Ubuntu on Studio 1555...Lots of issues.

I recently installed Ubuntu on my new laptop, and mostly everything is going fine. My most major concern at first was the lack of audio, but i fixed that by changing some modprobe stuff.

With that fixed i have been pretty happy with the installation, but there are still a few things that collectively are starting to annoy me.


For starters, the brightness buttons dont work. Well, they do if i play with them right when Ubuntu starts, but they stop working a few minutes in.

Secondly, windows are pretty laggy, which they shouldnt be on a system like mine (2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Radeon mobile 4570 512mb). I suspect the culprit is the Catalyst video card drivers for the Radeon card, they are whatever the Update Manager downloaded for me and i suspect they aren't specific to my card. Anyone know of a better driver i could use?

Thirdly, opening up the screensaver settings and using it for even a few seconds causes a system crash, again i'm suspecting the video card driver but if you have any other thoughts on that please let me know.

My fourth problem is that Ubuntu doesnt seem to know when its running on AC power and when its on battery, i.e the display doesnt dim to the setting that it should when on battery. The battery shows up when its supposed to (charging or discharging) but the rest of the system seems oblivious.

And lastly, the system goes to sleep fine, but does not wake up (i have to shut it down manually and restart it).


Help a brotha out y'all? I know i listed quite a few problems there but if you can help me solve even a few that would be fantastic.

 

I think Ati release new catalyst drivers for linux witch supposely solves lots of issues. You might want to see if you can get them installed.

 

Have you checked under System > Preferences > Power Management?

Cheers...

Edit: Also see this thread.

 

You can try getting the latest drivers directly from ATi. The open-source ATi drivers are very, very, very slow. When i was using Ubuntu using the proprietary ATi drivers made for a much smoother experience.

 

Thats where the problem is, its not changing to the settings i set for when its on battery.

I'll check out that link a bit later and see if it helps.

I'm already using the proprietary drivers, what version is the newest?

Thanks.


p.s a guy on that other thread was saying the open source drivers are better than the proprietary AMD drivers? What do you think of that? And where can i get them?

 

did you try to install the DELL Ubuntu release? I don't know, maybe they've tweaked something....