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AMD/ATI Proprietary Driver

AMD/ATI Graphics Drivers are partly secret source (closed source/proprietary) software, owned by a for profit corporation and not supported by Debian. For those interested in stronger security and stronger privacy, it is suggested to consider using an alternative to MD/ATI Graphics Drivers. Which is both fully libre source (open source) and supported by Debian. Such as Mesa.

This page describes how to install the AMD proprietary display driver (AMD Catalyst, aka fglrx) on Debian 7 (wheezy) and 8 (jessie) systems. For information on the open source drivers, see AtiHowTo.

Contents

  1. AMD/ATI Proprietary Driver
    1. Identification
    2. Drivers
    3. Installation
      1. Debian 8 "Jessie"
        1. AMD Catalyst 14.9
      2. Debian 7 "Wheezy"
        1. AMD Catalyst 12.6
        2. AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1
    4. Configuration
    5. Troubleshooting
    6. See Also
    7. External Links

Identification

The AMD/ATI graphics processing unit (GPU) series/codename of an installed video card can usually be identified using the lspci command. For example:

See HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI for more information.

Drivers

The proprietary "AMD Catalyst Linux Graphics Driver" (aka fglrx) provides optimized hardware acceleration of OpenGL applications via a direct-rendering X server. It is a binary-only Xorg driver requiring a Linux kernel module for its use.

One driver version is available for Debian 8 "Jessie":

The AMD Catalyst Legacy driver - supporting the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series - is not available for Debian 8 "Jessie", as upstream has not updated the driver for newer Xorg releases (726500).

Two driver versions are available for Debian 7 "Wheezy":

All versions above are available only for the x86 and x86-64 architectures (Debian i386 and AMD64 ports respectively).

Installation

Debian 8 "Jessie"

AMD Catalyst 14.9

For support of Radeon R9 200, Radeon R7 200, Radeon HD 8000, Radeon HD 7000, Radeon HD 6000 and Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs (supported devices).

<!> This driver is incompatible with the GNOME desktop, as it does not support the EGL interface. It is recommended to use the free radeon driver instead.

  1. Add "contrib" and "non-free" components to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example: 

    # Debian 8 "Jessie"
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

  2. Update the list of available packages. Install the appropriate linux-headers and fglrx-driver packages: 

    # aptitude update
# aptitude -r install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') fglrx-driver

    This will also install the recommended fglrx-modules-dkms package. DKMS will build the fglrx module for your system.

  3. Create an Xorg server configuration file.

  4. Restart your system to enable the radeon blacklist.

Debian 7 "Wheezy"

AMD Catalyst 12.6

For support of Radeon HD 7000, Radeon HD 6000 and Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs. For older devices, see AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1.

  1. Add "contrib" and "non-free" components to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example: 

    # Debian 7 "Wheezy"
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

  2. Update the list of available packages. Install the appropriate linux-headers and fglrx-driver packages: 

    # aptitude update
# aptitude -r install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') fglrx-driver

    This will also install the recommended fglrx-modules-dkms package. DKMS will build the fglrx module for your system.

  3. Create an Xorg server configuration file.

  4. Restart your system to enable the radeon blacklist.

AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1

For support of Radeon HD 4000, Radeon HD 3000 and Radeon HD 2000 series GPUs.

  1. Add Debian Backports sources to /etc/apt/sources.list, also including the "contrib" and "non-free" components. For example: 

    # Backported packages for Debian 7 "Wheezy"
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main contrib non-free

  2. It is recommended to only select single backported packages that fit your needs, and not use all available backports. Therefore include the following in /etc/apt/apt.conf 

APT::Default-Release "wheezy";

  1. Update the list of available packages. Install the appropriate linux-headers and fglrx-legacy-driver packages: 

    # aptitude update
# aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,')
# aptitude -r -t wheezy-backports install fglrx-legacy-driver

    This will also install the recommended fglrx-legacy-modules-dkms package. DKMS will build the fglrx module for your system.

  2. Create an Xorg server configuration file.

  3. Restart your system to enable the radeon blacklist.

Configuration

As the fglrx driver is not autodetected by Xorg, a configuration file is required to be supplied. For example:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-fglrx.conf

The configuration file above can be created using these commands:

Note: During driver installation you may have been notified that 'aticonfig --initial' can be used to create the required configuration file. If you do and then have problems with your video configuration, try using the simplified version shown above.

Restart your system at this point to enable the radeon driver blacklist.

Additional configuration information is available.

Troubleshooting

See Also

CategoryProprietarySoftware