Laptop webcam works with AMSN in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon
I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 3 on my laptop on Saturday. It has ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card. I had problem with the Live CD as usual. The X server didn’t work. I had to use the safe graphics mode in Live CD to get it to work. I then installed Ubuntu from the Live CD. The installation went fine, but Ubuntu didn’t install the proprietary driver for ATI card by default. I had to manually install and reconfigure my xserver. ATI support really sucks in Linux. Gutsy is slightly buggy, but it didn’t prevent me from doing the regular work.
The good news is, AMSN detected my built in webcam automatically and the video chat worked fine. AMSN in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn didn’t detect the built in webcam in my laptop. It did detect the external webcam in my desktop. I’m not sure if the fix was in AMSN or Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. The video chat with my parents worked fine.
The audio doesn’t work by default in AMSN. To get the audio setup appear in the preferences, you have to install the package libsnack2. Open a terminal and type
sudo apt-get install libsnack2
Once done, Open the preference box in AMSN, go to Others tab and you’ll see the video setup option at the bottom. The setup will guide you through audio and video tuning similar to audio and video tuning wizard in MSN. I couldn’t get my built in mic to work with Skype or AMSN in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. It was working fine in Feisty. The new beta version of Skype offers 6 options under the mic setting and I’m not sure which one to select. The default one is not working.
The UI of AMSN also underwent a change in Gutsy. I’m not sure if they changed the default theme, but it looks good to the eyes now. It’s much more fancier and neat. Once I get the mic to work, I’m all set.
(New chat window)
(Video window. I Captured the video at the wrong moment, when the video was refreshing)
(AMSN Main window)
Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, Gutsy, Gibbon, Feisty, Fawn, Webcam, AMSN, ATI, Xxserver
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Hey Arun,
Thanks for the post. It partially helped me figure out the problem with my amsn.
You are welcome!!!
Thanks for a good post!
I have a stationary set up with Gutsy. I have the Radeon X1600, though not the Mobility version. I have been unable to set it up, using both fglrx and the ATI drivers. X simply crashes.
Can I ask what is you manual set up? Might it work for the stationary card, not only the Mobility?
Refer to my post http://www.blog.arun-prabha.com/2007/04/02/problem-with-ati-driver-after-recent-update-in-kubuntu-feisty-fawn/
for the manual commands. Make sure you have ethernet connection to install the fglrx driver through apt-get and install xorg-driver-fglrx. Once installed, reconfigure the xserver using sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg. Select fglrx as the video driver when provided with the list. Don’t select ATI. Once you reconfigure, run the commands starting with sudo in the link provided above.
Hello again.
Thanks for your assistance. I’ve been trying for days to make fglrx work according to your instructions, without luck. Sometimes I get the errormessage that xorg.conf doesn’t exist (when using sudo aticonfig -initial) and other times I’m told that fglrx is already initiated and that aticonfig will therefore terminate. No matter what I do, the screen always turn black on logon and the whole box freezes..
Any ideas? Sorry for bothering you, but you are the only one I have found that seems to have solved the driver issue with X1600.
Torbjorn,
I’m not sure why, but initial and overlay command in my blog post should have two hyphens before them. The wordpress blog removes one hyphen. Did you try with two hyphen? I updated my post http://www.blog.arun-prabha.com/2007/04/02/problem-with-ati-driver-after-recent-update-in-kubuntu-feisty-fawn/
, so visitor won’t issue the command wrong.
If that’s not working, then give Envy a try (http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html). The only problem with envy is, you have to uninstall the driver installed by envy, each time you upgrade Ubuntu.