I'm a total noob...love being a total noob.

Okay, I downloaded ATI's little driver kit from their site...says i need XFree 4.2.0 or whatever.

I guess I found Xfree's site, but that stuff is just WAYYYY too confusing...

could someone assist me in setting this up? i hate being driver-less!!!

The driver set on ATi's web site does not work with XFree 4.3. Here's a link to drivers that do:

http://www.schneider-digital.de/download/ati/glx1_linux_X4.3.zip

When you get these, just make sure you have kernel sources installed. Mandrake doesn't put them in by default. Once they're in, the installation should work fine.[/url]

Awwww...sweet man, thanks, but about those kernal sources...how do i install those? How do i make sure as well?

Great...i have a different version of XFree...weird...thought 9.1 came with 4.3.0. Here's the error message:

Problems occured during installation:
file /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 from install of fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-2.9.12 conflicts with file from package XFree86-libs-4.3-5mdk


Um, so a conflict. Awesome. What to do? I assume i need 4.3.0...but i have no idea what files i need and what to install.

Okay I found this thread through a search engine cuz I was wondering the same things (getting 3d to work with my ATI card in Mandrake 9.1).

Anyway, just download that file.. that error you're getting means that XFree 4.3 is installed.. also make sure you have the kernel sources installed. The package is called kernel-source and you can find it in the software manager.

Okay once kernel source is installed, do rpm -ivh on the file, so for example:

rpm -ivh fgrlx-glc22-4.3.0-2.9.12.i586.rpm

This will force it to install. You also need to have all kinds of building and developers tools installed.. most of which should be installed by default so if the RPM completely fails trying to build the module, then you might want to consider reinstalling mandrake as a developer install.

To check if kernel sources are installed, do rpm -qa | grep kernel-source if anything shows up (i.e. it might say kernel-source-2.4.21-31.i586 or something) then it's installed.

Once the fglrx RPM is installed, immediately run fglrxconfig (it will remind you to do that).. if you've never manually configured X before, you will need to know what kind of mouse you have (PS/2 or USB or serial, etc) and what the refresh limits of your monitor are.. these should most definitely be available in your monitor's manual or at the very least available from the manufacturer's website. Okay once the fglrxconfig is complete you might wanna reboot.. I don't think you have to, but I like to anyway.. in the very least you need to restart X. If X starts up, you're good to go.. check out tuxracer or mesa gears (under your program menu under Amusement/Toys for gears and Amusement/Sports for tuxracer) to see if it worked.

If X doesn't start, then.. well.. run rpm -e fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-2.9.12 which should restore your configuration files to where they were before you installed the driver. Now go talk to the developers of the driver and see if they know what's up, cuz it worked for me

Mike