Hello there. I installed debian woody but the xserver will not start at all. it gives me errors. I do have an ATI RADEON 9200, 256 MB DDR. i tried to do apt-get install x-windows-system-kde, but still the same. Could someone help?

Need more information - what are the error messages you are getting when you try to start x?

Hello mate. Unfortunately the solution u offered it does not seem to work. After some search i found some drivers in ATI's homepage. all i did was wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/fg...-3.2.8i586.rpm
then alien fglrx-glc-4.1.0-3.2.8i586.rpm to convert it to .deb.
But again no luck. The card seemed to be recognised correctly, but no desktop.

the error message iam receiving after typing startx is:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserrc: /usr/bin/X11/X: no such file or directory
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserrc: exec: /usr/bin/X11/X: cannot execute

I think that if i update the XFree86 to version 4.3.0, then that will work. Any ideas how could i download and install the xfree4.3.0 using wget?

I too have a radeon 9200 8x apg W/ 128mb ddr and have been trying to get it to work i installed the latest xfree86 and it has radeon drivers but it didn't work automatically. I think you have to manually edit the file for the correct chip set (which i don't know). If anybody has any suggestions could you please reply.

Get the sources.list line for the backport for woody from Apt-get.org and install with apt-get.

You can fake a chip ID to make a 9200 work as an earlier model card.

See my web page (its about redhat - but similar hacks will probably work on other systems too)

http://users.actrix.co.nz/michael/radeon9200.html

Here are some good links that may help you.
I fell into similar trouble when trying to use debian with my geforce 4 mx 440.
These links are from gentoo, but maybe you can apt-get the same packages in Debian.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml
http://gatos.sourceforge.net/

http://g-tec.co.at/ati_alt.html - this one is for an nforce2 board and is for Debian.

if you read the gentoo links, it mentions xfree-drm, among other things. The ati driver is said to be better for 3d, compared to xfree-drm.
So I would give the third link a try, to get the ati-drivers to work.
It also mentions having trouble installing ati-drivers after aliening it to deb, but tells you how to fix that problem.

Hope this helps. If all else fails use Gentoo, and the gaming kernel.

"This is all hot air however, for I have no experience in any of these topics"
Ashley T