Mandrake 10.1 installed fine on this used dell inspiron. I have been having serious difficulties, however, in getting my radeon 7500 mobility card to work properly. Google tells me that all kinds of people have had similar troubles (particularly with 3D support) and sometimes people reply in their thread "nevermind, I got it." The only thing that it's missing is how they actualy did it. Neophyte here so please bear with. ATI has basically no support, maybe they need to know linux exists (I would post a link here but there's some kind of rule that I need 5 posts before I can post a link, so please google for ati linux petition), I tried to update my Xorg X server to 2.8.6 to no avail (running 2.7.0 now and I hear that it is problematic). I'm not exactly sure what to do here. I can live without 3D graphics but it would be nice to get the whole thing functioning.

Thanks
DaCapn

yes you need xorg 6.8.1 or later.
That and a 2.6 kernel.
I got 3d for my Radeon IGP320M and thats saying something.

See if MDK has update rpms for xorg

I have installed xorg 6.8.1 with success (apparently). Xorg -version tells me that i have 6.8.1 installed. When configuring the settings for the vid card in mandrake control center, however, when selecting the xorg radeon driver it says "the current configuration is: Xorg 6.7.0" Also if I select the ATI radeon driver it says it can use either Xorg 6.7 or Xorg 6.7 with 3D acceleration. The 3D option doesn't work, I have to reboot and change the options in failsafe. Could there be an install step that I missed or some conf file I need to edit to update this?

Thanks for the reply too