Catalyst (Obsolete - remove?)

This article or section is out of date. Reason: This is page need to be updated, and legacy users need to use FREE drivers. Oguzkagan (talk) (Discuss)

Owners of ATI/AMD video cards have a choice between AMD's proprietary driver (catalyst) and the open source driver (xf86-video-ati). This article covers the proprietary driver.

AMD's Linux driver package catalyst was previously named fglrx (FireGL and Radeon X). Only the package name has changed, while the kernel module retains its original fglrx.ko filename. Therefore, any mention of fglrx below is specifically in reference to the kernel module, not the package.

As of August 2012, binary packages are being offered. Currently, packages are available in the [basis] repository. In the past, Catalyst_legacy has been dropped from official Manjaro support because of incomaptiblility with Xorg-Server 1.13-Series. We had to remove both proprietary drivers for a short term due change to Xorg-Server 1.14-Series.

Steps to restore free ATI driver

1/ Fire up a package manager, search for "catalyst" and remove all installed packages starting with it. Also remove "lxdm"

2/ Put these in a terminal

sudo mhwd -i pci video-ati
sudo pacman -S lxdm xfce4-session

• This will also reinstall xorg-server. If you can't find xorg-server installed, you will have to manually install it before restarting the system. Also replace xfce4-session with your desktop session.

Prepare the System for Catalyst Drivers

It will be necessary to update your system in order to prepare it to use Catalyst drivers. To do so, enter the following command into the terminal:

sudo pacman -Syyuu mhwd-db-catalyst

Once complete, a Catalyst driver can now be installed.

Install Catalyst Driver

All the preparations complete, enter the following command in the terminal to automatically detect and install the appropriate Catalyst driver:

sudo mhwd -a pci nonfree 0300

Following the installation, reboot your system for the changes to take effect.

Catalyst / Intel Hybrid Driver

This method describes installing the non-free catalyst driver with full switching support for Intel chipsets. Currently there is an issue with Xorg 1.14 which prevents X from loading. Here is a workaround I discovered. Confirmed working for AMD 7970m / Intel HD 4000.

sudo pacman -Syyuu

Remove conflicting packages. At this time it is because of the Xorg 1.14 not being properly supported/

sudo pacman -R xf86-video-intel xf86-video-nouveau xf86-video-ati xorg-server

Install catalyst 13.4.X

sudo mhwd -i pci video-catalyst 

Install fix for running Intel driver and switchable catalyst from the AUR.

sudo pacman -S base-devel yaourt

yaourt catalyst-total-pxp
mhwd-gpu --setgl catalyst

Additional dependencies

sudo pacman -S qt opencl-headers linux-headers

A bug fix, workaround.

sudo systemctl enable temp-links-catalyst

Setting up initial configs

sudo aticonfig --initial -f

Switch to discrete GPU (AMD card)

sudo aticonfig --px-dgpu

Alternatively, for the Intel card use.

sudo aticonfig --px-igpu

Troubleshoot

conflicting dependencies

Error

---

failed to prepare transaction (conflicting dependencies)

xf86-video-ati and catalyst-server are in conflict (xorg-server<1.14.0)

Not all free drivers are supported by Catalyst-Server. Please uninstall any free drivers with:

 sudo mhwd -r pci video-ati

You may need to remove some packages with pacman:

 sudo pacman -Rs <pkg-name>