What command are you using to run the installer?

I just ran ./ati-installer.sh from the konsole.

try ./ati-installer.sh --install

Quote: Original post by Prozak
Your question got me thinking.

There are a few standardized ways of connecting stuff to a PC, through USB ports, or using a PC's internal slots (PCI-e, AGP, old PCI, etc)

If each piece of equipment had an unique market ID, then, upon connection, that uID would be transmited to the OS. If connected to the internet, the OS would call up a central server, and determine the URL to get the latest drivers from, for this PC's current configuration.

What you're describing is the PCI ID. Everything already works this way, minus the centralized server part, but experience with other devices shows that this isn't even necessary.

The real problem with graphics card support in Linux is that the vendors don't release register sheets to those who would write open source drivers, and due to licensing issues, many distributions don't ship the binary drivers by default.

ManaStone: AFAIK, your graphics card is based on the R3xx or R420. There's an experimental, flaky and visually buggy open source driver for that, but unless you feel like delving into developing a driver for a completely undocumented piece of hardware, you're better of with ATI's binary driver.

cu,
Prefect

I always hear bad things about ATI's Linux drivers, but NVidia's Linux drivers are very nice. Simplest install I've had with Linux actually.

Microsoft already has that centralized server, where all the WHQL certified drivers for Windows are available. Problem is, you can't use Windows drivers on Linux.

Sadly, for me when I go buy a card I look at nvidia only. Ati simply doesn't have the brain power to understand their own business as far as drivers go and opengl. No wonder nvidia is beating them to a pulp and has been for couple of years now. I would like to see more initiative on behalf of Ati so that the market is competitive. Alas, it is not to be.

ATI does a terrible job of keeping their drivers up to date. I've only ever bought NVidia for the past couple years as a result -- they not only provide the video card drivers but also the same tweak utilities as under NT.

ATI is supposed to be getting better, but in the meantime I certainly won't buy their cards. You likely have no choice in the matter, unfortunately.

If you're running Ubuntu I know it has a package for the NVidia drivers and tools. It may also have one for ATI, which is a lot faster than dealing with their (terrible) binary installer.