Hey RHLinuxGUY
I also have the Radeon 9600, and I am having problems too
I figured I would do some testing first... I found that the kernel 2.4.23-rc5 from kernel.org is supporting ATI Radeon. In fact I was able to specify it in the MenuConfig, you can find it under Character devices | Direct
Rendering manager ... and it is ATI Radeon.
dmesg is reporting it initialized:
[drm] Initialized radeon 1.7.0 20020828 on minor 0
Although it does not show up under lspci
I have yet to try the drivers suggested on ATI's web site, partly because like you I do not know what the hell they are talking about with the FireGL.
But eventually I will, so unless you get a better answer than mine (which I hope), I will post my findings later
Regards,
Sebastien