Crapfest. ATI sucks.

It's hardly a surprise to the Linux community -- ATI graphics cards don't get along with Linux. It's ATI's fault; they have poor driver support for Linux. From what I've read, apparently nVidia is a much better choice. But I have a laptop, so either I make the ATI card work, or live life by the Bash command prompt.

ATI has improved one thing about their drivers -- the latest drivers come with an installer. So, the driver apparently installed just fine; however X Windows refuses to configure, and if I try the command 'startx', the screen goes black (less a blinking cursor at the center bottom of the screen), and no command I have found will return me to Bash. Have I managed to crash Linux? Probably.

On the other hand, it *can't* be impossible. When I used Slax, there was absolutely no problem. The X Window environment started right up. And if Slax works while Slamd64 doesn't, it's probably a matter of user ignorance.

In any case, after spending at least 48 hours trying to get X Windows to run, I've had it for now. I'll return to the project in a few days, after I've forgotten how frustrating it is to get the X Window system up and running.