best video card for fedora 10

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Thomas Cameron wrote:
>>  From what I typically see on the lists, NVidia cards with the
>> proprietary driver typically work well.  That is, if you don't have an
>> overwhelming objection to using closed source drivers.
> 
> You must not be reading the same lists I do... ;-)

I guess it depends on which lists you read and how much faith in put in 
the postings there.

Yes, many people complain on the fedora-list about nVidia and their 
proprietary drivers.  Many of those complaints are rooted in the fact 
(as you elude to below) that they are not free (as in speech).  They are 
free to download and use (but you can't distribute them), and you just 
don't get the same support from nVidia as you would if you were running 
that less secure OS from Redmond, WA.  In fact, in the MythTV world, 
they practically swear by nVidia and nothing else.  And they don't seem 
to have as many problems configuring the proprietary blob as some people 
do here.

So, it all depends on what you want to do with your video card.  In 
another thread someone asked what card was the best for using in 
runlevels 1 & 3.  Well, if all you need is a text console, then *any* 
VGA compatible card will do.  If you want to be able to see graphics, 
maybe a card that support more video modes than 640x480 is better.  If 
you want to watch video, then I would lean towards nVidia.  Their video 
support is *much* further along than Intel or ATI.  Their proprietary 
drivers support XvMC for some of their older hardware and VDPAU support 
for their newer hardware makes displaying HD video much easier on lesser 
capable CPUs.

I'm not a gamer, so I can't speak for the gaming capabilities of the 
various video cards.

So, each question will have different answers depending on the intended 
usage.

> I see no ends of complaints on this list as well as the fedora-test-list and
> fedora-devel-list and IRC about all sorts of obscure bugs caused by
> proprietary drivers (and nvidia in particular). They are not supported nor
> even supportable by anybody other than the manufacturer, who usually does a
> horrible job, in particular their installer scripts invariably overwrite
> system libraries in a way which will break as soon as the system package is
> updated and which also makes uninstalling the driver a hit-or-miss
> experience.
> 
> Don't buy NVidia! Nor a Radeon HD, those are not supported by the Free (as
> in speech) drivers yet either.

VESA, nv, nouveau, and nvidia (with 3 different versions for various 
cards) for nVidia hardware, the last one (three) is (are) the 
proprietary driver(s).  I run the nvidia-96xx version on my old MX400 
card which is soon to be replaced by an nVidia 6200 card (the gold 
standard for MythTV SD TV support).  Yes, my home Fedora server is also 
my MythTV backend.

VESA, ati, radeon, radeonhd, and fglrx for ATI hardware, the last one 
again being the proprietary driver.  My laptop has a Mobility Radeon 
X1600 video chipset which requires the fglrx drivers for best use of 
videos, and I wish to hell it was an nVidia chipset instead on ATI.
I also have a very old machine with a Radeon 7000 video card, and its 
practically useless for displaying even SD video.

I'm not even sure about the Intel drivers, but these are mostly 
motherboard video chipsets, so if you have one, you don't have much choice.

>         Kevin Kofler

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)