Fglrx

AMD Catalyst is non-free/proprietary software

AMD Catalyst driver cannot be included in Fedora because it is not free software. Fedora includes a free and open source driver for AMD graphics cards. It is highly recommended that you use the default driver that is part of Fedora and help improve it by providing your feedback. The following documentation describes the steps to use the non-free/proprietary driver. Fedora cannot help resolve bugs in the proprietary driver and all feedback should be directed to the vendor instead.

If you experience problems with the default free driver, or find it slow, you may install it with the following instructions.

Getting AMD Catalyst

Root is needed
Any commands with a preceding hash, as opposed to a dollar sign will require superuser privileges. Become root using:

$ su -

or

$ sudo -i

Preperations

Upgrade your system and reboot.

# yum upgrade

# shutdown -r now

Download and install the RPM Fusion repositories (according to your Fedora version):

• Fedora 18
  • RPM Fusion free
  • RPM Fusion nonfree
• Fedora 17
  • RPM Fusion free
  • RPM Fusion nonfree
• Fedora 16
  • RPM Fusion free
  • RPM Fusion nonfree

If your browser has downloaded these packages, as opposed to requesting to open the Fedora package installer, you may install them using the following command:

# yum install /path/to/package(s).rpm

Installing AMD Catalyst

Install the Catalyst driver and libraries, as well as the akmod kernel module using yum.

# yum install xorg-x11-drv-catalyst xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs akmod-catalyst

Akmod vs. kmod
Many will mistakenly install kmod instead of akmod. Akmod is the preferred option, similar to dkms, in that is dynamically rebuilds the kernel module whenever a new kernel is installed, instead of the user having to rebuild each kernel module whenever there is a new kernel release.
A disadvantage to akmod is that it required more space than kmod-compiled modules.

Run aticonfig to generate a new xorg.conf for your system. Failure to do so will likely result in a broken system.

# aticonfig -f --initial

or (if using multiple GPUs / switchable graphics)

# aticonfig -f --adapter=all --initial

Finishing touches

To prevent the old radeon driver from loading at boot, blacklist it by adding the radeon and radeonhd drivers to modprobe's blacklist.conf.

# echo "blacklist radeon" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

# echo "blacklist radeonhd" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Remove the old radeon driver from initramfs loaded at boot.

# mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-radeon.img

# dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

Reboot.

# shutdown -r now

Once you have rebooted, run fglrxinfo (this does not require root privileges), which should display an output similar to the following:

$ fglrxinfo

fglrxinfo 
display: :0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6300M Series
OpenGL version string: 4.2.11733 Compatibility Profile Context