install disk

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Michael Shelby wrote:
> I downloaded drivers for my video card and it is a .run do I convert to 

Which is what?  nVidia?

> a rpm file or get a installer, I read the read me file for the down load 
> but got lost, it said to install,

ATI and nVidia drivers are available in many forms.  Some are free, 
open-source drivers, but may not support all of the required 
accelerations on all cards.  Sometimes there are more than 1 open source 
driver, which only serves to confuse the issue.  ATI and nVidia also 
provide their own closed source drivers for some video cards.  They can 
be provided via a .zip file, a .run installer file, or in some case, 
some third party repositories (ATRPMs or RPMFusion) provide RPMs for 
these drivers in various forms.  I use RPMFusions drivers for my ATI 
laptop and my nVidia desktop.  YMMV, and depending on your video card, 
may not need the proprietary drivers at all.

>  "The following packages must be installed in order for the CatalystTM Linux

Catalyst says its an ATI driver.  Consider looking at the fglrx packages 
from RPMFusion.  Also, note that the open-source radeon driver may do 
what you need.  If your card is an ATI-HD card, maybe radeonhd will work 
for you.  The basic ati driver may give you 2D support, but not 3D 
support.  (Like I said, its very confusing.)  I'm sure Kevin Kofler will 
have more to say on this subject, as he seems to be more up-to-date on 
the state of the free ATI drivers than I am.

> driver to install and work properly:
> • XFree86-Mesa-libGL
> • libstdc++
> • libgcc
> • XFree86-libs
> • fontconfig
> • freetype
> • zlib
> • gcc
> The Xinstall.sh script must be downloaded in binary mode, otherwise it 
> will not run correctly. If you get lots of "command not found" messages 
> when you try to run it, then it is most likely because the script was 
> not downloaded in binary mode. Some web browsers will not do this for 
> files of that name, so we also have a copy of it called 
> "|Xinstall.bin|", and most browsers should download that correctly. When 
> downloading it under this name, select "save as" on your browser, and 
> save the file under the name "|Xinstall.sh|"."

If you install via RPMs, all of your dependancies will be installed 
along with the driver.

> But I got up to downloading a script file but it took my to a page full 
> of code, do i need to copy and paste and turn into .exe? Sorry rusty at 
> linux, used it in school to learn java programming, should of watched 
> him dual boot all the cpu's in the class. If you can point me in the 
> right dir it would be appreciated.

I like to use RPMs whenever possible.  Esp when someone else does the 
hard work for me.  B^)

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)