ATI Radeon with 'Generic' Driver on Debian
 

Hi, I installed Debian for a second time with generic driver (instead of RADEON) and 24-bit graphics (no framebuffer). Last time it wouldn't start because the drivers weren't up to snuff (I suppose it didn't recognize my ATI Radeon 9600SE), but this time it says that the driver doesn't support 24-bit. Now, I can live with 12-bit or even 4-bit (at least until I get the radeon drivers working in the graphic mode), but how do I change this setting without having to re-install Debian again?

Generally, I need to know where this setting is held so I can open it up in xemacs and change it. I want to have a GUI at the least.

should be xf86config-4
 

Edit the xf86config-4 file in /etc/X11/ and you will be good to go. Why not try and use the ati driver though? It should support the card.

Last time when I tried to use the ATI driver, it gave me a long error (seems to me that the driver was too old, and didn't recognize my Radeon 9600SE). This time, I want to at least have a graphical interface before I mess around with everything.

Thanks for the help

Okay -- now the GUI works , but at such a small resolution as to be unusable (with the generic driver). Since the desktop is too large, I can't find how to login or go back to the terminal. :(

Do you think that Sarge will work better than Woody in that regard? (I'm currently using the latter).

Yo, yo yo. The other thirteen yearold geek is hear. And il tell you one thing, onew thing i learned from linux. ATI DRIVERS SUCK! DO NOT USE THE STI DRIVERS FROM ATI's WEBSITE. you cannot use ati's drivers, they suck, dont work. Expecially doing what we all download them for in the first place. which is for the opengl. Which, on one hand, they made things WORSE. MODIFY the /ect/x11XFree86 Config file, use dir to make sure i spelled right, and use them all. U can also, if u can get back to the trerminal use the command x11config. i thinkt thats the command, not sure. it might be xfree86config. try both. wordsa of the wisae as well, use sarge, or sid. DONOT USE WOODY.

hmm...

I didn't use the downloaded ATI drivers, I used the Ones that came with woody (and I couldn't care less about opengl, cuz I only do 3d games on windows).

In debian I think the command is dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

oh good. Then jsut stick to what works. But whatever you do, don use the ati drivers. And you may have to reconfig xfree a few times, see what drivers work , and what dont. i think x11config is the command. And hey, its nice to met antoher young nerd!

1)
learn how to spell out words!!...it's annoying:rolleyes:

2)
The ATI linux drivers are OK, if you get em running. I haven't attempted it on my Debian Sid yet, but on my SuSe they work fine, of course not near the performance as Win driver or the NVIDIA drivers have. But the official ATI drivers will give you better 2D performance to a certain extent also, and allow you to use OPENGL output in mplayer for example.

3)
Learn how to use vi to get stuff done in console, don't be scared of BASH, especially not if you are using Debian. If you are that GUI dependent, some distros have GUIs for everything(SuSe, Fedora, Mandrake).