I'm finishing up writing this post up, and will post it on my website www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org/slack soon. I will add to it as this thread is added to.

Thanks for the contributions from everybody. Keep adding to this thread. We all need more help.

If anybody has more to add, I'll gladly amend the post.

Does anybody know why DRI works under init 3 but not init 4 (except root)?

News/Update:

Getting the old Compaq up/running with a Nvidia GX400/32MB card. Will post about it on main thread. Keep an eye peeled.

How about "nVidia users who are using the binary driver from nVidia not only don't need DRI (unless they want to install a second non-nVidia card in parallel) but merely have to run nVidia's installer script and tell it "yes" to everything."

nVidia-binary installs are markedly simpler than ATI to the point where nVidia users should probably be warned that literally none of the DRI documentation pertains to them. nVidia's latest installer will remove older versions of itself, make the necessary device nodes, push spurious copies of libGL.so out of the way, deploy the module, run depmod, and even modify the current xorg.conf now if you let it.

All that's necessary is to have a copy of the kernel source installed configured to match the running kernel and *not* be trying to run the installer through X (since the installer can't rmmod a previous in-use module, or test the sanity of the new module with X running).

nVidia is the lazy man's best friend in this respect.

Thanks evilDagmar.
I added this to the main post, with the note afterwards of:
When the installer asks if you want to download a kernel interface from Nvidia's website, say 'No' and have it compile it's own driver.

BTW, I've got a little poll going, checking what chips everybody uses. It's in this forum too. Go ahead and fill out the poll. It'll help me figure out where to go with this post/guide.

I just installed a Nvidia GeForceMX400 32MB in an old Compaq, ran the Nvidia installer, told it 'No' when it asked if I wanted to download an interface from the web, and it modified my xorg.conf for me.

When I ran X11 after that, glxgears was running at 6000fps....Gotta love Nvidia. Easy.Fast. And it worked

Very usefull, made a huge difference. Thanks

And now for my next trick......

Uninstalling the Nvidia card, and installing the built-on motherboard ViaKM266 video chip (ATI, I think)

I'll let you know

OK...lots of problems so far on using the onboard ATI chip.....

Sticking with the Nvidia for now. Will post maore as I learn....

After looking through this forum, it seems that there are issues with ATI drivers being difficult to install/get working. And Nvidia seems to be real easy. Any comments?

No real comment,just flatout praise. To get my nvidia to work in Suse all I had to do was download with YOU and logout of x.
Slackware wasn't much tougher. Nvidia doesn't treat linux users as second class citizens in my experience. Nvidia has my buisness.

Can anybody post their experiences w/ATI ?

Mostly I'm looking for:

1. What you need to start with (downloaded files, etc.)
2. What you need to do with the kernel (if anything)
3. What was needed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (if anything)
4. How the issue was resolved (links to websites or other posts, if possible)

Doesn't matter if your experience was good or bad.

According to the posts in my polling thread, and by other posts in this forum, ATI seems to be very difficult to implement in 3D.

I just want this thread to be complete, not just about Intel or Nvidia. Experiences with ATI would definately help other people to get things going.

Direct Rendering Infrastructure DRI on VIA\S3 Savage

Back in 2004 it was alot harder to get DRI working on my Savage chip set. The standard kernel did not have built-in support. So I wrote the above HOWTO. It may be interesting to look through to see how things were "back in the day."