Ubuntu – Will Ubuntu 12.04’s proprietary AMD/ATI driver be updated to 12.5, 12.6, etc. once released

Here are the differences,

The fglrx package, contains the driver version available at distro release.

The fglrx-updates package, contains the newest driver version packaged for Ubuntu.

The AMD website download, provides the newest driver released.

It takes time to properly package the official AMD releases, so fglrx-updates might not always be the absolute newest release. fglrx-updates is often still very recent, It was specifically packaged for Ubuntu, and I normally prefer it to the other options. The only time you would want to go either up, or down, is when a specific situation arises.

I suggest two things

1 In a terminal type the following

fglrxinfo

This will tell you if fglrx is installed and working well you should see an output similar to:

$ fglrxinfo
display: :0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series       
OpenGL version string: 3.3.11399 Compatibility Profile Context

If not it has not installed properly and I would follow the advice on the Ubuntu ATI page here Ubuntu ATI site

I usually always install the ATI drivers in the terminal with the following command

sudo apt-get install fglrx fglrx-amdccclete

You may also need to reinstall the updates again:

sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle-updates

It can be a pain I know from experience. Sometimes I have had to go back the beginning by cleaning out fglrx (sudo apt-get purge fglrx*) and starting afresh.

Let us know how you get on