Solved - Enabling ATI Radeon Graphics

[7272andy]

I recently received a new laptop with the following graphics card
    1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5650 PCI Express - DirectX® 11

However the Live CD would not display a desktop (just a black screen) unless I booted with the vesa driver.

In order to fix the problem I installed PCLinuxOS using the vesa driver and then took the following steps;

• Open the PCC and go to Hardware and then set up the graphical server
• Select the correct Graphic Card driver, (the button will most likely be labelled Custom), when the button is pressed it will usually autodetect the correct driver for you.
• Click OK
• Click Yes to use the proprietary driver
• Tick the box to Enable Translucency and click OK
• Click Quit. Do not click on the Test button
• Click Yes
• Close the PCC and open Synaptic
• install the fglrx-control-center
• Open a Konsole and su to root
• Enter aticonfig --initial -f

Reboot the computer and you should now see your desktop

To bring up the Catalyst Control Center open a Konsole and enter amdcccle or select it from the Menus

Regards
Andy

[cmillar6]

thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Radeon HD 3100 Graphics and I could never get Compiz or KDE desktop effects to work with the driver installed by default. Your advice solved my problem. Printing this thread out as I will never remember instructions next re-install.