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[mr2mike]

I'm talking about a R128 AGP here, that shit is old enough to be in the old people home. it SHOULD have built in support everywhere since R128 products were damn near raining down back then and it's not exactly an exotic card.

Thing is, I'm having a really hard time finding a linux distro that displays, and by that I mean, as with Linspire wich I tried just about last week, bootup is fine, up to the point where the actual OS should pop up onscreen.

Instead, the screen falls in sleep mode with the familiar blinking power LED. If I could actually reach the OS and try tto fix it, I would, but I can't even get there. The sucky part is it usually works fine on my roomate's newer nForceII based rig (talking about bootable CD distros here)

So now I'm perpetually looking for something that's at least going to reach the desktop when coming out of the initial install...

 

[CrunchyB]

The ATI Rage 128 is available as kernel module, but it's marked "new" in the current 2.6.10 kernel. Chances are it wasn't supported a few months ago, so you might want to look around for a bleeding-edge installation CD.

bootup is fine, up to the point where the actual OS should pop up onscreen.

I think it's important to note than an OS and a graphical user interface are absolutely not the same thing. You might want to try booting to console to diagnose/fix the problem but I guess that's asking a bit much for a Linux newbie. Don't feel bad, we all started there

A final note of advice, if you're serious about using Linux, I would suggest Gentoo as a distro. The first week you will be trial-and-error and will probably include a re-install but the installation guide on www.gentoo.org is pretty good and you'll pick up a lot about the inner workings of the Linux OS and less about the peculiarities of the distro.

 

[Gattsu25]

Gentoo will grow hair on your PC knowledge chest

before you try that out, though, maybe you should check out the NEWEST Knoppix LiveCD

What is KNOPPIX®?

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.

http://knoppix.org/

 

[shuri]

Knoppix will be fine.

 

[Deleted member 4784]

Slackware should work just fine. My ex had an ATI and he didn't even have to worry about compiling for ATI proprietary drivers because x already included/configured everything for him. I guess that it also depends on what you plan to use the computer for though, because I don't know if you'd have to dig up 3D drivers or something if you plan to play videogames on there, for example. I'm a big fan of Slackware so if you have any questions about it, feel free to ask me. ^^

http://slackware.org

 

[Hitokage]

Slackware is Gentoo's less essentric grandpappy. I wouldn't recommend it to somebody who just wants a running linux system unless they are fully willing and able to get their hands dirty if they need to.

Oh, and the proprietary ATI Radeon drivers are complete ass. Don't even bother. Besides, unless you have a newer radeon (eg. 9800), you can get full 2D/3D accel from the opensource driverset which comes with X.