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After several graphic related crashes on Ubuntu 16.04, I've downgraded to 14.04.5 where I previously had a stable system using the ATI drivers (I forget which version).

I'm now having problems trying to install those ATI drivers.

Using the Additional Drivers GUI, I'm not even prompted for a password. The install silently fails. Using apt-get -f install fglrx will install the driver (I believe version 15.2) but upon reboot I cannot get past the login screen. I've also tried installing version 15.12 from AMD's website, with the same problem.

I'm using a Radeon HD6000 series card, which when used with the open source drivers, causes random screen freezing and requires a hard reboot.

Is this a known installation problem and is there a workaround? Perhaps a combination of Ubuntu and fglrx versions?

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4 Answers 4

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In principal, the problem is that AMD has stopped to provide updates for their fglrx drivers and change to a new one, called AMDGPU. In this deprecated state, ubuntu 16.04.0 and 16.04.1- and 14.04.5, whose hardware enablement stack is based on 16.04,does not longer work with the fglrx drivers (or see this blog post).

The options you have is

  1. to downgrade to ubuntu 14.04.1 to use the propietary driver until the end of life of ubuntu 14.04 in 2019

  2. Install 16.04 and use the open source driver, since your Radeon HD6000 series card is pre-GCN and will never be supported by the new AMDGPU

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Most likely the latest fglrx release doesn't support the kernel or X.Org Server version you have. Looking at AMD's page for the 15.9 driver, Ubuntu 15.04 or 14.04.2 is the latest supported version.

I would suggest looking for solutions with the open-source driver stack rather than the proprietary driver. You might look into enabling DRI3 or (possibly) switching to the xserver-xorg-video-modesetting driver.

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AMD typically has a problem with not providing up to date support for their proprietary drivers on Linux. Due to this issue, most of the time they don't offer packages like DEBs for any reasonably recent version.

However, they do offer a zip file to download which will contain a .run file. Execute this file in your terminal to install the drivers.

I did this about 6 months ago on Ubuntu 15.10 which worked so it should work for you on 14.04.x

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I would simply install 14.04 from older instalation media (maybe 14.04.2) not including latest hardware enablement pack, this would keep older kernel and X-stack compatible with fglrx. You can find older media here http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

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