Right, I've been experimenting with what games I can install on Linux and, because of a certain problem I have, very few seem to be playable. I've been looking around for reasons why and I figured out that it must be because of my graphics card (I have an ATI 9700 Mobility) and the dodgy support ATI have for Linux drivers. However, I've been reading through the forums and found that other people with ATI cards can play games. I've tried:
UT2K4 (installed, didn't load after splash screen)
Darwinia (Windows version using WINE, got 1FPS when playing)
Dungeon Keeper 2 (gave me a black screen and refused to get further)
and a couple of others. So far, the only game I have which loads and plays properly (although some graphical effects don't show and I get no crosshair) is Quake 2. Most other games can't find the CD when playing and/or get no sound.
I'm running Mandrake 2005 LE and, as far as I know, I have the correct drivers (they came preinstalled and I double-checked by getting them off the ATI site. If anyone has any clue why it's having problems then any advice would be appreciated. I'd love to know that a good few games work on Linux properly for me.

Well, for a start, Darwinia has a native Linux port. It should be on the CD.

Actually, no. I bought the game on the day of release, the Linux port was added later.

Try this in the console just to make sure you have 3d acceleration:

glxinfo | grep direct

If you get no, then you're not getting 3d acceleration, then I thinkyou need to get the propietary drivers from ATI.

Which kernel do you have? I read somewhere that there's a bug (fixed in 2.6.11) that causes something like this.

Right, I did that command you said and apparently direct rendering isn't on. It also came with this error message:
Loading required GL library /usr/lib/libGL.so.1
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".

I did a little exploring around and I'm going to try and just download and install the latest version of XFree, to see if this solves the problem.

Also, I am running the latest kernel so I'm assuming that this XFree thing must be the problem.

Right, I installed the latest version of XFree on Linux, causing it to screw up totally and utterly (it refused to boot into any X Window system at all), so I had to reinstall. It's back to normal but it still has that problem. The latest drivers are definitely installed and it can't be to do with the kernel problem d-static mentioned, so I'm rather stumped.