Linux (Mandrake vs SuSe) and ATI Radeon 9600SE

[coville]

I built a new PC in May. (listed below)

I have XP and Mandrake installed. I 've never gotten past the CLI in Mandrake due to the ATI drivers not being loaded. I just found a couple more ideas to try and get the video drivers loaded.

What I would like to know is if I bought and installed SuSe will the drivers for an ATI Radeon 9600SE AGP video card be loaded automatically or will I be in the same situation? I want to get to the GUI and be able to use my PC then worry about digging into learning a new OS/command line.

Brian

 

[Zelmo3]

SuSE will detect the card and use the open source "radeon" driver, which gives you lots of flexibility in 2-D but no 3-D acceleration. ATI's accelerated drivers are not allowed to be included in any distribution.
If you can get on the internet with Mandrake (using links or lynx, for example) and get the drivers from ATI's site then I and others will be happy to help you install them.
Alternately, if you don't have much installed in Linux yet and don't mind changing distros, go ahead and grab SuSE. You'll at least have 2-D functionality and can easily browse to SuSE's Downloads section and get the accelerated ATI drivers there. Again, I'll be happy to help you with the installation.