Proprietary ATI driver on OpenSUSE 12.1 64-bit system

Here’s the quick and dirty way to get the proprietary ATI ‘fglrx’ driver up and running on OpenSUSE 12.1 64-bit and 32-bit systems. Why blog about this when there must be hundreds of great wikis out there to cover the issue? None of them worked 100%. Here’s a way that works:

  1. Download latest driver from AMD/ATI driver page 
  2. Open Yast2 and install: kernel-devel,kernel-desktop-devel,Gcc,Gcc c++,Make 
  3. Reboot, and add this to the GRUB startup options: radeon.modeset=0 blacklist=radeon 3 
  4. When you boot into console, become root and run: # mkinitrd 
  5. Afterwards, cd to download directory and run installer: # sh ati-driver-installer-*.run
  6. Select default options all the way, then: # aticonfig –initial 
  7. And last: # /sbin/shutdown -r now 

Please note the GRUB boot options that blacklist the open source radeon driver. Without these parameters the driver would install but I would have fuzzy graphics and no way to change screen resolutions and so on. I added these instructions to the unofficial AMD wiki: wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/SUSE/openSUSE. Also note that AMD’s display driver no longer require kernel sources if kernel headers are present (hence the kernel-devel packages).

Please note that in time there will be made an RPM one-click install available for the new ATI drivers on the OpenSUSE wiki, but since I want to play some graphical games I need the latest and greatest. Also note that OpenSUSE policy dictates that the ‘radeonhd’ driver is phased out in favour of plain ‘radeon’ open source driver and ‘vesa’. If I wasn’t supposed to be gaming, I’d stay with the defaults.

One thought on “Proprietary ATI driver on OpenSUSE 12.1 64-bit system

  1. Driver version 12.1 released 25th of Jan 2012.

    I had to update since OpenSUSE 12.1 updated the kernel-desktop packages, and experienced the old incredible tearing that happens when the drive isn’t correctly inserted. Re-doing these steps (except #2) corrected the issue.

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