I'm running opensuse 10.2 and have the following graphics card:

Model: ATI RS300 5834
elsewhere it says it is a radeon 9100 igp, may be same thing but i duno.

ive googled high and low to see if I can get anything (beryl, compiz, xgl stuff) working with it. i was wondering if anyone knew what software would work well with my setup.

Thanks for your time,
Will

Compiz is a thing that can make your desktop look fancy; XGL is an X server, afaik, like Xorg, but an alternative. If you wish to enable, say, Compiz you'll need to get good drivers (from ATI, 'flgrx') for your card; the software renderer 2d drivers often offered ('radeon' for example) aren't usually enough. Keep in mind, though, that at the moment at least ATI drivers' DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) doesn't work with Compiz, so you can't have them both at the same time as of now.

Try it out if you want to; there are guides on the web, I suggest following them since it might be tricky at times to get Compiz (for example) working. Last time I tried, though some time ago, took half a day. First get ATI's drivers installed and working all right, then go on with getting a good guide on how to set Compiz (and probably XGL) working and how to enable/disable them.