Enabling Desktop Effects: Best driver for Radeon Xpress 200m

[nxn00b]

I am trying to enable Desktop Effects in Ubuntu 10.10. So far, when I enable, the system will crash/freeze and the only way out is a hard shutdown.

So my question is. Which driver is the best to use for enabling these effects?

Thank you.

Update: My Sabayon system is running compiz fine, so I searched the package manager for ati and discovered xf86-video-ati is installed. Correct me if I'm wrong of course, but I just thought I would provide that update.

[reed9]

Yes, open source ati driver does support 3D acceleration for the xpress 200. I have a laptop with the same card and it does work. My experience with Ubuntu has been that 9.10 worked, 10.04 had troubles, and I haven't tried 10.10. However, in no case has performance been great, I'm afraid.

The Arch wiki has some ideas for tweaking your xorg.conf to help with performance.

[nxn00b]

Hi Reed.
Yea it isn't very stable right now. I have never been able to get it working fine in Ubuntu though. Sabayon has always been flawless on default without any changes. I wonder why Ubuntu can't recognize and set this up as default if sabayon can. As far as xf86-video-ati is concerned, I couldn't find that driver in Ubuntu. The only ati driver I can find has no Install or uninstall link on it and is greyed out.

Thanks for the link by the way. I'll have to check that out when I get a chance.

[reed9]

Ubuntu calls the package for the open source driver xserver-xorg-video-radeon.

[nxn00b]

Oh ok. Well that one is definitely installed.