[Wylug-help] Linux-compatible graphics card

[Aaron Crane]

John Hodrien writes:
> nVidia still gives the most reliable accelerated behaviour under X.  It
> still has *many* bugs and performance issues, but fewer than others...

Well, that depends on how you define "fewer" and "others".  I have a laptop
which has both an Intel and an nVidia chip.  Using the nVidia graphics,
there are some occasional colour problems when switching graphics modes, and
it can't resume from suspend-to-RAM.  But with the Intel chip, everything
works fine.

As for performance: the laptop manufacturer claims that the Intel chip is
for "stamina" mode and the nVidia for "speed" mode.  That may well be true
for Windows (or even for Linux with the non-free nVidia drivers), but
Ubuntu seems to have better 3D acceleration out-of-the-box on this system
with the Intel chip than with the nVidia one.  (Though I must admit I'm
much more interested in the improved battery life I allegedly get with the
Intel chip -- the performance bump is just a bonus, as I don't actually use
any applications which rely on 3D graphics.)

Intel have also taken to open-sourcing their graphics drivers, with each
component under the same licensing terms as the project it needs to be
contributed to:

  http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/

I like the idea of supporting a company that's trying to do the right thing
for users of free-software OSes.

That said, these people say they offer a guarantee that the kit you buy
works with Linux, and all their graphics cards are nVidia:

  http://openforeveryone.co.uk/perifs2.php?id=1

I've never bought from them, though, so this isn't specifically a
recommendation.  But, Qef, you might like to take a look if you haven't
bought a new graphics card already.

-- 
Aaron Crane