Hi People
For starters for people with this card. Get Red Hat 8.0. The OpenGL stuff installs no problem either the 4.2 or the 4.3 XFree Ati drivers (not sure which just run the sh Check.sh thing and see what you need). I got Tux and Chromium running at good frames if you must have OpenGL.
Being the knob I am I really want to get Mandrake 9.1 to work with the ATI. So I have tried the Schieder driver for 4.3 and installed Glib 2.2 I think. I've tried (the official 4.2 on as well) both I believe and forced the drivers on. Okay Linux tells me I can't run 3d hardware. Why is that? When I STARTX after the flglxconfig program I get like WDWindows or something (three windows with an analog clock?) Is there a program that I can force KDE or Gnome to run. I think I specified KDE to run on boot but it goes to that silly minimalistic windows thing.
I'd appreciate some ideas with exact path names please. Linux isn't that smart and neither am I :-)

Thank you all...

I would like to add that I tryed to install the xfree 4.3 ATI drivers and they installed okay. Next I did the sh make.sh in the build_mod directory and it said the kernel was incompatible and the sh make_install.sh didn't work either.

Do I have to recompile or update the kernel and if so how do I do this? Mandrake also uses a newer Glib 2.3; does this effect the install too?

I would really appreciate some input on this as I think alot of people are trying LM 9.1 (as its one of the newest and easiest distros to install etc) and many have 9700 pros as well.

Thanx

Well it looks like I stumbled upon the fix for Linux Mandrake 9.1 myself.
- make sure that you install the kernel source or binary with the
distro as you'll need it to recompile the kernel which I finally
figured out
- get the latest Shnieder driver off the Xfree 4.3 forum above this
- install this in console mode with no windows (u can tell LM to
boot with no graphical interface in mandrake config program)
- install it with the rpm -i --force --nodeps filename.rpm
- run fglrxconfig and setup your card
- you may have to try different resolutions for some reason
as my 1200 x 1024 doesn't seem to display (anyone know
why? I have a NEC Multisync 95 with the right refresh rates)
- then go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
- type sh make.sh to build kernel
- then go up a level cd .. and type sh make_install.sh
- reboot or just startx in the console mode and presto OpenGL!