Installing 3D support

wfstanle · 12-10-2005, 03:06 PM

I have just installed Suse - Pro 9.2. My graphics card was not in their list. Of course, the wrong video card driver was installed. 3D graphics support is software only. I have an ATI Radeon 9800 w/ 128 Mb of RAM. I looked into the problem somewhat and from what I read, there are some problems with the driver. Any feedback on this?

I would appreciate any help on how to install the proper drivers. I checked and fglrx is not installed. What is this and if needed, How do I find the correct version and how do I install it?

wolorf · 12-10-2005, 04:56 PM

Ok, first you need to obtain the ati drivers from their website. I'm not sure if you're using xfree86 or xorg, but hopefully you do. Get the appropriate drivers for your xserver. I think suse is an rpm based distro, which means that you probably only have to to:

Code:

rpm fglrx_6_8_0-8.20.8-1.i386.rpm

With them installed, you need to exit out of your desktop environment and into the console. Usually typing ctrl+alt+f1 will take care of that. Once you're there, do this:

Code:

cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
./make.sh
cd ..
./make_install.sh

Note: you probably need to change the permissions on those scripts by going into su and doing

Code:

chmod +x script_name

.
That should build the modules for you. Then you should backup your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/xorg.conf (depending on what you use), just to be sure that you don't mess up your current settings. Just do

Code:

cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.old

or

Code:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old

Then just run fglrxconfig and hopefully everything will work out.

Another note: Most of this info was taken off of a website made my a friend of mine, bobbens. So credit goes to him for this. His Website

wfstanle · 12-10-2005, 09:03 PM

Thank you for the answer about how to install the driver. Before I do so, however I would like to know if anone has heard of any problems with this driver.

wolorf · 12-10-2005, 09:25 PM

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by problems. The drivers are not as well supported as those from nvidia, which is unfortunate considering that the 9800pro is a good card still. I have the same one. The drivers are still good enough to run games like ut2k4 and even some things through cedega/winex. Unfortunately, the nvidia cards are better supported, but there really isn't much either of us can do about it. Otherwise, I haven't noticed any major problems. They work well enough for normal desktop environment usage and some gaming. If you have any specific concerns about the drivers maybe I could give you some feedback based on my personal experience.

wfstanle · 12-11-2005, 05:11 PM

Thanks for the reply. This si sort of what I saw on the 'net but I wanted to know if anyone haerd of anything more specific. I'll try to install the 3D support as soon as I get the time.

wfstanle · 12-12-2005, 04:35 PM

Well I am back at it again... (Still struggling, but making progress) this time I am having problems running check.sh to determine which driver to download. I opened a console window and issued su to get root priveleges.
The following is the output.

linux:/home/bill # ./check.sh
=====================================================================
ATI Technologies
=====================================================================
You are either not running this script from the console
or simply do not have console ownership. Requirement failed.
Unable to determine XFree86 Version. Stopping now.

What mistake am I making now?

PS. I know I am being a pest, but this is part of being new to Linux.
This is my second attemt at installing the proper drivers. The first time, something wrong was done (probably I treid to install the wrong
3D driver.) I messed up the X server so that startX would not work. Since I fid nothing of important yet, I reinstalled Linux to get a fresh start.