fedora-list Digest, Vol 11, Issue 38

[Lin Tse Hsu]

From: Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com>
On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 21:03:11 -0800 (PST), Lin Tse Hsu 
<evfreek at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- Markku Kolkka <markkukolkka at kolumbus.fi> wrote:
> 
> > Are you an antiques collector, or do you have any
> > other sensible
> > reason for wasting time and money on obsolete
> > graphics hardware?
> >
> 
> The computer is an old Dell without an AGP slot.  I
> had always heard that Linux tends to run better than
> Windows on older hardware.  Also, the very new
> hardware often has more bugs associated with it.
> 
> Note that these cards are all listed on www.tldp.org
> as supported, and they all are recognized and
> configured.  It is just that some don't work, and
> others are unstable to varying degrees.
> 
> >
> > Yes, get a video card that's currently
manufactured.
> > The X
> > developers aren't likely to spend much effort on
> > developing
> > drivers for ancient cards.
> >
> > --
> 
> There also seem to be a lot of bug reports for newer
> cards, especially ATI or Nvidia (like the ATI Rage
128
> problem).  Does this mean that if I try one of the
> listed cards that are currently manufactured, as
long
> as I steer clear of the ones in the FAQ.
> 
> And, I think that you meant "maintaining" rather
than
> "developing" drivers, since all the drivers for the
> cards I have tried have already been developed. 
They
> appear in the hardware compatibility lists, and they
> appear in the README's for xorg, but, they may be
> "less" supported due to age.  This makes sense, but
> buying 5 different modern cards and having them all
> fail is an expensive proposition.  Perhaps I will
try
> just one.
> 
> Are there any suggestions for a PCI video card which
> is "more" rather than "less" supported?  All the
ones
> at the store seem to be AGP cards.

I'd suggest a GeForce4 MX 440 or MX 4000.  I have a
440 and a 440 Go
(laptop) and they both work great with the nVidia
binary drivers.  You
can find both AGP and PCI versions for not too much. 
Check out
www.newegg.com  Looks like you can get one there for
about $50. You
can also search for cards with PCI interface to see
all of what is
there.  I have only had experience with nVidia, but it
looks like the
ATI cards are about the same price.  A GeForce2 MX400
and a Radeon
7000 are a little less expensive, but not much.  The
MX 400 should be
fine, maybe someone who has had experience can tell
you about the
Radeon 7000.

----------------------------------- begin message

Hi Jonathan.  This sounds just great.  I'll give one
of these a try.

Eric



		
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