suse 8.0 and ATI rage 128 Xpert video cards

[davidrobin]

I have been considering playing with Linux for a couple of months now. I have a full version of Suse 6.2 but my video card is not supported.

ATI Rage 128 Xpert

I could upgrade the XFree86 to 4.2.0 but figure I might as well buy Suse 8.0 in the hope the problem is resolved for me.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has this version and what problems they have had.

I have looked on Suse.com but their Hardware compatability database does not list my video card. Also the system spec states you have to have Pentium 4. That seems very limiting to me, a lot of people and the company would miss out. I have a Celeron 500. What system spec do you have?

Thanks for any help.....

David
Visual Basic 6 Ent

 

[AdaHacker]

Disclaimer: I don't use SuSE, but...

Unless they're distributing their own modified version of XFree86, which I doubt, SuSE is irrelevant. It's X that needs to support the video card, and I know XFree86 4.2 supports the ATI Xpert 128 using (if I recall correctly) the r128 driver. Whether SuSE's configuration software will detect it or not is another story, but it should work with X.

As for the Pentium IV thing, are you sure you got that right? I could understand them listing that as the recommended configuration, but if that's the minimum requirement, it seems ludicrously high. I couldn't find it on their web page, but if it's given as a minimum requirement, I don't see how that could possibly be right. The specs you've given (provided you have enough RAM) should be enough to run X at a reasonable speed.

I don't know much about SuSE specifically, but with enough RAM (say 128 MB) the processor and video card you've mentioned should be enough to run a Linux desktop comfortably. I actually have a comparable system running an updated Slackware 8 with no problems.