Been using Ubuntu dual boot since the Breezy Badger (Ubuntu 5.10) days. Presently have both 8.04 LTS 64 bit Ultimate Edition and Ubuntu 8.10 64 bit in a multiboot configuration with Win 7 RC and XP-SP3 pro. Grub menu.lst is on 8.04.
I prefer 8.10 over 8.04 LTS.
I cannot use the latest 9.04 version because the devs made a decision to use the latest xserver beta. This xserver initially didn't support the Linux drivers for my ATi Mobility Radeon X1400 video card. When Ati released a driver set that would work (Catalyst 9.4 for Linux) it coincided with their decision to drop support for my card and many other so called legacy cards. The last driver version to support my card was Catalyst 9.3 for linux.
These drivers provided full hardware 3-D acceleration for these cards in linux.
See the below warning from the cchtml wiki site devoted to installing the fglrx (Catalyst) proprietary drivers in Ubuntu 9.04.
Which cards does ATI no longer support? The ATI Radeon 9500-9800, X300-X2100, Xpress. See the complete list
here. If your card is on that list, you are restricted to the 9.3 driver - however since 9.3 driver doesn't support xorg-xserver 1.6, it will not work with Jaunty! This guide currently is for installing 9.7. !!!SO BE CAREFUL!!!
Trying to install either driver set results in a severely broken x.
With Ubuntu 9.04 the only option was to use the open source based Ati or Radeon drivers in the repos installed by default.
In a word these drivers suck. No hardware acceleration only software. One consequence is that GoogleEarthLinux doesn't work.
It looks like future versions of Ubuntu will be similarily crippled by ATi's heavy handed decision to drop support for dozens of video cards plus Ubuntu has to share some responsibility if they continue to push the latest xserver exclusively.
I can only hope that either ATi will produce a special version of fglrx that both supports legacy cards and the new xserver (very unlikely) or the future releases of Ubuntu offer, during the install process, the option of choosing the earlier xserver
version, the one supported by Catalyst 9.3 or earlier. Another option is that the folks developing the open source drivers get on the ball and develop usable 3-D hardware acceleration.
If nothing changes it looks like Ubuntu 8.10 will be the last Ubuntu release I'll be using.
I suspect that as other linux distros jump on the new xserver bandwagon it will exclude users of the ATi legacy cards as well.
Thank you, to the jerks at ATi for engineering this monumental mess.
BTW, I'm using a notebook computer so I can't change my video card, believe me, I would if I could.
I will never by another AMD/ATi product again, be it an AMD/ATi equipped computer or a standalone ATi video card.
I won't ever by an AMD cpu either.
Nvidia all the way.