Radeon 9600 Mobility and Mandrake 10.0
 

Hi,

I've just converted from Mac -> Linux after spending far too much on a new laptop. It came with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 and I installed Mandrake 10.0 on it (hearing that this was the easiest distribution for n00b users to have) however, expecting to see some Funky Graphics from my machine I see if there's anything to test it with and find the OpenGL screensavers. Trouble is they don't work. Well, they do work but they're slow and jerky and not worth admiring as screen savers, and TuxRacer runs so slow it's a joke (these are the only tests I've been able to run - it works perfectly in Windows). My setup is, like I said, Mandrake 10.0, and it automagically selected "Radeon (fglrx)" when I tried to set up the card on install.

So the question: How do I get this card to work?

If there are answers /please/ write them in n00b language. I don't understand how to open up config files and mangle their insides and rebuild the kernel and all this - I've been using a Mac, so I'm used to all this happening for me (though half of the reason for getting this PC was for me to learn).

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

David

hi!

the opensource driver for this grapic card does not have 3d acceleration. but there exists an "original" ati-driver. the installation is quite easy...

follow these instructions:
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/linuxhowto-ati.html

some hints:
- first of all you need to install the kernel sources, use the mandrake-install-tool, search for "kernel-source-2.6.3-7mdk" and install the package.
- there are several versions of these ati-driver available, download http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/fg...3.9.0.i386.rpm for mandrake 10.0.
- the fglrxconfig may be a bit confusing... usually the default option is a pretty good choice, but be sure to configure the monitor settings correctly. you can use the old configuration /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (it may be good to back that file up, before you start fglrxconfig) to get an idea about the monitor settings.

regards!
adrian