LinuxQuestions.org - Debian Etch, ATI, Direct Rendering, WORKING

Hi all,
I've used Linux on an off for 2 years now and I've tried heaps of distros. My goal with every distro was to get my ati to work(properly) so I could play games. I spent countless nights getting it work and never managed to. The latest Ubuntu worked but it was pretty sluggish on my machine. I always liked Debian and loved how you can install the bare minimum. It's a bit more work to get sorted out but the result is a speed machine. Anyway, today I sat down determined to get my ati working. At first I had to configure xorg to use vesa, selecting ati using the config manager would stop x from loading. I pretty muched skipped google and came straight to these forums. :D

I found a post by a member "mikethefrog". I followed his example but had problems. Went to the ATI website and they said Debian needed a lot more work to get ATI working because it didn't have kernel source files etc.. I'm not that advanced with linux so I looked for an alternative. I came by a message posted by moosedaddy, I followed exactly what he said. "In Debian, I've always installed the ati drivers with module-assistant, and it's always worked like a charm. Apt-get install module-assistant, then, as root, run module-assistant (or m-a) at a command line, put an X next to fglrx module, then away you go."

I did this and had a few problems along the way. First it had to build before installing but it couldn't build with building/isntalling something else. Anyway, it did it all for me and eventually installed fglrx. I then went back into my xorg.conf file and put in the lines mikethefrog said. Also did a modprobe -v fglrx. I log back into kde and now my resolution is taking up the entire screen and refresh rate is up to 75 from 60. Most importantly though.....

Code:

nivv@debian:~$ glxinfo | grep direct

direct rendering: Yes

After all that, I'm not really sure what has happened. That's the reason for my thread. :) I've got another computer opened up here with notepad loaded, what I'm doing is writing down every command I used to get Debian working for me. After each command I explain what it does and why I did it. So with this module assistant and fglrx I'm not sure what it did. Did it load a module into the kernel(ie. install the correct driver for my video card to make it perform at it's fullest?). I'm puzzled as to which drivers it installed. I downlaoded some from ati's website and I'm sure it didn't use those. Did module-assistant download them from debian repositories just before it built/installed the fglrx component?

If anyone could shed some light on exactly what I did it would be great. I'm hoping most of this stuff can translate to other distros and it can be just as easy to setup.