midget_0n_stilts

Sorry if this has been posted before, but I looked and did not see anything, except as explained. I am somewhat new to Linux, but I think I've got the hang of things. I saw used several guides on the Internet (including one here, one at linuxquestions.org, and one at rage3d.com or something like that) to install ATI's drivers for my Radeon on Mandrake 10.1. While all of them did work in installing the actual driver, none of them succeeded in getting me hardware acceleration, leaving me with Mesa Indirect rendering. My question is: Has anyone gotten hardware acceleration with ATI's current drivers to work on a Radeon system, and if so, how? I'm desperate here, and I do not want to cave in to the corporations (i.e. ATI and Microsoft) ;( PS: I hear all this talk of AGPGART, and some say that it's needed and some say it's not. What do I want to do with AGPGART? My system has a Asus A7NX8-X (it's an NFORCE2) motherboard and a Radeon 9800 Pro, if that helps.

As promised, here is my guide to installing ATI drivers on Mandrake 10.1: 1. (If not done already) Download X.org 6.8. Since it is difficult to install, I'll describe a shortcut I took: a. Open up the terminal and su into root b. Type in urpmi.addmedia thacs.rpms http://rpm.nyvalls.se/10.1/RPMS with hdlist.cz (Don't worry, this is only temporary) c. Type in urpmi-xorg The packages will then be installed d. Remove thacs.rpms from the Software Media Manager. I do not recommend using this mirror for anything else. 2. (If not done already) Install the source code by: a. Typing in urpmi kernel-source (I'm not sure if this step is necessary. b. Typing in urpmi kernel-source-2.6 (This is definently necessary) 3. Download Radeon drivers; force install using rpm -i (package name).rpm 4. Run fglrxconfig and follow the instructions. (You can safely choose the defaults for everything.) 5. Restart, and you should have hardware acceleration up and running As a side note, I tried the drivers with and without internal AGPGART and did not notice any difference in performance.

Ok guys, I managed to get it to work. But, I am too tired at the moment to describe what I did so I'll do it tommorow. (I've been working on this for 3 days straight.) Sorry. *YAWN*