Ok, so I've tried to install Arch several times. Everything goes good, right up until it's time to install and configure x. If someone could run me through what needs to be done or if any more info is required, I can give it
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Catalyst
Have you tried this yet? I recommend the open source driver package 'xf86-video-ati'.
What results / errors are you getting? If you're a bit more specific that would help people point you in the right direction, if Gorgatron's link doesn't help you work it out.
xf86-video-ati has been merged, all you have to do is work with mesa 9.2 or higher, modern distros won't have xf86-video-ati in the repos any longer. AMD and Intel are a step ahead of nVidia, the simplest way is the best, the old ways to install it are no longer valid, so most how-to's aren't correct any longer for AMD drivers.
If you're running Arch or Fedora on 3.12.5-301 or more recent, install catalyst with the BETA AMD catalyst installer from the AMD US website, it's by far the best way, you'll have it up and running in seconds and it'll work perfectly fine.
The AMD catalyst build has been orphaned from the rpmfusion repos because it's just not necessary any more, first of all, both the r600 and the radeonsi have been merged and are pretty full-featured, second of all, AMD's catalyst compiles just fine with all newest kernels, if you don't overthink it. Keep it simple, deinstall catalyst if you've installed it already, re-dracut and -grub, reboot, download the AMD installer BETA (most important to take the official BETA from the AMD US website, other fglrx versions might not compile because they are made for re-packaging in the different nonfree-repos, and as everybody knows there is a major AMD-and-Intel-GPU-boycott going on in the industry with the compliments of nVidia, and many maintainers and commercial linux entities are either not packaging correctly or are orphaning the packages). Arch, Gentoo and Fedora have well-merged and working mesa's, OpenSuSE has AMD priority, and through the build service, AMD has very good packages for other repos, so just use the AMD installer. It's not a creepy system-clogging mega-installer like nVidia's, it's a really simple installer that does what it's supposed to do in literally mere seconds, and after reboot the kernel modules will compile clean and fast.
Just don't get side-tracked by all the forum discussions on AMD drivers, most of which are very unreliable right now, and that will probably continue for quite a while, about 6 months, after which AMD will retire Catalyst and not need a graphics driver anymore just like Intel, as by then, the open source drivers will be better than catalyst on linux, and Fedora 21 will come out with a full loaded mesa 10. There is a lot of crap being told about AMD on fora for the moment, and nVidia is being praised on many linux fora whereas nothing really works out of the box with open source or proprietary nVidia drivers. It's just how it goes. Just use your own mind when pulling packages for your linux distro. Everybody makes his/her own system in linux, just keep it simple and straightforward, let logic prevail.
Just a note: there is a lot of optimisation of game profiles going on in AMD drivers, and one of the things AMD does is enable things like CPU waiting for the GPU to finish each frame. If you're benchmarking, you might want to disable that, because it will limit your fps under 60. But everything will sure look a lot better with it enabled (it's not V-sync or G-sync, those are just half-baked patches for a problem that shouldn't even exist, in linux, regardless of the graphics adapter, you can tell the CPU to not issue a call for the drawing of another frame until the frame is fully rendered down the line, which prevents any problems that are traditionally "solved" with V-sync or G-sync). The downside is that in the beginning of a game, there are still some general functions going through the CPU, and for the first 10 seconds after starting a game, there might be a little stutter depending on how strong the CPU is. Within 10 seconds though, all the unnecessary background processes will have been zombied and the game will run fast as fuck and with super fluid graphics and without screen tearing. Another thing is that "recommended settings" in games in Windows often bring down the resolution to provide an average of over 30 fps. This is not so in linux, in linux, most of the time the recommended settings will use the native monitor frequency, and provide better fps, regardless of the driver (except the nouveau driver for nVidia cards, which is close to unusable for games).
Holy tl;dr but I have not used AMD on Linux so lol.
Not tl;dr at all, saving people time by giving the right advice, instead of sending them on a ghost chase for a package that doesn't exist any more or letting them look endlessly for how-to's on fora that aren't current anymore, just informing the people WHY they shouldn't look for xf86-video-ati, and WHY they shouldn't look at how-to's on fora too much...
Guess that wiki article is outdated then huh?
thank you zoltan
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-linux-beta-driver.aspx