What's a good video card?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 11:46:34 -0700,
  Robin Laing <Robin.Laing at drdc-rddc.gc.ca> wrote:
> 
> This is not new.  Older cards are not supported in todays linux. 
> Either by the kernel or by the X server.  One of the things that 
> forced me to get a new computer.

That may betrue for cards that have binary drivers, but it does not
appear to be true for cards that had open source drivers.

> At least nVIDIA is working towards linux support with driver 
> development.  I believe on their WWW site I read that they have made a 
> common code base for their cards and drivers between Windows and 
> Linux.  I have also read about people that have bad support from ATI 
> even in the Windows environment.

The following is more political than concrete. I think that developing
binary drivers for Linux is not all that helpful. I would much rather
see the specs released and have someone else write open source drivers.
I plan on only buying video cards that have open source drivers.

> For me, the time wasted getting an ATI card to sort of work to getting 
> an nVIDIA card to work was well worth the loss I took on the 9600. 
> Days over minutes is my experience.  When I say 30 minutes from 
> purchase to working it is the truth.  I looked at the time on my 
> receipt after getting the card working and was shocked at how easy it 
> was to get the nVIDIA card working.

Well with the 9600, you get the worst of both worlds. A binary driver,
plus poor support (as observed from comments I have seen, not personal
experience) from the vendor.
 
> If you look at the nVIDIA site, you will see that there are only 4 
> drivers for video cards and that is based on BSD or type of processor. 
>  There is no difference between cards.  How much easier can it get?

Getting the driver with X in the first place.