Hardware
Disabling free modules on Ubuntu
Since the kernel 2.6.27 was released we can take advantage of the new free modules that support almost all webcam and wifi devices. But there is something weird sometimes, above all on wifi devices, what happens is that the free module is so much slower than the privative one.
The way to fix it is disabling the free modules and installing the privative one. To do this on Ubuntu (Intrepid) we need to edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add a new line for each module we want to disable. Of course, it is completely necessary to know which is the module name.
Here are two examples: with atheros and bcm4xxx devices. My problem was that the top speed with the “old” privative driver was at least 300kb/s (the speed line), however, with the free module, this speed was 100kb/s (just annoying).
So if we want to disable these modules, here is what we have to do. Open a terminal and:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
A new window will appear. Go to the bottom and add these lines (it depends if you have one or the other device):
blacklist ath5k
(for atheros devices)
blacklist bcm4xxx
(for bcm4xxx devices)
And that’s all. The install the privative drivers and all will work fine.
New ATI drivers version
Two days ago a new ati catalyst drivers were published, the 8.6.
Of course they’ve solved some bugs and improved the performance, but there is something new that is kind of interesting: the new command-line installer.
With older versions, we were able to install the drivers by two ways: with the graphical installer (not always working well) or the command-line installer that made the specific distributions packages (–buildpkg).
Since now, things will change. There is a new option for the command-line installer that allows to detect our distribution and its version and create directly the packages. Even more, it installs the created packages and configures the system. The specific command is:
sudo bash ./ati-driver-installer-8-6-x86.x86_64.run --buildandinstallpkg
However, that’s the theory. I tried to run it on my Ubuntu Hardy and the distribution was detected, packages were created, but it couldn’t install them (I don’t know exactly why). Even though, at least it was able to detect and create the specific packages by its own.
Finally, I installed the packeges manually, and it worked. The problem was that when I tried to run wine, the screen broke in two… (metaforicaly).
- Link | Release notes
- Download | Catalyst Linux Driver 8.6
