Thursday, November 13, 2008

Ubuntu 8.10 on my Thinkpad T60p - (Part 2 - Cool Effects )

Earlier this week there were a few updates for Ubuntu via Synaptic. As usual I let the system apply the updates in it's typical smooth manner, however this time there was a problem.

When I restarted the system the usual Compiz graphics would not work at all. The cube you can keep - but I ned those wobbly windows. I restarted the system and chose to boot an older version of the Kernel and found the Compiz graphics were working to an extent, I had the wobbly windows but no Cube effect.

I booted back to the latest kernel. Running "fglrxinfo" in a terminal windows gave the error "BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)".

As usual there are a few websites giving long and complicated solutions to this problem. I just ran EnvyNG on the command line... "envyng -t" and selected the option to "Uninstall the ATI driver", then chose the option to "Install the ATI driver".

After a reboot the "fglrxinfo" gives a more useful output...

john@monza:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8087 FireGL Release

And now I have the cylinder effect going in conjunction with the cube.

Ubuntu desktop with the Compiz circle effect
Thanks go to Alberto for EnvyNG yet again.

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