Installing ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 on HP Compaq Presario CQ40-410AU:

Using the default driver that came with Linux Mint 12, I noticed that the screen resolution was fixed to 1024 x 768. During my search, I found a forum that suggested the use of Proprietary Display Drivers for ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200.

WARNING: Do not install the ATI/AMD Proprietary FGLRX Graphics Driver from System Settings--> Additional Drivers below because this is unstable and affects the GNOME3 and Cinnamon Desktops.

This is the outcome when this proprietary driver is activated. Menu captions are garbled, and some window contents are warped just like the image below.

Related community post: ATI/AMD Driver causes garbled/malformed/broken menus

One of the solution is to use the latest proprietary driver AMD Catalyst Proprietary Display Driver (x86/x64) ver.12.1 (released on 25-Jan-2012) from AMD Support & Drivers site.

If a previous ATI Catalyst (a.k.a. FGLRX) version of this proprietary driver was installed, it must be removed before proceeding with the new version.

Uninstall ATI/AMD Proprietary FGLRX graphics driver:

My first instinct was to go to System Settings --> Additional Drivers and remove the active ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver.

Then out of curiosity, I search "fglrx" from Synaptic Package Manager and uninstall completely the X.org-X-server -- AMD/ATI Radeon display driver. I'm not sure if this is correct but it seems to work in my HP Compaq Presario CQ40-410AU laptop.

After reboot, it appears that I have successfully uninstalled the old and unstable proprietary display driver.

Install AMD Catalyst Proprietary Display Driver ver. 12.1:

1. Download AMD Catalyst Proprietary Display Driver (x86/x64) ver.12.1 from AMD Support & Drivers site.
2. Right-click the downloaded file amd-driver-installer-12-1-x86.x86_64.run then click properties
3. From file property, go to Permissions tab
4. Check Allow executing file as program then click Close button.
5. Double-click the downloaded file amd-driver-installer-12-1-x86.x86_64.run then click Run button
6. Select the option Install Driver 8.93 on X.org 6.9 or later then click Continue button
7. Read License Agreement then click I Agree button
8. Select Automatic as mode of installation
9. Reboot Linux Mint

Additional Reference:

Refer to ubuntu site regarding ATI Radeon installation on ubuntu 11.10.