sadly the people to blame for this are ATI. They have been very lazy when it comes to supporting linux which is why most distros use non-official ati drivers.
I had the same problem as you with my hd3xxx series ati card and decided I like enlightenment, elive and ecomorph more than the 10plus years I had been using ATI cards. sold the ati card and bought the nvidia geforce 8800gt on ebay with a plan to upgrade when the newer cards are cheap enough