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The -fglrx driver does not always uninstall properly, and leaves bits behind which can cause failures in -ati.

Symptoms:

• You had -fglrx installed previously but have switched to -ati, and now are seeing various odd problems including one or more of the following:
  • Failure to boot
  • Performance issues
  • Monitor power management stops working
  • glxgears/glxinfo fails to work
  • Various crashes, freezes, rendering errors, etc.

Non-Symptoms:

• If you've never had -fglrx installed on your system, there is no chance you have this problem

How It Works

The fglrx driver includes kernel components which don't always get fully uninstalled when switching to -ati. In addition, -fglrx provides its own fglrx-specific version of libgl, which can cause breakage when running -ati.

In theory, apt should be able to clean up all the fglrx bits properly, but in practice there are many corner cases where bits get left behind.

Try:

 dpkg -l '*fglrx*'

and

 locate fglrx

to see if there is still some proprietary bits around causing problems.

Problem: Need to purge -fglrx

Typically, the following manual commands will properly uninstall -fglrx:

  sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx
  sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri
  dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Problem: Need to fully remove -fglrx and reinstall -ati from scratch

Here is a more aggressive recipe which removes both -fglrx and -ati, and reinstalls the latter:

  sudo /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh  # (if it exists)
  sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
  sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
  sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
  sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri
  dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Then reboot (or fix up the kernel modules and restart gdm)

How to File a Bug Report

It is generally known that incomplete -fglrx uninstallations can interfere with -ati, so no bug reports need be filed for the issues that arise from this. See bug #285603 in particular.

However, if you have specific recommendations or ideas on how to improve the transition process, please feel free to file wishlist bugs against fglrx-installer explaining the idea in detail.