How I installed Debian Testing on a PC with a ATI Radeon X550 PCI Express card. Using the proprietary ATI driver with 3D Acceleration.

Using the latest network install CD.
Choosing Basic system.

Then loading gnome, menu, x-window-system-core and gdm using apt-get install.

The automatic hardware recognition recognises an ati card so puts the ati driver in xorg.conf, X will not start.
To get an X session started all I did was to use the vesa driver instead of the ati driver in xorg.conf,
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon X600 (RV370)"
Driver "vesa"
# Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
# Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
# Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
# Option "MonitorLayout" "AUTO, AUTO"
# BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
# Option "UseFBDev" "true"
EndSection
and commented out all the ati specific options.
The Debian Installer picks up the X550 as a X600.
I then set other packages on the PC as I wanted with Synaptic.
Then set about the task of getting 3D acceleration working on the X550 card.

After trying to use the debian fglrx-driver, which is currently in SID and getting lots of issues, I gave up and gave the ATI Installer´s package builder a try.
I downloaded it from the ati main site. This forum is stopping me from posting the url until I have made 3 posts but you can find it a wwwdotatidotcom and follow the downloads/linux links.

As Root
If you run:-
sh ati-driver-installer-8.24.8-x86.run --help
It lists all the available options for you. I chose the following.
sh ati-driver-installer-8.24.8-x86.run --buildpkg Debian/Testing

It creates 5 packages in whatever directory you put the orginal file.
fglrx-driver_8.24.8-1_i386.deb
fglrx-driver-dev_8.24.8-1_i386.deb
fglrx-kernel-src_8.24.8-1_i386.deb
fglrx-control-qt3_8.24.8-1_i386.deb
fglrx-sources_8.24.8-1_i386.deb

Then....
dpkg -i fglrx-driver_8.24.8-1_i386.deb
dpkg -i fglrx-kernel-src_8.24.8-1_i386.deb
dpkg -i fglrx-control-qt3_8.24.8-1_i386.deb

Then...

module-assistant prepare
module-assistant auto-install fglrx

To test whether it had worked....
I stopped X.
/etc/init.d/gdm stop
modprobe -v fglrx

Which displays info about fglrx if successful.

I then went into xorg.conf and made the following changes...

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon X600 (RV370)"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "MonitorLayout" "AUTO, AUTO"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
Option "UseFBDev" "true"
EndSection
Put back all the stuff I had commented out previously, changed the driver to fglrx and added <Screen 0> because I only had 1 screen attached to the card.

And that was it.....
3D acceleration now works

zoe@ZoePC:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON X550 Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.5755 (8.24.8)

zoe@ZoePC:~$ fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
2587 frames in 5.0 seconds = 517.400 FPS
3222 frames in 5.0 seconds = 644.400 FPS
3190 frames in 5.0 seconds = 638.000 FPS
3223 frames in 5.0 seconds = 644.600 FPS
3237 frames in 5.0 seconds = 647.400 FPS
3208 frames in 5.0 seconds = 641.600 FPS
3200 frames in 5.0 seconds = 640.000 FPS

There was a problem with the Ati Control which got installed on my Gnome menu. The program was in the wrong directory, I simply found it and copied it to the correct directory.

The whole system now performs a whole lot better.

I can recommend using the ATI Installer Package builder and not trying to use the Debian fglrx-driver package.

To build the deb packages you need these packages: Nice tutorial!

That was a great tutorial. It was the exact problem fix I needed.

Thanks