ahh, the infamous struggle to get opengl and 3d support! card works fine all other instances. just a big NO GO if you have red hat 8+ and intend to make use of 3d accelleration or even play games at a framerate of more than 3-4 fps

Funny, I've had absolutly no problems getting this card to work with Linux. Download the driver from ATI's site and follow the instructions. The shell script they created works well to create a new XF86config file. The only problem I had was getting the driver to use the proper agpgart driver, which was more of an nforce problem anyways. If you have this combination, just make sure you've installed the nforce2 proprietary drivers properly first. The only problem I have is a flicker in the polygon pipeline with this driver. The problem is still there with ATI's most recent driver. Other than that, I get 90fps at 1024 in ennemy territory (quake 3 engine).

Cheers,
Kilka

This videocard needs the aid of the binary drivers from ATi. Except minor problems when configuring it (especially XF86Config), this card works like a charm, again with the drivers provided by ATi.

The ATi drivers work pretty well, only downsides with them are:

• Their speed with 2.4.x kernels leaves much to be desired.
• Need patches to work properly with 2.6.x kernels.
• RPM-only distribution. Although I use an RPM based distribution, this method of distribution leaves out * some users with other distros, meaning they have to first convert the package (especially true for Slack users).
• High frustration coeficient.

Good thing aobut these drivers, though is that they are in Portage for Gentoo users.

With my setup I rate it a 10, because I have had no problems with it.

ATI's binary drivers seem to be reasonably stable for me. I used their internal AGP driver in FGLRX. On the other hand, performances leaves a lot to be desired and bugfixing happens at a painfully slow rate. I speak from experience... Do yourself a favor and buy nVidia, if you intend to play many games and use a lot of 3D apps. This card seems to reach about 50% of its Windows potential.

ATI isn't serious enough about Linux yet. I've used drivers 3.7 trough 3.9, and have been extremely disappointed with their performance and compatibility.

Unlike others, I've had no real problems getting the ATI drivers installed - when I've followed just what the instructions say, they go in fine.
However, like others, I am disappointed in the drivers' linux performance. I've used the 3.7.5, 3.9.0, and now 3.2.5 drivers. In UT2004 the 3.7.5 and 3.9.0 drivers gave me very poor performance - but the 3.2.5 ones work quite well. Only downside with these old drivers is that there is a graphical corruption issue that comes up every now and then in OpenGL games - and it slows the system to near a halt. I believe the issue was fixed in the newer drivers - but then you get very poor OpenGL performance with those.
One very nice thing about the ATI drivers is that I have been able to use two monitors - 'Big Head' mode - two screens with one framebuffer (one X session). To go from windows with two monitors with an extended desktop and then be able to do the same thing in Linux was great.
If you are planning on getting a 3D card for Linux - go with Nvidia. Their drivers are excellent. But on the other hand, if you have an ATI Radeon card and are considering trying Linux - don't let this stop you. 2D performance is fine, and if you get the 3.2.5 drivers, 3D isn't too bad.

I can't get OpenGL to run smoothly, but other than that it has been good to me.

I've emailed ATI and told them that I was going to definitely switch to an NVIDIA card unless I saw strides in the usability and compatibility of their binary driver.

I DO have the driver working w/ hw acceleration, but it wasn't easy to configure. Plus I've read that Doom3 nor the latest X.org server are supported by the current ATI drivers.

I have configured NVIDIA drivers for a few distros, and have had MUCH better luck w/ them--thus I would recommend that anyone looking into this card should consider NVIDIA first.

Old vga (at 2012.) but works without problems.
I changed from Debian 5, 6, Ubuntu 6,7,8,10.04 to 11.04.
It works.