Install Ubuntu 11.04 on Lenovo C205 All-in-one PC

Recently I bought myself a low-cost Lenovo C205 All-In-One for home use, and quickly came to hate the Windows 7 Starter version it came installed with. So, I tried to run Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) on it, only to find that graphics support would not work out of the box.

So, looking around, I cobbled together these instructions; I'm posting them hoping it might help out others in a similar situation:

1. Start out by grabbing the Ubuntu Alternate Install ISO disc and burning it to a CD. This provides a text-based install that will get us a running Ubuntu terminal from where we'll be able to install the graphics drivers to get the full-blown Ubuntu.

2. Install Ubuntu!

2. After you finish installation, you should now boot into text mode. If you don't force text mode, you will just get a black screen, or a garbled GUI.

You force text mode by: using the Grub menu (purple screen) that shows up when restarting your computer. Select Ubuntu from the menu, then hit the e key and add the word text to the end of that line. Once you do that, hit b to continue on to booting.

After booting completes, hit CTRL-ALT-F1, and log in using the username/password you gave during installation at the prompt.

3. Once you're logged in, fetch and install the proper drivers. I used some of the steps outlined in http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=106898 Of course you need a working Internet connection to do this.

Note: Last I checked, the ATI Catalyst driver version was 11.7; some of the following won't work if for some reason the driver version has changed.

Run the following commands one by one.

sudo apt-get install -y dkms

cd ~; mkdir catalyst11.7; cd catalyst11.7

wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run

chmod +x ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run

sudo sh ./ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run --extract ati

cd ati

sudo ./ati-installer.sh 8.881 --buildpkg Ubuntu/natty

cd ..

rm -rf ati

sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

sudo aticonfig --initial -f

sudo aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

After running all of the above commands, you have to reboot:

sudo reboot

Now, let the normal boot sequence start and lo an behold, graphics should now work! Yay!