🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, I got my Linux - RedHat 5.0 (2.0.31), I've got SuSE 5.0 missing and
5.1 on it's way by courier from the USA. Anyone want a free copy of SuSE
5.0??? I was told if it turned up not to return it and donate it to a UG.
Maybe the next SLUG?

I bought a new 4.3G HD for RedHat - I installed it (after losing my NT4
installation through my own ignorance) and I've reinstalled NT on the new
drive (Quantum) and RedHat is on 2 x 2.5 G Seagate MedalistPros (which are
Master and Slave on IDE 1 - the Quantum is Master on IDE2 and Linux didn't
like that by the looks of it. NT doesn't care.)

I've spent two days installing stuff and reinstalling stuff and finally gave
up in desperation today and took my machine to work and dismantled it and
repositioned everything.

I re-installed RedHat again a couple of times using the two different
XServers that come with it - the commercial one from Metro and XFree86.

In the end I went with the the XFree one because it names the chip on a
graphics card (VirgeDX) whereas the Metro one seemed much older with it's
list of chips and gives very little information to you besides the card
name.

Now the real problem is that I have a wonderful 16bit X Windows display
happening on a 2Mb Diamond Stealth card which I put in my machine after two
days of wondering why my 8Mb Dimaond FireGL1000Pro (Permedia2) wouldn't run
under XFree86 in VGA mode even (the monitor blacks out).

So here I am with a very expensive (well not really as OpenGL cards go)
Permedia2 based card and needing it for any decent work with the 3D
rendering programs I use under NT4 and no X under Linux with it.

I can't run the 2Mb card on NT because it's just too darned slow for the
display I need, but I really want to do all my Internet stuff and some GIMP
work etc under Linux.

Has anyone any idea how to make the Permedia2 work under XFree86? I know
it's a really new card and the support guys at german SuSE say that support
isn't forth coming for the chip (even though their web site hints that it
may be soon) until ELSA come to the party.

It's really frustrating me. I hope SuSE 5.1 will be a little easier to
understand (using Y.a.S.T) but it doesn't alter the fact that I know next to
nothing about Linux and that running SuSE will make no difference with the X
, except that I'll be running a 2.0.32 kernel instead (which I thought was
in RedHat 5.0 but not in the one I got the other day).

Any help greatly appreciated. I'm going nuts trying to fathom this out.

Maybe the Permedia doesn't have very good SVGA or VGA emulation?? I don't
know. Thank the lord I could just whack a Virge card in my machine at work
to see X in all it's glory, if only for a a few hours. Now I have to work
out how to mount Fat16 ZIP carts with all my Linux archives (RPMs tgz and
zip) of the things I've been collecting over the last few weeks and thinking
it was going to be easy - not!

Thanks,

Ivan.