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I've installed 11.10 and the proprietary ATI drivers using "additional drivers" The performance of my system is absolutely awful and it shouldn't be. I tried to remove the proprietary drivers using the Additional Drivers tool and it appears to remove them. However after I reboot I cant get back into my desktop properly (the panel and launcher go missing). This doesn't seem to be an isolated problem in 11.XX. This guide covers how to restore the desktop (panel and launcher), but the guide doesn't fix my problem though.

Whenever I do sudo unity --reset it runs through its normal processes until it hangs at setting update "run_key" and never gets past that. I must reinstall the proprietary drivers using jockey-text or jockey-gtk in order to get back to my proper desktop.

Interestingly enough the system performance seems improved while it is in its "broken" state (missing panel and launcher).

I think restoring the default drivers may solve my problems but I cant figure out how to do it.

2
  • Use the uninstall script the offer. Dec 18, 2011 at 0:13
  • Where is it? I tried using the longInstallerName.run --uninstall (found this command using help). It says it cant find the uninstaller ...
    – Jiew Meng
    Dec 18, 2011 at 0:32

5 Answers 5

73

Try to completely remove your ATI drivers from your system:

sudo apt-get purge "fglrx.*"

Remove your xorg.conf

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reinstall xorg completely

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64

Re-configure Xorg

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Reboot

sudo reboot

You should be greeted with lightdm, this will default everything x the same way a fresh install would.

13
  • thank you! also, just discovered that ubuntu 2d under proprietary drivers runs nice and snappy. I dont understand why though. My hardware should be more than enough to handle regular (non-2d) ubuntu Oct 17, 2011 at 20:02
  • 2
    I also have an ATI, my recommendation to any one using any kind of ATI is use Ubuntu2d! Oct 17, 2011 at 20:06
  • 1
    After you remove the drivers if you want to use fglrx again use the official ATI ones on the AMD site. Oct 17, 2011 at 20:07
  • 1
    This worked on Ubuntu 13.10 as well!
    – karlingen
    Oct 22, 2013 at 11:59
  • 1
    Note that this removed ATI drivers from Mint 16 Cinnamon for me. Thanks @BrunoPereira!
    – Ryan
    Jun 13, 2014 at 14:41
15

Remove the drivers, .deb or normal install (if you get a file not found ignore it)

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev*

Remove your xorg.conf

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reinstall xorg

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri

Configure Xorg

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Reboot:

sudo reboot

After the reboot all the fglrx packages will be gone, you will be using default open source.

For more information on how to remove / add / replace ATI drivers in your system there is already a very good post with these steps.

5

To remove all the current fglrx packages from your system

If any of these returns errors like file not found or package not found, ignore it.

Run these commands in a Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_\* fglrx-amdcccle\* fglrx-dev\*
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  • 1
    Will my display drivers work fine until I install th new ones
    – alme1304
    Aug 12, 2012 at 6:15
  • Yes but wait until your ready to install the new ones. Have a look at this Q&A it gives you 2 options how to install new drivers Aug 12, 2012 at 6:20
  • What Q&A site? did you forget a link?
    – alme1304
    Aug 13, 2012 at 1:16
  • Sorry. askubuntu.com/questions/124292/what-is-the-correct-way-to-install-ati-catalyst-video-drivers/126513#126513 Aug 13, 2012 at 6:34
  • Doing this doesn't work for me. It shows the following message: One or more files have been altered since installation. Uninstall will not be completed. See /etc/ati/fglrx-uninstall.log for details. Apr 21, 2014 at 13:57
2

Here are the release notes for the driver.

As for their instructions, the uninstall:

aticonfig --uninstall

Alternatively, uninstall can be launched with superuser permissions using the following commands as well:

sh ati-driver-installer-x86.x86_64.run --uninstall 
sh /usr/share/ati/amd-uninstall.sh
2
  • Oh, I tried that it says something about the script not found ...
    – Jiew Meng
    Dec 18, 2011 at 1:05
  • can you post the exact command you used and exact error message please. Otherwise could be most anything, including a typo.
    – Panther
    Dec 18, 2011 at 4:44
0

Those darn AMD ATI crimson drivers! The second time I've tried installing and got some glitch/bug. Luckily I was able to uninstall it fairly easily after the crash / black screen stuck frozen at login.

Was also getting

One or more files have been altered since installation. Uninstall will not be completed. See /etc/ati/fglrx-uninstall.log for details.

Doing the following worked for me from root recovery shell

sh /usr/share/ati/amd-uninstall.sh --foce

or

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/amd-uninstall.sh --foce

then reboot.

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