Hi,

I'm relatively new to games on linux. I tried to install the rpm package of xorg-x11-Mesa due to a game requiring the library libGLcore.so.1, but it conflicted with the mandriva package libxorg-x11, which I can't uninstall due to almost every X program relying on it.
Any ideas what I should do?

What sort of games do you want? If 3d games, then what sort of video card. I tend to use nvidia as they are better supported. You need the binary driver for your video card, from nvidia or ati... Or some cards have included drivers, like old voodoo cards...

Yeah I've been trying to run a few 3D games that I've downloaded from freshmeat.net but often they refuse to compile due to a missing GL library. My computer only has onboard graphics via an intel 810 chipset, 32mb graphics mem. Not sure if there's a special linux driver for it..? Also, it doesn't have an AGP slot so I'd have to find a PCI graphics card.

You'll have some fun with that...

Hmm yes. Well do you think there's any hope of at least getting these Mesa packages sorted out? Most of the games that came with my distro run and older windows games (Return to castle wolfenstein, MOHAA) run under winex/cedega. It's just that downloaded linux games don't run due to the general mess that the mesa/opengl/something libraries are in.

I'm only used to working with nvidia and it's gl lib... I used to run voodoo a long time ago but I don't recall much

You'll need the accellerated drive for that chipset and that should have the gl lib. You might find that on the intel site somewhere... I found this, but not sure it's what you need...

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...?ProductID=798

Maybe there is something else as well, like a built in driver in X that you just need to enable... Need someone familiar with the chipset and 3D

If and when you get accelleration set up you can run what you want. I have return to castle wolfentien. It has a linux native version you can download... But I run other stuff with cedega...

I think you will find the chipset a little on the weak side for this sort of work though...

Yeah the chipset sort of gets to the running-GTA3-very-very-slowly-under-windows-XP stage. Thanks for that link, I'm downloading that RPM now and I'll tell you how it goes. A local linux geek used to live across the road from me but now he's moved into town.

Oh, I just installed that driver but according to the readme file, one of its "known limitations" is that it doesn't include 3D support. It also says that it doesn't support 32bpp colour, although I wasn't exactly expecting that. I ran 'rpm -ql XFCom_i810' and it only returned two files - /usr/X11R6/bin/XFCom_i810 and
/usr/doc/XFCom_i810-1.2/README

Keep an eye out for a pci voodoo3 or tnt2 or early geforce card for something easy to set up...

I can't find too much good info on using the 810 as #D... I've only ever used it for 2D myself in the past with a little 3D in windows. Wasn't great in windows...

Yeah I'll keep an eye on the old internet auctions. Well thanks for your help. It just occured to me today that none of the native linux games I've run have been openGL, they've all either been in SDL or else I don't really know what they're in. I don't think I would have let my parents buy this computer if I'd known it would render itself obselete so quickly, but then again I was 13 when we bought it in the days when windows XP was just the latest thing.

I think if you get pci video for it you'll get a bit more life out of it... But PC's do get obsolete pretty quick...