This is not "universal". For example, NVidia drivers require that the dri load directive not be present (or it can be commented out).

Also, if my understanding is correct, ATI does not always require that you download the proprietary drivers. For older chipsets, I believe hardware acceleration is possible with the open source driver.

As I said, it's a general guide.

The newest ATI cards do need different drivers. Older may not. But for Nvidia, always get the newest...(Can't go too wrong there, lol)

For every chipset/hardware configuration/distro, you will ALWAYS run into exceptions. But in a general sense the info is correct.

Specific drivers may need specific settings. Specific BIOS will not let DRI work. Some drivers provide their own 3d acceleration mechanism.

So, if all else fails: READ YOUR DOCUMENTATION.

BTW, the 'universal' has been taken out, replaced with 'generally' (thanks AGAIN Shilo!!)

By no stretch of the imagination did I start this guide as the "end-all-and-do-all" for DRI in X11. It is just here mostly to get a pointer in the direction you need to go, without getting into specifics. The main drive was that a friend of mine was wondering why my paltry laptop was smoking his in the graphics department. I showed him what this thing was doing via glxgears (around 720fps), and his was only doing 115 (New ATI PCI-X video card). It got him looking, and there was no general guide anywhere.

So I thought I would start this thread as an assistance to people who didn't know that their performance could be dramatically improved with the DRI working, and how to go about it in a general way.

Again, thanks for the comments/questions. It's the best way to learn

I have a couple questions regarding DRI.
1. Is the video memory representing the memory on the actual card? Or is it the ammount of system memory you are going to alocate for the card?
2. I have an old Matrox Mystique PCI 4mb card, will DRI work for me?
3. What are the performance gains/benefits?
Thank you.

In my case, it's how much system ram to allocate to the video. But if your card has a discrete amount, such as 4MB on yours, do the amount for 4MB (Unless you know you can 'borrow' system memory).

As for specific performance gains, my glxgears went from 120-130 FPS to over 700.

Will it work for your card? Maybe, but you will have to try. May have to use a lower resolution/color depth tho. Try it. Won't hurt to much to do so. Just remember to have backups of your xorg.conf file, in case X will not start. And the kernel options would be different for your card than mine (Except agpgart).

Do a google search on your card and DRI. See if anyone else has been able to do so.

Google is your BEST friend.

As I said, every card/chip is different. If you don't have DRI enabled now, what do you have to lose?

I just installed the newest nvidia drivers on my system due to a reinstallation.
It seems that they have added a script in the newest drivers that automaticly configures your xorg.conf file. I allowed it to do that and now my direct rendering is on without running that other script. So I guess you might not need it. If you want it tho you can have it.

But it's still weird though 'cause the script I used before didn't change anything in my xorg.conf file. It only made symlinks to the proper folders.
Maybe the new nvidia driver does that to.

Great. Thanks alot. Ill mess with it this evening and post results back sometime. Thanks for the guide.

That's one reason why you should try the latest drivers. Go ahead and post the script, tho. Others may still find it useful.

Remeber, knowledge not shared is knowledge lost

You got that right
I see now that the script actually makes changes in the xorg.conf file too, so forget what i said before

Here's the script, save it as a .sh file:
You have to change the nvidia driver version number with the one u're running.

As root type:

Synt4x_3rr0r-

I've added that script to the original post.

I also am thinking of making this a repository of the various ways to make DRI work, such as my general guide at the top of this thread, plus additions like what Synt4x_3rr0r just added.

I just figure that one place/thread to go has to be better than the 70-80 that we now have, not to mention all the crud out there on google.

Any comments on that?

I may also consolidate the various threads on my website. May make it easier to combine that way. I will *try* to give credit where credit is due, but I'm only one human with a screwy laptop!

As I've said, comments/suggestions are welcome

Thats a great idea since, like you said, problems with DRI are pretty common. Especially in slackware it seems. =/

As I've already stated in this thread, I didn't know I couldn't do it. I just went ahead and did it.

I've also seen the DRI issue pop its beady little head up in other distros (I actually got some of the info from a Mepis forum). But as I ONLY use Slackware (Yeah,Pat!) , I can only comment on that.

Other distros: Be aware that the way I got DRI to work may not work for you. You may have other tools,scripts,etc., that make it easier/harder for you.

But, with that said, X11 is X11. Give it a shot.

I know about the trials and tribulations about Intel/Nvidia/ATI. What other cards/chips are ther problems with?

OK....here is an odd problem.

If I'm using runlevel 3, I have DRI with all users (root, and everybody else)

If I switch to runlevel 4, I don't have DRI. Not as root, or any user.

Any ideas?

OK....I reset back to init4 again, and now it works. I'm assuming a temorary lapse in one bit somewhere when it was doing that ealier. So, never mind that. Everything is back to normal.

But it irks me a little.....Having to do a Windows Fix....i.e. reboot. Anybody have any ideas on what might have happened?

Like, is there another xorg.conf type file that is used occasionally? Or a different version of something simuliar elsewhere on the system?

From the amount of people looking at this thread, I may have struck a deep chord in the minds of users...."How can I get my video to run faster?"

I know there are alot of success stories out there. And even more failures. What I would like to do with this thread is to make it a learning post, having both successes and failures to learn from.

Post them. I belive it will help alot of people. And, as I said, I'm going to collect them, and make a more comprehensive guide.