I get a black screen whether I use Ubuntu's driver or ATI's driver, but when I use the default it works fine without an desktop effects. Catalyst installed without any errors.

Maybe try the open-source "xf86-video-ati" driver (be sure to uninstall Catalyst first)?

MTK358, he did say "when I use the default it works fine". The default one would be the open source -ati driver.

andrew2325, I've used a HD4350 with the catalyst drivers Ubuntu packaged for 9.10 but, of course, each users success is going to vary depending on the exactly hardware in their machine. If you can't get the catalyst drivers working, you could try using an updated version of the open source drivers which do support 3D acceleration. You could install it using the xorg-edgers PPA:

https://edge.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

It would also require a newer kernel, which I believe you can get from the kernel PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~kernel-ppa/+archive/ppa

Unfortunately, I have no experience with either of these, so I wouldn't really be able to assist if you ran into problems.

xf86-video-ati provides acceleration. Why not use it? Did you try to enable desktop effects with the "default" driver?

The version in Ubuntu 9.10 provides 2D acceleration only. 3D acceleration wasn't in a usable state at the time 9.10 was released, though it is now.

Adam

Isn't Ubuntu 9.10 the newest?

Yes. But that still doesn't change the fact that 3D acceleration wasn't really in a usable state at the time 9.10 was released.

Adam

The default ati driver doesn't work either. I was talking about the regular old vga driver or whatever that comes with Ubuntu.

What happens when you try to use the 'ati' or 'radeon' driver, then? I still stand by my suggestion that if fglrx won't work for you, you might be better off trying to get newer versions of the radeon driver to work. It functions quite well these days, particularly with desktop effects, and even with many games such as ut2004, openarena, even doom3 (if the kernel and driver are new enough).

Adam