Usually when I want to enable 3D on my suse linux I have to compile and type a lot on init 3 environment.....
But now all that nightmare is gone.....because ATI now make an installer that make us easy to install ATI Graphic Driver (radeon 8500 or higher)......

first.... you must the ATI Driver Installer...you can download the latest driver from here
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/at...16.20-i386.run

then.....go to console and make "su" then do this "sh.ati-driver-installer-8.16.20-i386.run".....(I assume ATI driver installer file is on /home/username/)

then.....just follow the guide (no need an expert to do this ).....and after finish click "exit"

then....type on console (still as super user ) "fglrxconfig" ......do a configuration depend on your hardware ( e.g monitor)

then....after finish with fglrxconfig then reboot your PC and after that now you will have 3D enabled on your Suse linux......and now on your Kmenu you got "ATI Control Panel"

to make sure check with playing "tuxracer or neverball"
or do this.....go to console and type "glxinfo" then "glxgears" and "fgl_glxgears".......

So this is the winning day for ATI user.....

have a nice day


EDIT : To install this ATI installer driver correctly you must have installed GCC and
Kernel Source if this packages already installed then you should got your ATI driver running and 3D enabled

Right on! Mods, can we make this a sticky?

Make sure you backup xorg.conf or the XFree86 equivalent (XF86Config ?) before installing, ive had lots of trouble with parts of my config disapearing (my Synaptics Touchpad for instance).

Then to cap it off I was getting lockups as soon as I even attempted 3D.

Ill have to try this new driver though

I tried that and it didn't work. This is the solution that worked for me:
(check the readme)

http://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/su...fglrx/8.14.13/

Or maybe you could just use that technique and then go to step 4a in this readme to turn on 3D acceleration.

Hi

it did not work for me. I got the following message:

Detected configuration:
Architecture: x86_64 (64-bit)
X Server: Xorg 6.8.2

Detected version of X does not have a matching 'x680_64a' directory
You may override the detected version using the following syntax:
X_VERSION=<xdir> ./ati-driver-installer-<ver>-<arch>.run [--install]

The following values may be used for <xdir>:
x410 XFree86 4.1.x
x420 XFree86 4.2.x
x430 XFree86 4.3.x
x680 X.Org 6.8.x
x690 X.Org 6.9.x
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install

Thanks for posting this. I now have full 3d support for my HP L2000 lappy. It uses that stupid ATI express 200M chipset. It is supported in ATIs latest driver.

Only thing I had to out of the ordinary was to add the display mode for my laptops native resolution. For some reason the ATI installer didnt know how to do 1280x768. Here is what I added to the section that has all the resolution modes:

# 1280x768 @ 60Hz
# Modeline "1280x768@60" 129.859 1280 1368 1504 1728 768 769 772 814 +hsync +vsync

Also there is a section called Screen section with a subsection for displays called Modes. The file generated by the ATI installer had a 1280x960, I simply changed the 960 to a 768 which will cause it to use the above "Modeline".

Even though my laptop has a turion 64 processor, I am using the 32bit version of suse 9.3. I just need that stupid macromedia flash plugin. If it wasn't for that I would be trying the 64 bit version.

Thanks again for you help.

Will ATI's xorgconfig mess up other settings from my existing xorg.conf? For example, I use both a touchpad and a USB mouse--will running fglrxconfig mess this up?

Honestly I don't know. I only use the touchpad on my lappy.

Part of the fglrxconfig utility is to config devices like mice.

I imagine that if does screw one of the mice up, I would think that you could use yast to re-configure it. I would certainly backup your xorg.conf before starting the ati-installer that way you could just copy the input section back into the ati created conf file.

Apachedude: that was the config that I had on my laptop i was installing to

It definitely rewrites the sections for mice, keyboards, and modules in addition to the obvious display related settings, I suspect it rewrites the whole lot but i cant be sure.
The best way I found was to backup my original one and then use diff/tkdiff to see the changes and merge the settings by hand.

Edit:
Though i only got it working once, one reboot later and 3d was gone again

I don't have my USB mouse with me, so I can't verify whether that works any longer, but I do know that my touchpad settings have definitely changed to be almost unusable. Can someone tell me how I can splice the new display settings (added by ATI) with the old xorg.conf?

If someone is willing to help me, I will post my old and new xorg.conf. Otherwise, I won't do it to avoid excessive clutter on this thread.

For that matter, how do I know that my graphics card features even work? ATI Control is there, but it shows detects my card as "Unknown". (For that matter, it is an ATI's MOBILITY RADEON X300 PCI Express x16.) glxinfo gives me some input, glxgears displays some gears that rucran anywhere from 150-700 fps. fgl_glxgears just crashes.

It definitely feels faster, but I'm not sure that is really the case. I'd like to be able to verify it objectively.

Apparently, the new driver does make a difference. glxgears claims something like 600 fps without the acceleration, but the gears are spinning extremely slowly. There's no confusing it.

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I'd like to report that unlike sum1else, I was able to successfully get the input devices to play nicely with the ATI settings. I'm not sure if there's any other settings that I forgot to merge, so I'd still like someone to look over it if possible.

@sum1else: there's three sections of code you need to copy. First, in Section "Files", there are some InputDevices lines. There are the obvious Section "Input Device" files. And finally, you have to modify Section "Server Layout" appropriately. Hope this helps.

thanks for the info, im in the middle of moving house right now so it will be a couple days before i can try it but its encouraging that someone's got an ATI Mobility to work

with the gears moving slowly in glxgears, if your screen refresh rate is 60Hz then a frame rate of 600fps should look the same as a frame rate of 10fps because on each screen refresh you will only see 1 frame and the others will have been overwritten before you see them. its like the way wheels on cars appear stationary or spinning the wrong way.

I would expect there to be less load on the cpu with ATI's driver so it might be worth running a system monitor (GNOME and KDE both have applets to do this) while using glxgears

I ran the installer and fglrxconfig with my 9600pro, and all appeared to work fine. I get 90-700 frames with glxgears, but when I try to run a game (GL-117) it gives me the "no 3d acceleration" error and an uplayable frame rate. Under YaST the card shows up as ATI RV350 AP with 3d acceleration marked as unavailable. Restarting and reinstalling the drivers doesn't seem to help. What's going on here?