Now that my NIC is working, it's time that I bring up the next issue
with my new PC: the ATI video card. When I bought this PC, I had SuSE
on my mind (which is what I used to use on my old PC and my laptop), but
I started to like using Debian from work. With that said, I did not
have compatiblity issues in my head while I was picking out components
for my PC so I chose the Radeon (I didn't need 512MB of the best 3D
acceleration tha t money could buy; I just needed something cheap, but
decent), because I know for a fact that fglrx drivers can be found for
RH and SuSE on the ATI website and installed easily. Sadly, that is not
the case with Debian (even now, I'm just using the VESA driver at
800x600 res.). After some googling, I found the following website with
detailed instructions:
_http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/fglrx-installer.html_
I followed the steps and everything went smoothly without any sort of
errors. When I rebooted, my login screen was in the 1024x768 resoultion
that I wanted. *hooray!* But would hang/freeze while loading GNOME :(
To be honest, I don’t' really care whether the ATI card gets interfaced
properly, I just want 1024x768 resolution since I use it only for work
(mostly coding) and not play. Does anybody have any suggestions on how
I can achieve that?
I actually had problems using 'vesa' with my X300 card the first
time I installed Debian on that machine. Switched to text consoles
resulted in corrupted screens, though I could clean it up using 'clear'.
Therefore, I needed the proprietary ATI drivers just for peace of
mind. I was compiling my own kernels (for an old P3 and the new P4
with the X300) for the first time, so I decided to investigate what
was necessary to get the ATI drivers working.
I found that compiling in any kernel modules with 'RADEON' or 'DRM'
would block my ATI drivers from working. (I was compiling all needed
features into the kernel, no modules at all to avoid needing an initrd.)
If you are using a stock kernel, you may have to blacklist a module
or two.
I've been very happy with the ATI drivers since I got them to work
after a false start or two. Hope you get it to work on your box!
Dave Witbrodt
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