I have a program for windows called powerstrip, basicly what it did was allow me to change my gamma, brightness, and various other aspects of display. In windows this was criticle as with out it most of my games were black with muzzle flashes or other bright spots.
is there a porgram for linux that is at all comparable.
I have mandrake 9.1 and a Radeon 9500 Pro (are there any drivers that allow 3d for this?), if that helps

Edit: or is there some way to run the .exe file to get pstrip working, im guessing i would need an emulator or wineX

If you're running GkrellM then you can get a plugin to change the gamma. Otherwise, you can use all sorts of nice programs. At its most basic, you can use the command line utility xgamma - it is a default part of your X server.

If you wanted something more GUI, then I'm sure there are Qt/Gtk (KDE/Gnome) interfaces - try google.com/linux searching or sourceforge.net searching for linux gamma programs.