Can't fix problems with ATI drivers on Fedora 12

[copyleft]

Hello everyone,

My girlfriend has a laptop that always chokes with Windows. She finally gave up on it and I helped her install Fedora 12, since it was the only distro that worked "out of the box" for everything; drivers I thought would be just a simple fix.

After a bit of reading, I thought "uh oh, experimental ATI drivers?" and worked on making everything run smoothly. No luck. I read the guide for ATI drivers in the wiki and it did very little to help; at least she can wobble her windows

Flash sites (such as YouTube) as incredibly slow to the point where she doesn't even bother to watch things anymore. She wants to keep Fedora because she loves the simplicity of Gnome and YUM, but is getting frustrated that she can't play any games or watch anything at all. Any suggestions for us?

She's using an ATI Radeon Mobility card. I'll get the exact model later.

Much help would be appreciated!

Edit: It seems like ATI drivers are not supported by F12. Is there any way around this? What other distros can I try? Ubuntu/Mint fail to boot up, OpenSUSE is a pain and I am not touching that, and most others I have tried have no Wireless support. Fedora 12 seems to have made improvements to wireless, so maybe F12 is the only distro that can work on her laptop at the moment?

Will the ATI drivers be fixed for the upcoming F13?

[Mordocai]

This sounds more like a flash issue than an ATI issue(since her "wobbly windows" work), to me. Have you tried running something 3D and seeing if it is slow as well? An easy thing to run is glxgears from a terminal. After a few seconds of running it will output the fps to the terminal window. If this seems low, then it is (imho) likely the 3D drivers. If it is fine, your issue is likely flash player. How did you install it? I've always had luck with the guide here: http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mj...f12.html#flash. Linux has always had issues with flash, especially 64-bit, but i've had fewer problems after installing it the way mentioned in that guide.
Finally, how fast is her CPU? Especially on linux, flash is a CPU hog. I have no problems on my home system, but I also have a 2.6 ghz quadcore. My laptop, however, runs at nearly 100% CPU with, if I remember correctly, something around a 2.0 ghz dual core. This is with just about any flash application.

P.S.: I ask about 3d support because most drivers are good with 2D, and I know how to measure 3D speed. As far as a i know, flash doesn't actually require a 3D driver.

[copyleft]

Flash was installed via the RPM on the site. I also tried installing flash-plugin via YUM.

I tested the graphics out on Runescape (a 3d Java based game) and it can only run in safe-mode, which is extremely poor graphics mode for computers unable to handle the normal game. I'll try out the glxgears later. It's only Flash and Java causing trouble.

I installed Java via the RPM's on the website. All that did was allow runescape to resize the screen.

What's with these problems?

Edit: Her processor is crap. Only 1.2 Ghz. The laptop is from 1998 and designed for Windows 98. But, it has been upgraded so everything but the processor is great. 1 GB of RAM.

Also, I do not think Flash would be that bad. Flash works great on a computer I have running Mint with only about 1.2 Ghz.

Edit2: Maybe I could tell her to try another web browser? Firefox is not exactly lightweight.

[AdamW]

1.2GHz isn't always the same as 1.2GHz, IYSWIM. There's big differences between processor architectures.

[del_diablo]

Edit: Her processor is crap. Only 1.2 Ghz. The laptop is from 1998 and designed for Windows 98. But, it has been upgraded so everything but the processor is great. 1 GB of RAM.

Pentium 2 or Pentium 3?

[copyleft]

III I think, but I will check in a bit; she doesn't get back until later. Sorry for the lack of info!!

What are my options if Fedora is too heavy? No other distro supports her wireless. She doesn't want Windows either.