I'm planning to build a PC soon and I wanted to know how I install graphics drivers in Ubuntu 12.04. If you have any Linux tips that would be appreciated also.
Thanks in advance
Get a 7k card over R series, driver support seems spotty from what I hear.
I would also go Xubuntu 13.10 /w kernel 3.13 (you will need to update this but its fairly simple) Do it in 3 seperate steps so if anything goes wrong you can diagnose whats wrong, I did it this way.
1 - Update system - apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
Reboot
2 - update to 3.13 - http://www.yourownlinux.com/2014/01/install-upgrade-to-linux-kernel-3-13-1-in-linux.html
Reboot
3 - Install Catalyst - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD
All been good it should boot back into X and everything should be fine.
I had issues with Ubuntu and these upgrades, they eventually worked after some fiddling and reinstalling, but to say Ubuntu is supposed to be a beginners distro, it makes you work for it.
Have fun!
Get a 7k card over R series, driver support seems spotty from what I hear.
From the benchmarks at phoronix, the R7 270X seems to be doing pretty well: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux314_mesa102_gpus&num=2
The benchmarks are on the open source driver, expect about 25% better performance on the proprietary driver in 3D and slower performance with 2D (EDIT: the numbers are from their benchmarks also, and THEY will change over time, we'll probably get to a point when the open source driver wields the same performance as the proprietary one).
Just don't go with NVIDIA, or the super high end, and you'll be happy.
So do you know if it will be good enough for gaming? I didn't really understand the benchmarks.
What do you mean by "good enough for gaming", 60+FPS at 1080p?
Anyway, the 270 should have similar performance to the 7850, so yes, very good gaming experience for linux native games.
If you choose an nvidia card go to
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
If you choose an AMD card go to
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
and select you card. The trick is that after you input what card you have, you need to tell it what operating system you have. I would guess if you're building a new system you'll use ubuntu x64 which would be linux 64bit to those video card guys. Once you download the driver you'll unpack it, do a chmod+x (or do a right click properties "enable execution as program") then right click "run in terminal" give it your password and agree to the eulas as they come up then reboot when done. You will have the newest bestest drivers installed and be ready to grab metro last light off steam.
You'll have a better experience with a more modern distro, but if you insist on using Ubuntu, install the freshly released 14.04 beta. There might be some rough edges, but they didn't change much, and were able to benefit from the community 14.04 releases that came out in beta quite a while ago, so it should be pretty stable.
Advantage is that it uses a more recent kernel, which contains extra functionality for AMD cards (better audio support, better dynamic power management, h.264 native encoding for streaming, more OpenCL power, etc...).
Your card will just work with the open source drivers. If you find that you need the couple of extra fps in games, you can install Catalyst by typing "jockey" in the HUD, and it will present you with a GUI graphics card installer as long as you have the non-OSS repos enabled.