I've been using Linux for about two weeks now, with not much success so far. SimplyMEPIS was the only one I could get working, but I still can't get really basic stuff working right so I can't even begin to get to stuff like cd burning or even watching YouTube videos.

Anyway, this is one of my biggest problems-- Pretty much everything on my monitor looks really bad-- stretched resolution and cannot use multiple monitors. In Windows, I have to manually install video drivers to fix the EXACT same problem every time I reinstall it. I think I found the drivers on ATI's website (sorry, I can't post a link because the forum won't let me), but I can't figure out how to install them (for that matter, I'm not 100% sure these are the drivers I need).

The drivers I downloaded are called "AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology,
AMD Opteron™ Processors, and
AMD Athlon™ 64 Processors Driver Version 1.60.01 for Linux 2.6." which seems like it would work.

The instructions say this--
But the problem is, I don't know how to rebuild the kernel, and every tutorial I can find is either FAR too complicated or simply doesn't work.

These are my specs, in case they need to be known--
Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook, Dual-boot Win XP and SimplyMEPIS Linux, 1 gig ram, AMD Turion 64 x2 1.6 GHZ, ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 256 mb

I've spent two weeks on this and other, more serious problems (I'll just ask this one first, tackling things one-at-a-time). Does anybody know what's wrong here?

What you've downloaded is cpu stuff, but you need a graphics driver which would be this one.

Edit: That's really a little PEBKAC

Ah!! I made a lot of progress! Thanks so much! Things look a lot better. Sharper, not stretched, and there's more room on my desktop.

BUT, I have another question now. I'm using multiple monitors, and previously MEPIS didn't even affect my second monitor, like it wasn't plugged in. Now it's mirroring the primary monitor, which is an enormous improvement nonetheless, but I want to extend my desktop instead, as well as use a different resolution setting (the second monitor is a different shape than the primary, so it needs different resolution settings). When I go to the "Display settings" window, the drop menu for "Settings for screen" is faded out so I can't change it. Is there a place to activate multiple monitor use?

Generally speaking this would be Xinerama (google for that). AFAIK this can even be done using aticonfig. As a pointer, you could have a look at the Gentoo documentation for doing so. You'd have to change some commands and paths according to the distro you're using which might be a little tricky but this will get you into the right direction. Maybe MEPIS has some distro-specific documentation on this too.

Have you tried System>MEPIS>X-windows assistant? Not familiar w/ ati cards and drivers, but I know there are options for dual monitor setups in this utility.

I looked up Xinerama, but I could only find text files at this site.

I tried using aticonfig, and it looked like I was about to get somewhere, but when it said to enter this command into the konsole-- "aticonfig --dtop=horizontal --overlay-on=1", I got these results:
I tried that Gentoo thing and when I entered this command-- "X -configure," I got this error--

You'll have to do this without having X running, so you need to enter a runlevel without X (should be runlevel 3 on debian based distros of which I believe MEPIS to be one)(< was that correct or at least understandable grammar? ).

This can be done by typing telinit 3 (in konsole for example). You'll end up without any GUI then, but the commands will work or at least give some information.

Edit: Afterwards, you can of course type telinit 5 and have back your GUI if everything works.
You should write down the name of the backed up config file which is stated here:

(Just in case )

Ah! That makes a lot of sense. At first I did something pretty dumb, lol, but now it's working, but I have ONE more question I feel like Columbo, I'm "one-more-thinging" things to death. One thing I would like to do is drag windows from my primary monitor to my secondary monitor, but right now I have to OPEN things in my second monitor for it to be there. Is there any way to set things like that? Even if that's not possible, though, this is a HUGE improvement, thanks so much!

I'd guess that there will be some option to aticonfig to enable that, but as I in fact have not used an ATI card for years, I dunno. I tend to think it should be possible tho. Searching the forums for ati + dual head is the best I can suggest here - and that might in fact be quite a good suggestion

Nevertheless I'm happy you made good progress with that whole thingy and I'm sure you'll get it done.