quote: Original post by Fibonacci One
I put the sites:
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/ unstable/non-US main contrib non-free

into etc/apt/sources.list and commented everything else out. Then I used "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get dist-upgrade".
Everything ran fine except for one package that didn''t install (but I managed to install it afterwards).

quote: Original post by Fibonacci One
But...it still doesn''t see the drivers. I''m thinking of just reinstalling the version I have and burning the drivers to a cd...but the ati website only has the drivers in .rpm format. How would I do this?

Not sure exactly why. If I owned an ATI video card, I probably would have been forced to learn more about them already; but since I don''t, I haven''t.

Anyway, I do know that the DRI built into XFree86 4.3 doesn''t support 3D acceleration for the Radeon 9600 (it does up to the 9200, but newer versions are required for anything higher that they do support; ATI stopped "helping" the DRI team for cards past the 9200, so the DRI developers haven''t been able to do the work so quickly since). So, you''ll probably want to get ATI''s drivers in the long run anyway.

Using a RPM package in Debian can be done a couple ways. You can pull the contents out of the rpm and manually install them, foregoing the advantages of a package manager. You can also convert the RPM to a deb package and hope it works afterward. I''d recommend trying the latter option first.

To do conversion method:

1. As root: apt-get install fakeroot alien


2. As a user, in the directory with the RPM: fakeroot alien --to-deb whatever.rpm


3. As root, again: dpkg -i whatever.deb

The get the contents out of the RPM:

1. As root: apt-get install rpm cpio


2. As a user, in the directory with the RPM: rpm2cpio whatever.rpm | cpio --extract (I haven''t tried this, it''s just an educated guess).


3. Then, as root again, copy the files where they''re supposed to go (I couldn''t tell you exactly where without knowing what the files are, but it should be relatively obvious).

I''ve read that ATI''s drivers do not have good 2D acceleration (merely moderate from the opinions I''ve seen), so be warned about that.

quote: Original post by Fibonacci One
also, how do I run a .sh file?

The extension is commonly used for shell scripts. You can run them in two ways, feed them to their interpretter (e.g., /bin/sh something.sh) or give them execute permissions and allow the rest to be handled automatically (e.g., chmod a+x something.sh and then ./something.sh like a normal executable).

Sorry about all the trouble this has been, I''d be able to give much more precise instructions if I''d owned an ATI card at some point. But, you wouldn''t be trying Debian if you didn''t expect to learn your way around it I suppose .

no, you''ve been more then helpful. And all this trouble I''m having is forcing me to learn farm more about debian then I ever would have if X had worked right away.

I''m going to revert back to woody version my teacher gave me then try seeing if I can install the offical ATI drivers. If that fails I''m out of ideas.

After you dist-upgraded to sid, did you reconfigure your XFree? (the conf file is /etc/X11/XF86Config-4). How are you configuring your XFree? Why don''t you try using some generic driver instead of ATI specific (Null & Void might know more than me about how to do that).

Anyway; XFree is really a PITA, this is how i usually configure it: after installing Debian, i boot Knoppix. Knoppix will generate an XF86Config-4 file for me, so i just copy it to my Debian partition, and boot Debian again. So now it will use the configurations Knoppix made for XFree. I know it''s cheating, but... it works.

Victor.

On this site you have a list of the drivers'' name for XFree. Try to find your ATI card there. But, like Null & Void said; the ATI''s may only be supported by the latest versions of XFree. You could also try some generic (fbdev?)

Victor.

All of that is beyond me..
I''m just going to burn the files to a cd and see if I can convert them to .deb files and hope that works.

quote: Original post by Null and Void

quote: Original post by Fibonacci One
also, how do I run a .sh file?

The extension is commonly used for shell scripts. You can run them in two ways, feed them to their interpretter (e.g., /bin/sh something.sh) or give them execute permissions and allow the rest to be handled automatically (e.g., chmod a+x something.sh and then ./something.sh like a normal executable).

Do note that in almost all cases where you didn''t write the .sh file that file already has execute permission set, so you can just use ./something.sh like all other local executable files. The ./ is important because, unlike Windows, the current directory is not part of the search path in Linux.

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