Hello,

I recently decided to try Linux again after a long hiatus. I play a lot of games, and I could never get 3d acceleration to work. I've been through several distros in the past few weeks trying to find one I really liked (Tried Mandrake, Slackware, RedHat, and now SuSe). I like SuSe the best out of all the ones I tried. It's not too complicated and it's fast and stable. If anyone has any other suggestions for me besides the ones I've tried, then by all means suggest away.

Anyways, the problem I'm having is getting the ATI drivers working. I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from the ATI website. The card is recognized by the system, but Yast says that 3d acceleration is impossible. When I do fglrxinfo, it tells me it's still using the Mesa drivers. I had this same problem on all the other distros with the ATI drivers.. I'm assuming this is mainly an ATI problem rather than Linux, because Nvidia seems to have their drivers working just fine.

Also, I do have an AMD on an Nforce2 board, which apparently can cause even more problems when coupled with the ATI drivers, or so I've heard. I'm no linux expert, so if anyone does know how to help, I'd need to decently detailed instructions. However, I am competent and can figure out some things for myself. I've tried everything I know in Linux (which I admit is very little), and it still tells me it's using the Mesa drivers. Gears runs at a terrible 300 FPS and games are not playable.

Anyone that knows how to fix this problem, I'd appreciate the help.

P.S. I have done many searches, but I haven't been able to find a solution to my particular issue, or for the SuSe distro. Suggestions for the Mandrake, RedHat, and Slackware distros failed, still had this same problem. Hoping I can fix it in SuSe. If I can get this working, I wont be using Windows at all anymore.

All I can think of off the top of my head is to go to the SuSE website and goto the page for the version you got, ie personal or professional. Then goto the hardware requiremnets. There should be a link there that will allow you to search the whole database. Then just find your card and see if it is supported already. It may say full, not tested or not. Something like that...

Good Luck

There is a simple solution to your problem, SuSE has rpms and instructions that you need. See my post here for some background information and you can get what you need here. Read SuSE's readme and it should give you all of the info that you need to get this working.

According to this interview with ATI, they offer "support for 2D only in Radeon 9500 and above". In other words, if you own a Radeon 9500 or better, then 3D is *not* supported. As an ATI user myself, and a veteran of many hours of fighting with these drivers, suffice it to say that this situation is less than ideal.

On a more postive note, this Howto guide may be of interest, and has a section on Suse. Good luck with it -- J.W.