Chapter 2. System Requirements

For this HOWTO to apply to you, you'll need the following hardware/software up and running:

Hardware

• ATI R200 (Radeon 8xxx) based AGP card

Software

• Linux kernel 2.4.x (check with uname -r)

• Glibc 2.2 (check with /lib/libc.so.X where X is a decimal number)

• XFree86 4.2.x for alternative 1 (check with X -version)

• XFree86 4.1.x for alternatives 2, 3 and 5 (check with X -version)

• XFree86 4.x for alternative 4 (check with X -version)

If you run XFree86 4.1.x/4.0.x on your computer, you can NOT use alternative 1, as shown above. Of course you can try it, but it won't work (or at least it didn't for me). Also, if you read The XFree86 Project's release notes for XFree 4.1.x, you'll see that the R200 chipset is not listed as a supported chipset for the radeon_drv.o driver, which means that the Radeon 8xxx is NOT supported. However, if you read the release notes for XFree 4.2.x, you'll see that the chipset IS supported by the same driver.

Once you have met the system requirements, it's time to decide which of the available alternatives to choose.