ATI Xpress 1150, need proprietary driver but uh..

[Raletia]

Ok, so I wasn't really sure where to post, I looked around, and did searches on google and here.

I have a Dell Inspirion 1501 laptop that works but is sort of frankensteined. If that is even a word..

It's DVD drive was broken and its internal HDD failed, and the screen developed spots. So it is hooked up
to a USB DVD-Multi drive and a self powered USB enclosure, and hooked up to an external monitor and I
removed the laptop screen and added a USB mouse. So the computer is pretty much just the motherboard
and the keyboard.

So its basically a desktop now, and I installed Mint 9 on there and everything was great, awesome. Until
I installed wine and tried to run a game. I also tried the trial of crossover games, and it did even worse.
(Wine: Black screen, music played, everything seemed to work except rendering!; Crossover, it just
crashed when it tried to render anything.)

The game is Runes of Magic, I know it works on linux, as there is videos on youtube, and I've seen it compared
with getting World of Warcraft running in linux(apparently they're similar games?)

Turns out from searching that I apparently need the proprietary flgrx driver? As the open source driver's 3-D
acceleration isn't sufficient yet. I also tried using VMware and it said I did not have a compatible 3-D accelerator or
something so that the guest would not be accelerated. Note that glxgears and the desktop effects were working fine.

However, from further searching... It appears that the fglrx driver for my card doesn't work on the x server that
comes with mint 9 which is based on ubuntu.. 9?

Because in unbuntu 9 they upgraded it, and the last version that works is ubuntu 8, which linux mint 6 is based
off of? If my searching was correct?

So my options were try to downgrade x server or install an older version? I tried mint 6, and sure enough it asked me
about a 'restricted driver' -- however everything failed to install! and the repositories no longer exist? Everything
gave 404 errors..

So my question is simply... where can/should I go from here?

Thank you.

P.S. I really like Mint, I've used it off an on since around version 4, but never did any heavy lifting with it, and
never really used it on anything but secondary machines. I don't have much experience with linux, but I'm not
computer illiterate, I'm going to college and my major is computer science, so far just taken some visual basic and
c++ classes, as well as working on HTML and PHP in my spare time, so I don't mind getting my hands a little dirty, but
I'm far from experienced with more complex coding yet. And what experience I have is mostly within windows.

[conslie]

I just installed the new release, Linux Mint 10, and at least for my ATI video, it was a real treat. Unlike previous editions, a working driver was found and installed automatically. With LM7 I found many ways to break things, LM8 worked with one of the Proprietary drivers from the ATI site but not the most recent, LM9 went up easily by just running the Hardware Drivers utility from the Control Center, and with LM10 "it just worked" without me doing anything.

WineDoors had WoW listed among the things it helped install. You can find it at: http://www.linuxmint.com/software/?sec= ... &release=6

Many programs will run under wine only if certain other things are done first. Wine Doors adds those needed bits and sets "registry" entries appropriately. But it sound like getting your video performing is the first step. LM10 MIGHT be the easiest solution.

[Verix]

Because in unbuntu 9 they upgraded it, and the last version that works is ubuntu 8, which linux mint 6 is based
off of? If my searching was correct?

You're correct. Here's a passage from this wiki:

Which cards do ATI no longer support? The ATI Radeon 9500-9800, Xpress200-1250, 690G, 740G, X300-X2500 (including Mobility RadeonHD 2300, since it is really a DirectX 9 part). See the complete list here. If your card is on that list, you are limited to open-source drivers on Ubuntu Lucid. If you really need the proprietary Catalyst/fglrx driver, you will have to use an older Linux distribution, such as Debian Lenny/5.0.x or Ubuntu Hardy/8.04.x.

I have an Inspiron 1501 with the same card, and I'm not even trying anymore to obtain good 3D performance from it under linux. To me, it's not worth downgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 (i.e. Linux Mint 5 not 6 as you tried) just to have 3D support, I very rarely play games at all.

Also, I doubt you'll get good performance on Runes of Magic with this crippled card, even with the latest drivers on Windows. Here's the listed system requirements for this game:
# CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or equivalent
# RAM: 512 MB or more
# Video: DirectX 9.0c compatible video card with 128MB RAM or better (Pixel Shader 2.0 support)

My 1.6 GHz AMD Turion dual core processor will struggle to keep up with a single threaded application written for a 2+ GHz processor. Also, if I remember correctly, the 1150 does not support DirectX 9.

I've tried on Windows with old and relatively low demanding games and still got a choppy performance. This card is very low end, not to mention the laptop itself. I'm personally planning on getting a new laptop, just waiting for the Sandy Bridge processors to come out

Hope this helped out.

[Raletia]

Oops, I forgot to mention that I just wanted to use it for stuff like crafting, I don't expect any miracles from it, I also want
to experiment and learn more about linux.

From what I understand it supports DirectX 9 and has Pixel Shader 2.0(Windows 7 gave it aero).

I'm using it with a USB hard drive as the boot drive which is why I didn't just use windows, that and
I really have liked linux mint and would like to use it more. Which is why I was trying to get it to work
before trying to find another distro with an older x server(which I don't even know what ver I'm looking for).

Oh also, I have a friend, who when he is at work(night shift at a 24/7 convenience store) uses his netbook
with a Intel GMA950 to login to the game for exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to.

But if its hopeless, thats alright, I'm just experimenting around. Since the old repos seem to be gone, it looks like
all I can do is either try to figure out how to 'downgrade the x server' or find a distro that is using an older version.

[Verix]

Well you can try Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) or Mint 5 (Elyssa), they are supported until April 2011 and have the X server version you need.

I'm not sure about downgrading the X server on a newer release, it might screw up your entire installation since many things depend on it. Good luck.