Re: tlug: graphics cards recommendations

["Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com>]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000, Jonathan Q wrote:

> On Sun, 2 Apr 2000, Micheal E Cooper wrote:
> 
> > As a further question to this... is AGP okay with this G400? The Red Hat HCL
> > states that "No card should be considered to be AGP or VLB unless the
> > listing specifies it.", but I did not see AGP on the list. Does this mean
> > that I should use a PCI card if I want good Linux support?
> 
> AGP is definitely supported by XFree86, so as long as RH isn't doing
> something really stupid in their installer, you should have no problem
> using AGP.  For the definitive word on what is supported,
> http://www.xfree86.org/ is your friend.  My G400 is an AGP, and I have
> had no problems at all; it works great. Caveat: I have never installed a
> graphical installer flavor of Linux on that box, but Matrox cards are
> very well supported by X.  If the installer doesn't bite you, X itself
> sure won't.
> 
> I think my position on Red Hat would be that if their installer couldn't
> deal with a card as commonplace as an AGP G400, I would install
> something that could.  Both the AGP and PCI flavors of the G400 are
> supported by X, so nobody's installer should have any excuse.  However,
> I would expect AGP to be pretty well supported, since it's downright
> difficult to find PCI video boards these days, and AFAIK no new systems
> ship with them.

don't the graphical installers use the VGA16 server anyway and provide
16-color 640x480 for the install?  Or is Sun the only one that does
anything like that? :)

Anyway, if your card doesn't support standard VGA registers then it might
not work, but if that's the case then your card either sucks royally or
it's broken - in either case, replace it :)

btw, the nVidia geForce-256-based cards work nicely with 3.3.5 and above.
I've got an ASUS-V6600 AGP at home and it had no problems under Linux.

--------------------------
Scott M. Stone, CCNA <sstone@example.com>
UNIX Systems and Network Engineer
Taos - The SysAdmin Company 

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