Ubuntu Wiki

How to enable and fix compiz on laptops with ATI cards

If you used Ubuntu 7.10 and compiz worked for your laptop with ATI card and now in Ubuntu 8.04 compiz is not starting(is not present) this How TO is for you. This will work for you if you are new to Ubuntu i will make a step by step instructions. 1 I am sorry for my bad english(is not my native language) 2 You must have a laptop with a ATI card. 3 Read the step that instructs how to set compiz to skip a ugly problem(in some cases compiz is not workin fine ,in my case is not working ok) 4 this is my first page and i must learn how to write in wiki, i will edit in the future to make it look better In Ubuntu 8.04 some people with laptops with ATI cards had problems running the Live CD and the Ubuntu developers turnd off compiz for ATI cards in laptops. For enabling compiz we must modify the script that starts compiz to skip testing if we have a ATI card

edit the file /usr/bin/compiz Type this in the terminal and press enter and enter password if needed

sudo gedit /usr/bin/compiz

sudo makes the command run with root privilegies and gedit is a text editor in Ubuntu .If you are using kubuntu i belive that the text editor is named kate but i am not sure.

You must search this section from the file and comment it(place the # symbol before each line, this lines will not be executed, you can delete the lines but then you have to make a backup file in case something is nt working OK)

Search this section:

#don't run on laptops using ati driver
if laptop-detect; then
        for DRV in ati radeon; do
                 if egrep -q "Loading ${XORG_DRIVER_PATH}${DRV}_drv\.so" $LOG &&
                   ! egrep -q "Unloading ${XORG_DRIVER_PATH}${DRV}_drv\.so" $LOG;
                 then
                        verbose "Found laptop using ${DRV} driver. \n"
                        return 1
                fi
        done
fi

the commented section should be like this

#don't run on laptops using ati driver
        #if laptop-detect; then
        #       for DRV in ati radeon; do
         #               if egrep -q "Loading ${XORG_DRIVER_PATH}${DRV}_drv\.so" $LOG &&
        #                  ! egrep -q "Unloading ${XORG_DRIVER_PATH}${DRV}_drv\.so" $LOG;
         #              then
        #                       verbose "Found laptop using ${DRV} driver. \n"
         #                       return 1
        #               fi
        #       done
        #fi

save the file now compiz will start because it will not check if you have ATI card to start compiz from terminal you use the command

compiz --replace

Attention at Updates

Updates to compiz will rewrite the abve file and you must perform the operation again.

Setup compiz to work properly

On my laptop compiz is not workin OK without this settings: I do not know if this step is required for other ATI cards(my card is ATI Radeon M6 LY )If in &.10 it worked without this trick then it should work in 8.04(in 7.10 i had problems displayng the title bar and some black backgrounds untill i found this trick)

we need to put some lines in the file /etc/drirc(if is not present it must be created) Type this in the terminal and press enter and enter password if needed

==Attention at Updates==

sudo gedit  /etc/drirc

paste this lines

<driconf>
    <device screen="0" driver="radeon">
        <application name="all">
            <option name="allow_large_textures" value="2" />
        </application>
    </device>
</driconf>

save the file. Compiz must be restarted.

To start compiz from terminal type the command compiz --replace