My problem is that the kernel in my Mandrake 8.0 doesn't support my Ati Radeon VE (video card). So I was thinking of installing a new kernel hoping that it would. I have downloaded the new version, but I just don't know how to install it. The HOWTO's on the internet are not specific enough for me. Is installing the new kernel only solution? Ati doesn't make drivers for linux. Help would be appreciated.

by linux not supporting it, i presume you mean you can't get in to Xwindows? if you can still get into the system and boot up on a black screen, then that's not linux, that's X. and recompiling a kernel will have absolutely no effect whatsoever. You gotta appreciate how modular linux is. I seriously doubt there's ANY graphics card that can't be used outside of X.

actually, i just had a search around, and i saw somewhere, mention of needing 2.4.8 of better. i'm dubious about that, but you can download the mdk rpm rfor 2.4.13 kernel from rpmfind.net and upgrade your current one to that one.

there's also a rage128 howto around on the net, look for that for more details on how to actually get ati cards working nicely.

i had a ati Xpert 2000 for abuot 2 days, and couldn't get it to work ever, and found that it was officailly unsupported in an way. so i swapped it for a nice geforce2

Ok, now I'm not even sure if my card is working well or not. KDE's control center says that the card is working, but it doesn't recognize it (unknown device). Basically all the graphics on the screen looks very nice, but the screen refresh (frequency) rate is really low, and I can't 'stretch' the picture to fill the whole screen. So if I could just adjust this refresh rate and resolution... I just couldn't find out how, like you can do it in windows in the control panel.

look in /etc/X11/XF86config for the graphics device and see what that says. that's where the installed driver is declared. you'll probably be using the r128 driver i guess. if it just mentions standard vga then you might be unlucky.

run drakxconf to set up xwindows on mandrake