I'm such a noob - driver installation

[Duki]

Hey guys,

I have Fedora6 installed on my Dell laptop. I am a complete noob at any Linux os. I have a few things that I would like some help with.

1. I have no clue how to install drivers (or programs for that matter). I need drivers for my graphics card (Radeon 9700?) and my scroll wheel on my Logitech mouse doesn't work.

2. I also need help finding the installation files for AIM, as I have a friend who can help, but phone-chat isn't very productive when issueing commands :confused:

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm sure I'll have more questions later... xD

[John A]

I have no clue how to install drivers (or programs for that matter). I need drivers for my graphics card (Radeon 9700?) and my scroll wheel on my Logitech mouse doesn't work.

There's multiple ways of installing Linux programs and drivers. For open source programs, the most common way to distribute them is to use source code which you then have to compile. Other ways include using the built-in package manager that came with your distro (in this case, RPM) to handle the programs.

For your ATI card, the drivers are proprietary, so you'll simply get a binary which will install the drivers, not very different from installing software on Windows. First download the drivers from ATI for your Radeon, then follow the instructions .

I also need help finding the installation files for AIM, as I have a friend who can help, but phone-chat isn't very productive when issueing commands :confused:

Here's a link for AIM on Linux: http://www.aim.com/get_aim/linux/latest_linux.adp

They provide good installation instructions there, so you shouldn't have a problem.

Hope this helps

[DimaYasny]

what's really good in linux - everything is googleable ;)

[Duki]

Well I've gotten somewhere with this. I found a site that said to type in this command, so I did.

# yum install xorg-x11-drv-fglrx kmod-fglrx glx-utils

My resolution is where I want it, but my screen looks like this:

[IMG]http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s33/ctote/Screenshot.png[/IMG]

I don't know if you can tell, but there are verticle lines on the taskbar. I can also tell when scrolling through web pages. :confused:

Here's a link for AIM on Linux: http://www.aim.com/get_aim/linux/latest_linux.adp

They provide good installation instructions there, so you shouldn't have a problem.

I couldn't find anywhere to download the files. Do I just download the ar.gz file files?

[John A]

Don't really know why your taskbar looks so funky; perhaps you should try changing the color depth.

As for installation of AIM - here's the link:
http://www.aim.com/get_aim/linux/latest_linux.adp#install

So, just download the RPM file.
Then navigate to the file, and enter the command at the prompt:

rpm -i aim_file.rpm

Replacingaim_file.rpm with the name of RPM that you downloaded.

[Duki]

Ok, well I downloaded this for the graphics card drivers:

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeon.html

but when I double click it, the program just opens and freezes. I have to log off to close it out.

[Duki]

I just tried to install AIM and got this error

libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 is needed by aim-1.5.286-1.i386

any ideas?
I ran this cmd: ln -s /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3 /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2
Not sure what it did, but the installation still won't work

[Duki]

Ok I'm quiting. I did everything on this page, except edit the xorg.conf file. I'm going to wait until someone on here has time to give me a hand beefore I mess something up.

Here's the link to the page I used:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-Install-Video-Drivers-on-Fedora-Core-6-38740.shtml

[pty]

I just tried to install AIM and got this error

libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 is needed by aim-1.5.286-1.i386

any ideas? I ran this cmd: ln -s /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3 /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 Not sure what it did, but the installation still won't work

Instead of the official AIM client use Gaim (it will already be installed on FC6).

For Radeon drivers have a look at this: http://www.fedorafaq.org/#radeon

It should get you up and running.

To be honest, if you get stuck maybe try Sabayon Linux, its Gentoo based but comes with ATi drivers preinstalled and uses the same installer as Fedora.