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I have been booting Ubuntu to 3.13.0-93-generic because the newer releases do not support the RS880 [Radeon HD4250] video card that is built-in on my motherboard.

If I were to install the latest release of Ubuntu, would I be able to use the video driver from my Asus CD that came with the motherboard?

Please see question, "Monitor blacks out intermittently and flashes at random times in 14.04 LTS and 18 Bionic Beaver" if you need more detailed information about the problem I am experiencing. I understand that Ubuntu is not supporting my old video card because AMD did not agree to continue supporting it for another five years, but will my old driver work with the newer release of Ubuntu? If so, how do I go about installing the driver from my CD? (I know a little, but never enough.) Thanks!

I really don't want to buy a new computer just because this one is old. It still works great with the older software on it, but 14.04 LTS keeps wanting to upgrade and I can't because of the driver issue. Thanks again!

Zanna
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1 Answers1

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According to the documentation your RS880 [HD4250] is fully supported by the open source radeon driver for both 14.04 and 16.04. I would surmise that you are having problems upgrading because you are using the fglrx driver.

The approach that should work for you is to Revert to open source graphics drivers - options greyed out 14.04 or the related How do I remove the FGLRX drivers after I've installed them by hand? Once you have purged the fglrx driver and reverted to the Open Source Radeon driver you should be able to upgrade not only to 14.04 but also to 16.04.

Typically, the following manual commands will properly uninstall -fglrx:

sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*

The above is to completely purge the binary blob from the system.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core

The above is to reinstall packages affected by the installation of fglrx

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

The above is to to reconfigure X.

sudo reboot

It's necessary to reboot (or fix up the kernel modules and restart gdm).

Sources:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/VideoDriverDetection#Problem:_Need_to_purge_-fglrx

Elder Geek
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