Since installing Ubuntu 12.10 I have been playing around trying to get my Radeon HD 5450 gpu to work with the proprietary driver, as from the start installing the driver meant losing unity.
I won't list the steps I took as it is not a requirement to answering this question.
After taking one measure and then installing fglrx-updates, upon reboot the system hung at the purple screen. So I decided to boot using nomodeset
I edited
quiet splash $vt_handoff
to look like this
quiet splash nomodeset
Making this change I am then able to log in with Unity and the proprietary driver installed and performing well. I would go as far as to say it performs better than it did in 12.04
fglrxinfo
reads
display: :0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series
OpenGL version string: 4.2.11903 Compatibility Profile Context
Please note the way I have added nomodeset
It had been a while since I have had to do this so it was done from memory.
When looking for an answer to this question I came across this and discovered that my edit was supposed to go from
quiet splash $vt_handoff
to
nomodeset $vt_handoff
What has my nomodeset
edit done? The only thing wrong that I have noticed is that I don't get the plymouth Ubuntu logo screen when booting.
If that is the only trade-off I am happy to make the edit permanant.