I've been searching through google for the past couple of hours and I can't find a solution to this problem of mine, hence the forum post.

What I'm trying to do is install linux drivers for my 9600XT in a brand new installation of Fedora Core 5. I first downloaded the linux drivers from the ati website and followed the install instruction. The following is what I got:

After searching in google for a while I came upon one forum post that said that ati hasn't released updated drivers for the latest linux kernel yet. So I gave up with the ati issued drivers and eventually found the following tutorial on fedora faq: fedorafaq.org/#radeon

I tried that tutorial and it worked fine up until step five, in which the following command wasn't recognized:

I tried skipping that step but the X system wouldn't start up with that config enabled, so I had to disable their config just to get back into the X system.

As of right now the drivers are uninstalled... I decided to put it back like it was and try from scratch again. I know ati cards aren't the best to run in linux, but I would really appreciate help if someone knows a fix for this. Surely there's a way to get ati drivers working in FC5?

You cannot get around the selinux setup.
The easy workaround is to reboot with selinux=0 in the grub.conf kernel line. This switches selinux off completely. (Think carefully about if you actually need this.)

Before you do anything - read the sticky at the top of the fedora subforum. There is a good chance that attempting to use the ati installer has messed up your configuration, and you need to reinstall or repair your system.

And a final caveat - FC5 will not allow proprietary drivers to install until you upgrade the kernel etc. Use only the latest kernels before trying to install ati drivers.

ok, I read the sticky in the fedora sub forum and followed what that guy suggested. I looked up the uninstalled directions on the ati site, which are:

The fglrx folder doesn't exist though, so I would assume that the proprietary drivers were never installed.

I don't even know what selinux is? Do I need it for anything, or is it safe to turn it off? If you were to think that turning off selinux was a good idea, where is the grub.conf file and should I add that line in the file, reboot, then enable the fglrx config file for the drivers?

I ran software updater under system tools; does that upgrade the kernel as well? If not, what's the best way to upgrade the kernel?

OK cool - did you check the integrity of your rpms? Or did you completely reinstall FC5?SELinux is "Security Enhanced Linux - it adds an extra layer of protection to the normal permissions by taking into account the "context" that anything is being done. Unless you are on a large network, you don't really need this. However, you should be running the firewall. See the fedora core 5 install notes at www.mjmwired.net > resources.

as root: gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf - there is a line corresponding to your kernel, at the end of this add "selinux=0" (without quotes), save and reboot.

Another configuration file you will need to know about is /etc/X11/xorg.confI really don't know. I would have used yum like in the fedora faq.

Aside: unless you are happy with pup, I'd suggest installing yum extender: yum install yumex ... this allows you to dynamically alter repos, and browse package lists, so there is less guesswork involved in getting stuff later.