Please Help This NEWBIE! Where can I find this path/to/your/xfree86/tree. I am trying to install ati2 driver from gatos and don't know if this tree already exists in my system or should I download it from somewhere? The instructions that I got doesnt explain what this tree means.

I think what you are looking for is /usr/X11R6/bin for Slackware. At least that is where the binary files are located for the X system. Note that filenames and paths are case sensitive in Linux.

Thank you for your response. I was actually on the process of downloading files from Xfree86.org. Tought its different from X11R6

Anyway, I tried it... . this is part of the instructions in installing ati.2 driver from cvs... still no luck. Whats the error message below means?

root@mongo:/drm-kernel/ati.2# xmkmf /usr/X11R6/bin/
mv -f Makefile Makefile.bak
imake -I/usr/X11R6/bin//config/cf -DTOPDIR=/usr/X11R6/bin/ -DCURDIR=.
Imakefile.c:34: Imake.tmpl: No such file or directory
imake: Exit code 1.
Stop.

Well, I am just guessing here. I have not installed any of the ATI drivers before. I just use the normal stuff that comes with X. The imake program is being instructed to use a template file called "lmake.tmpl". The file is not being found.

It may also be that this program/driver requires the source files for X. And that is what the reference was requesting. You can only review the docs to determine if it is looking for the sources. There is a Slack source package available for all the distributions of Slack. If you determine that sources are required then download and use "pkgtool" to install the source package for the X server.

Have you got the xfree86-devel-4.x.x-i386.x.tgz package installed?

I have not. Should I? I think that's my problem, don't know if xfree86 and X11R6 are the same or not.

X11R6 is part of XFree86, you need to install the devel package to build programs that depend on XFree86, such as video card drivers.

Sorry, but I thiink it is already installed. I view the packages using pkgtool and saw xfree86-devel-4.3.0-i386-1dl.

Ok, then you just need to add /usr/X11R6/bin to your path in /etc/profile and then log out and back in again to update.

I checked the /etc/profile. The path is already there.

Not wanting to get in the way here, because I think Aussie knows more about this area than I do. But I wanted ask a question to clarify. I think Aussie is correct about the development package. I had forgotten about that one. I am so used to just selecting everything when I install.

You made a statement earlier that you were downloading from xfree86.org. Did you see the package above in what you downloaded or have you actually installed and upgraded to 4.3.0? On my copies of Slack 8.1 and slackware-current the X system is 4.2.

However, for installed Slack packages they should be listed in /var/log/packages. To check what you have installed you could;

ls -l /var/log/packages/xf*

and see what it lists and the versions. This is only for Slack package installations though. If you downloaded and built/installed 4.3 then it would not be listed.

I did full installation of Slackware 8.1 a month ago so that means I had 4.2 version. I never did upgrade.

Last night, maybe to my confusion I installed/upgraded yesterday to dropline-gnome (thought I could get xfree86 from there).

I tried this:
ls -l /var/log/packages/xf*

... and saw 4.3 versions (none 4.2).

Dropline could have upgraded the version.

xfree86-devel-4.3.0-i386-1dl. is a dropline package, I've got it installed here as well. Either there is something misconfigured in the dropline XFree86-4.3.0 or the ati driver dosn't yet have support for v4.3.0. Try reinstalling the stock 4.2.1 from a slackware-8.1/patches mirror and see if the driver builds. You can use pkgtool or the latest dropline-installer to remove the dropline XFree86 and pkgtool to install the slackware-8.1 XFree86 packages.

I looked at xfree86.org but have not downloaded any file yet.

Get them from here, not from XFree86.org.