Well my one problem and always has stayed the same is graphics installations.

Side note: i read all the post about ati drivers already on this site and nothing has worked.

I am using a radeon 9600xt. I can't understand why nothing seems to work right. The only thing i can think of is that the kernel for mepis is not installed right. So the question is "does the linux kernel get installed when you install mepis to your harddrive?" If not then i will need a walkthrough on that as well.

I can't download the rpm for the ati drivers from their site, looks like some sorta vcr setup on the download page and when i click the little play button is says "the player does not have the cababilites to play back the content" so i don't get it is it a download or a video? /ati makes life so easy sometimes/ so i went hunting and found the binary deb files of the drivers i needed and followed just about every howto i could find on the web, with still no luck.

well the specs are xfree86 version 4.3
radeon 9600xt
kernel 2.6.7
not really sure what else you might need to go on, so just ask and i will find out for ya

i hope someone can write a very detailed howto on this, i am planing on writing it in a notebook that i have going on linux so that would be helpful, if i had know that it was gonna be this bad for ati drivers i would have kept my geforce, well you know what they say you learn the hard way.

thanks for any help that might be provided

Yes - anytime you install Linux on your hard drive, the kernel will be one of the files that is installed. (If the kernel wasn't installed, the system wouldn't work. No kernel = No operating system.)

Most likely this isn't an issue with either the distro you're using or the installation you performed. Instead, I suspect the real issue here is with the level of Linux support that ATI offers, which as you have discovered is not as strong as it could be. Problems with getting optimal performance out of ATI cards under Linux is a very common topic; there are numerous well written guides here in the LQ threads that discuss how to do it. As you will see, some people have had success, others have had a lot of frustration. Unfortunately, in my view, getting the ATI drivers to work is an iffy proposition. Good luck with it in any case. -- J.W.

well i got a bit farther, then yesterday.

ok so i get the drivers unpacked and i do a dpkg -i --force-overwrite fglrx<the rest>

well the truth is there appears not to be a build_mod directory in /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod

there is a make.sh file in /lib/modules/fglrx after running it i can't find a build_mod or the make_install.sh file, so i guess this is where i leave it for now wondering what is going on.

thanks j.w. for clearing up the kernel question, hard to believe there are no mepis guru's in this forum, well hopefully one will view this in and know what is wrong.