RADEON XPRESS 200.
I have looked up in System -> Administration -> Screens and Graphics then under Graphic Card Tab I see “vmware - VMware virtual video cards”. Also I can change screen resolutions upto 2360 X 1770. Somehow I can not make Visual Effects to work. What am I missing here……… any comments
Comment by sam — January 18, 2008 @ 11:55 am
Hey sam,
You can’t get 3D desktop effects on an operating system installed in a virtual machine. VMWare abstracts away the real hardware of your machine and projects a generic architecture to the operating systems installed on it. You can install Ubuntu on the machine directly(dual-boot with Windows XP) if you want to play with 3D desktop effects.
QuoteComment by tabrez — January 18, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
Thank you very much this fix work on my (rs485 [Radeon Xpress 1100 IGP] ) on a dell inspoiron 1501 you are the only one i could find with a fix.
QuoteComment by bob — February 3, 2008 @ 3:40 am