Mepis came close but it didn't give me 3D acceleration. Even after I installed the new ATI drivers it still didn't work. Is there a distro out there that just works with ATI? I need something quick so I can get back to work.

I don't think you'll find a distro that works out of the box with ATI or Nvidia these drivers usually have to be installed separately and 3d acceleration usually has to be turned on manually after the install of the drivers. I sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, however I doubt it.


peace V

Trouble is ATI's own drivers don't work with their own cards half the time! Then you have the usual problems of legal nature that prevent distros from including binary drivers in their installation. So basically, I am also pretty sure the answer to your question is NO. Sorry - blame ATI and lawyers.

Edit: spelling

Hi,

Are you looking for a Live-CD or just any distro ?

I mean, if you plan to use the distro with your ATI-machine daily, you'd probably want an installed distro anyway.
Then just download and install the drivers (really not complicated imho).

For a live distro, though I don't know your skills with linux, consider customizing a certain one to your (ati-)needs.

I just don't understand why one would really want a distro supporting nvidia/ati out of the box, because for seriuous gaming or other graphics applications one would install the distribution anyway. Plus it perhaps would (don't know how well this support could be implemented) narrow down the possible PC configurations you could run this ati-Live-cd-thing on, which is just what Live-CD developers wouldn't want.

kanotix is the only distro. that installed the drivers for me and worked great

in kanotix all you have to do is type as root :

update-scripts-kanotix.sh
install-kernel-source-vanilla.sh
install-radeon-debian.sh

thats it

Mepis worked out the box with my Nvidia card. I, literally, didn't have to do anything to get it going. I'm looking for a distro that can do the same, or at least make it easier for me to install my ATI stuff.

I downloaded the drivers and installed then... but still... no 3D acceleration. In Suse there was an option I could click to turn acceleration on, but it grayed out after I installed the new drivers. It makes no sense.

For which card? I'm using an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV card. And isn't Kanotix German only? I don't know German.

No there is an english version of Kanotix. If you install it, you get a Debian Testing system. It is how I started using Debian.

I've been hearing a lot of good things about Kanotix. I should probably give it a try. The only problem is the computer I'm looking for an ATI friendly distro for doesn't have an internet connection, and .deb distros tend to rely on the internet for most things. Is there a way to install software for a .deb distro without an internet connection?

Well of course... just get the normal Debian 3.1 Sarge on 2 chock full DVDs ! I got mine from eBay because I just don't want to download all those Gigs myself.
There's tons (more than 14000 I think) packages on those 2 DVDs and you can use them as the apt-source. Though if you want to keep your system really up-to-date you'll have to update everything through the web occasionally.

Concerning ATI: I never had problems installing and running ANY version of the ATI driver on my Debian machine (Radeon9000Pro) in the past few years. The installing process has gotten easier with time and there's the easy-to-use fglrxconfig command which generates a XF86/Xorg config for you, if you don't like editing that yourself. Only if you want TV-out or Dual-screen support and more special options, you perhaps have to dig a little deeper into the configuration.

I always prefer the plain old debian over Debian-based live-distros just because you can do a minimal install and add only what you like to it. And if you still run into problems, there's one of the biggest communities there to help you out, as well as certain good websites, providing advice and guides ... like this one obviously, but also e.g. [debian-administration.org] which is great, but perhaps not so much oriented to linux-beginners.

well, give it a try with the dvds if you can spend a few $. otherwise... knoppix or ubuntu come with a lot more than you need for basic everyday use ... unfortunately this makes them really bloated and slower than a little debian install.

damn, babbling in this forum keeps me from getting my sleep ... hope I was of some advice to you ...

I have so far used Debian and Knoppix with Ati Rage128, Ati Radeon 7200, and Ati Radeon 7000--all with 3d acceleration with the open source drivers (I have found them sufficiently functional so I haven't bothered with the official drivers).

Some possibilities, based on my experiences:

1. Often, I don't get DRI out-of-box (much less 3d acceleration). Usually, this is because my motherboard's AGP isn't supported. There's a modification I don't entirely understand that I found via Google which lets me insert "try_agp_unsupported" in modutils (or something like that), and after that it works!

2. Even if I get DRI working, I find that 3d acceleration only works if I lower the resolution and/or color depth sufficiently. For the Rage128, I had to reduce reduce resolution to 1280x960. I'm fairly sure this reflects an actual hardware limitation, that would be the same in any OS.

3. I don't know from first hand experience, but I get the impression that all-in-wonders are not the easiest things to get entirely working properly in Linux.

I suggest you try reducing your resolution and see if that gives you 3d hardware acceleration.