So I finally got around to getting Ubuntu 8.04 installed on my desktop at work…which means my Windows XP working area is being moved into a Windows 2000 SP4 VM.  At least until we stop using SourceSafe.

There were some issues with getting it up and running though, mostly hardware-related.

ATI Radeon X1550 DualHead card - This was a pain in the ass to get set up in Ubuntu…primarily because it’s a PCI card running off a PCI-E bus and has some memory ranges molestered by the BIOS on my Dell.  Basically, it still shows 2 Intel 915 cards (.0 and .1; the .1 doesn’t really exist, it’s just a memory area for a second head on the card that’s not there) and 2 ATI cards (again, .0 and .1).  Ubuntu seemed to have detected everything OK, using the fglrx driver for the Radeon cards, but the displayconfig-gtk tool is hosed beyond comprehension and couldn’t sort its ass from a hole in the ground.  Don’t use it.  Anyway, Ubuntu does something really, really, stupid here…it turns on Beryl/XGL/Compiz/whatever they call it these days and sets the default BPP in xorg.conf to 8; a resolution that is unsupported by the fglrx driver; not that you’d ever figure that out, since gdm decides to init a failsafe X config and totally clobber your X11 logs.  After manually molestering the xorg.conf and getting fglrx-control package (for my catalyst control panel) I finally got the fual monitors set up correctly.

Here’s my xorg.conf, in case anyone else is doing battle with this card:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Generic Keyboard”
Driver        “kbd”
Option        “XkbRules”    “xorg”
Option        “XkbModel”    “pc105″
Option        “XkbLayout”    “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Configured Mouse”
Driver        “mouse”
Option        “CorePointer”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier    “ATI1″
BusID        “PCI:5:0:0″
Driver        “fglrx”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier    “ATI2″
BusID        “PCI:5:0:1″
Driver        “fglrx”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “LCD1″
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “LCD2″
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Screen1″
Monitor        “LCD1″
Device        “ATI1″
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Screen2″
Monitor        “LCD2″
Device        “ATI2″
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Default Screen”
Monitor        “Configured Monitor”
Device        “Configured Video Device”
DefaultDepth    24
SubSection “Display”
Virtual        2560 1024
Depth        32
EndSubSection

EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier    “Default Layout”
Screen        “Screen1″
Screen        “Screen2″ RightOf “Screen1″
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load        “dbe”
Load        “dri”
Load        “glx”
EndSection