Graphics Cards

PCs can have many different video card manufacturers and models, just as cars can have many different types of makes and models. There are primarily two large video card manufacturers, ATI and nVidia along with Intel following closely. For the most part, ATI, nVidia and Intel drivers are very simple and fast to install.

Quick Links to the Binary Driver Installation Guides:

• General Binary Driver Guide - Try this section first.

• ATI Binary Driver HowTo

• nVidia Binary Driver HowTo

For additional troubleshooting resources, please also see the Ubuntu X Team wiki

Xorg.conf

The X configuration file can be found at /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You can back it up:

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old

If you changed your configuration file and you experience problems, you can copy the /etc/X11/xorg.conf from the Ubuntu LiveCD to your hard disk /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (before this, backup the file as described before).

If reverting back to the original xorg.conf file does not work for whatever reason and you are stuck in the terminal, you can execute the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg 

This will reconfigure your X server. Note: This will overwrite your current xorg.conf file.

Video Card Driver Types

There are two types of drivers that we can use: Open Source and Proprietary drivers. Open Source drivers have been created by the Linux community to function with certain video cards, and most video cards have an Open Source driver available. These types of drivers are usually licensed with the GPL and we can use these drivers freely. The advantages of using the Open Source drivers are that they are community supported and bugs can be fixed by the community programmers. The disadvantages are that the Open Source drivers sometimes do not provide full support for all of the video card's features.

Proprietary drivers are drivers written by the manufacturer. The Ubuntu development community has no access to the source code, so cannot fix bugs in these drivers. Users are allowed to use these drivers if they agree to the licensing terms. The advantages of using the Proprietary drivers are that they have been written by the manufacturer of the video card and they sometimes implement a larger set of features for the graphics card. The disadvantages are that bug fixes are usually slow and the drivers may have broken/not-fully-implemented features.

Some video cards may require the proprietary drivers, even though these drivers are not part of the open source community and cannot be fixed by open source software developers. If you encounter bugs with these closed-source drivers, developers will not be willing or even able to assist you in resolving your issues. These are the drivers that you use at your own risk.

If this is your first time here and you already know the information above along with your graphic card information, then you may skip the next section.

How do I determine my Video Card manufacturer and model?

To determine your video card manufacturer, execute the following in the console or a terminal window:

lspci | grep VGA

This will return information about the video card such as its manufacturer, model and revision number. Example:

tripp@eclipse-desktop:~$ lspci | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AR [Radeon 9600]

From this line we can see that ATI Technologies is the video card manufacturer and that Radeon 9600 is the video card model. With this information, we can determine next step we need to take.

Video Card Manufacturers

ATI

• Ubuntu ATI Binary Driver Howto - Guide for enabling the ATI binary drivers along with links discussing common problems.

• Ubuntu ATI Open Source Driver Howto - Guide for enabling the ATI open source drivers.

• Radeon_9200/9250_(RV280)_and_DVI - How to get DVI output working with ATI RV280 series video cards?

nVidia

• Ubuntu nVidia Binary Driver Howto - Guide for enabling the nVidia binary drivers along with links discussing common problems.

• Nvidia Driver - How to install the both the latest driver and the one in the repositories (it also includes a detailed Problems Section)

• Nvidia Troubleshooting - How to solve OpenGL Problems with Nvidia Drivers

• Nvidia TV Out - View X simultaneously on your monitor and TV

• Nvidia manual drivers installation - How to install the Nvidia accelerated drivers without apt

• Multiple monitors with nVidia - how to enable dual screens with the nVidia driver

Matrox

• Ubuntu Matrox Binary Driver Howto - Guide for enabling the Matrox binary drivers.

Via

• OpenChrome - video driver for the ASROCK/VIA/S3G UniChrome and UniChrome Pro graphics chipsets

Webcams

• Webcam - Guides on installing and managing Webcams.

Ports

Firewire (IEEE1394)

• Firewire - Hardware, drivers and software for getting ieee1394 (Firewire) to work

TV-cards

DVB

• Asus_P7131_Dual - Help on installing an Asus P7131 dual DVB card.

• DViCO Dual Digital 4 (and probably other DViCO cards) - How to get the DViCO Dual Digital 4 DVB Card (and most likely other DViCO cards like the NANO, FusionHDTV DVB-T Pro and Dual Express) working.

Help!

If you have a question that is unanswered, please visit the Ubuntu Forums and feel free ask questions! Try some of the following threads:

• Beginner Talk - Where you can ask any kind of question.

• Hardware & Laptops - Where you can see if your video card/hardware is supported. On this thread, you can ask questions about installations of video cards/hardware that are not mentioned here. Please refer to this section while in discussion on the forum so that this page may be updated if needed.

CategoryDocumentation CategoryHardware CategoryX