Ubuntu display - no existent

Question

My HP Pavillion Dv5 1004nr worked great with Ubuntu up until 11.04. Now, ever since Unity desktop environment the display has been sporadic at best. I was told that the video driver bugs (known and largely ignored) were fixed for the ATI raedon card in my laptop with 13.04. So I installed it. 13.04 doesn't even detect the display. Boots to black screen every time now. Is there ever going to be a fix for the AMD architecture with ATI raedon chipsets? do the developers even care? this has been an issue for years, and no sign of a fix in sight....

Answer 1

The legacy graphics driver that you need is not available in the Ubuntu Software Center in Ubuntu 13.04. That is why you're getting a black screen. This is also the reason why your HP Pavilion dv5-1004nr laptop worked great with Ubuntu up until Ubuntu 11.04.

However you can still install the correct graphics driver for your HP Pavilion dv5 1004nr laptop on Ubuntu 13.04 by adding this Ubuntu PPA (Personal Package Archive): ppa:makson96/fglrx to your system's Software Sources. In order to install the AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1 graphics driver on Ubuntu 13.04, open the terminal and run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:makson96/fglrx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install fglrx-legacy  

...and then reboot to enable the AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1 graphics driver.

Taking a longer range view of things, the AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1 graphics driver is not supported for Ubuntu 13.10, and Ubuntu 13.04 will not be supported by updates after January, 2014. So that doesn't give you an operating system that is supported by updates for a long period of time unless you install Ubuntu 12.04, which is a Long Term Support release that is supported by updates until April, 2017. The same terminal commands listed above are also the commands used to install the AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1 graphics driver in Ubuntu 12.04.

For the time being you still have Ubuntu 13.04, so this gives you an opportunity to test whether the AMD Catalyst Legacy 13.1 graphics driver solves your black screen problem, and then after that you can decide whether or not to install Ubuntu 12.04.