At the moment I'm using the operating system SuSE v10.00. This isn't my primary operating system as I much prefer the simplicity of Windows, however I needed a Linux system for school.

 

As I'm new to the OS I was hoping that someone here would have knowledge of it and be able to lend me a hand with something. In order to update my graphics card drivers I have to install a Proprietary Driver Installer from ATI. The problem is, I can't figure out how the hell to install anything. I can click on the downloaded file, but it attempts to open it as a text file. I have a feeling I'll have to resort to the command line (not something I relish as I hate command lines and will have to learn how to use it in the first place), but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Igor I believe is a Linux expert.

If you hate command lines, you're not going to enjoy linux. Once you figure the basics out, its not a hard system to use, but for those of us (myself included) who are used to how Windows operates, it takes some time to get the basics down. Look for a FAQ on your particular linux, perhaps on their website. Or some kind of newbie guide. Don't feel too bad about it, I still can't use linux.

Well most of the time, you'll need to end up compiling things to get it to run. That is, time to figure out how to use "make" - most scripts include a Makefile to do the compiling in a simple batch

 

I'm not too sure how drivers are done, as I haven't really installed any of those myself. May depend on recompiling the kernel .. I know my friend did that a few times to get my linux system to work

 

There also many be some precompiled packages that could help. It looks like SuSe uses one called YaST - maybe that could help you install things

Well, maybe listing the file type will help. The ATI download program is in .run format. Right now I only know how to install tar.gz (or something to that effect) files, which are basically Linux zipped. Sadly without my graphics drivers I can't even take advantage of my OpenGL abilities.

ATI and NVIDIA both have self-installing linux drivers now, sometimes you may need to manually configure the xorg.conf to get the desired resolutions but the display drivers are the easiest of any device drivers to get working nowdays. Im' still fighting with getting slackware 10.2 setup on my new laptop... so far the nvidia 7800gtx is about the only thing I got working right.

 

Log in with root and use the "sh" command to execute the .run file format.

 

root@compname: sh ati_driver_version_#.run

My friend I don't know how to thank you! I just have to do a restart to ensure everything is alright.

Your thinking windows man... no restart needed, just use "startx" to begin and run "glxgears" from X to test hardware acceleration, or I don't remember how ATI does it, but you get a nice NVIDIA flash screen as you load up X.

Well, I started off by doing the automatic install. It installed drivers but didn't give me any 3D support (no OpenGL or anything), so I re-did it using the custom mode and selected the SuSE 10.0 drivers... which completely screwed me over. It cannot find any screens anymore, so I can't "startx". Basically it will only boot to level 5. Any suggestions?

I'm not familiar with Suse, I primarily use Slackware which is a more traditional core linux interface w/o the package management system.

 

But as far as I know, I believe using the automatic install script of the ATI driver should detect the screen and modify the xorg.conf file accordingly. You could try renaming the xorg.conf to xorg.old and attempting to run the ATI driver setup, I would assume it should build a new file from scratch.