ATI Linux Drivers

[Cassius105]

Hi

Im pretty new to linux and am taking some time now i finished uni to fiddle about with it. However iv ran into a problem, im using SuSe 9.2 and a radeon 9700pro graphics card and every time i install the latest ATI drivers it completely nukes the installation so that when i reboot the monitor turns off before even getting to the login screen.

Iv tried various methods of installing such as:

using the auto installer to install an automatic generic rpm
using the auto installer to create a distribution specific rpm
downloading the driver rpm and installing manualy
followed various installation guides such as those on the ATI site and wiki etc.

all these done using fresh installs of SuSe 9.2 with no other modifications

so iv come here to ask if any more experienced linux users have any idea how to make the drivers work.

Thanks for any replies

 

[Cerb]

First, why do you need the ATi drivers? The radeon ones aught to work fine for normal use.
Second, why 9.2? That's fairly old.

 

[Cassius105]

1) I want the drivers because one of the little experiments (i like to experiment with things that one of the reasons for setting up the linux box) i wanted to do was see how well i could get games working on the system.

2) 9.2 is simply the copy i have atm, got it some time ago but due to the weight of uni work never really had the chance to fully explore it.

 

[Cerb]

10 has been a major improvement. ATi's drivers aren't as good as nVidia's, but newer will be better. Just start the 10.1 DVD download and wait . The bleeding edge can be bad (FI, Debian Sid), but just a few months behind tends to be ideal (SUSE 10.1, Dapper Drake, etc.).

 

[n0cmonkey]

Use OpenSuse 10.1 if you have to use Suse.

 

[postmortemIA]

OpenSuSE 10 and 10.1 are stellar.

 

[Brazen]

Ubuntu Dapper is stellar.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

How old is 9.2?.. Try to grab 10.1 or 10.0 at least. Its a free download. TBH, 10.0 has better hardware detection, especially when it comes to wireless cards.

 

[elph]

Had the same problem with these drivers on another distro - look in your logs in /var/log/X11/. It's probably not finding the right video card or something. You can get a lot of info out of the log.

 

[Cassius105]

Managed to fix it, was a problem with Sax2 in the end.

Thanks for all the replies though.