The DRI project closely tracks Linux kernel development. Since the internal Linux data structures might change in the 2.4 Linux kernel, it's important to use the most recent Linux kernel and not an old, intermediate development release. As of this writing (Jan 2001), 2.4.0 is the most recent version of Linux which the DRI is synchronized to.
Most of the DRI drivers require AGP support and using Intel Pentium III SSE optimizations also requires an up-to-date Linux kernel. Configuring your kernel correctly is very important, as features such as SSE optimizations will be disabled if your kernel does not support them. Thus, if you have a Pentium III processor, you must configure your kernel for the Pentium III processor family.
Building a new Linux kernel can be difficult for beginners but there are resources on the Internet to help. This document assumes experience with configuring, building and installing Linux kernels.
Linux kernels can be downloaded from www.kernel.org
Here are the basic steps for kernel setup.
cd /usr/src rm -f linux mkdir linux-2.4.x ln -s linux-2.4.x linux bzcat linux-2.4.x.tar.bz2 | tar xf -It is critical that /usr/src/linux point to your new kernel sources, otherwise the kernel headers will not be used when building the DRI. This will almost certainly cause compilation problems.
make menuconfigand do the following:
image=/boot/vmlinuz label=linux.2.4.x read-only root=/dev/hda1The important part is that you have /boot/vmlinuz without a trailing version number. If this is the first entry in your /etc/lilo.conf AND you haven't set a default, then this will be your default kernel.
cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.x make dep make bzImage make modules make modules_install make installNote that last make command will automatically run lilo for you.