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I've wasted an absurd amount of time trying to get my nVidia card to function properly in Linux (Ubuntu & Fedora). I've decided to purchase a new video card that will "just work" with any Linux I throw at it. Making things even easier, I'm not a gamer, though I do appreciate some of the 3D or alpha blending effects seen in modern GUIs.
What cards and/or manufacturers do you recommend for the maximum acceleration with minimum problems?
rcampbell
Posted 2010-06-18T07:43:59.220
Reputation: 563
I don't know what nVidia card you had or when you last tried an install. I fondly remember spending what seemed like years setting dotclocks etc. in the past. I've installed Karmic and Lucid in a vanilla PC with a 8800 GTS and spent zero time configuring. Indeed, my xorg.conf was auto-generated. Try a Live CD, you might be pleasantly surprised. – msw – 2010-06-18T07:51:51.003
I had no problems with my nVidia Quadro video card on my Ubuntu 10.04. The fonts are rendered larger than normal with the proprietary driver, but 3D and such work well. – petersohn – 2010-06-18T08:17:21.983
@msw - 9600GT, I've booted the Live CDs from both Fedora and Ubuntu. Both boot to a blank screen unless I force the VESA driver. Installing w/VESA then results in Nouveau for Fedora (doesn't work). The prop. ones do work, but then brake upon Fedora upgrades since Fedora doesn't control prop. repos. Basically it's a mess and I'm tired of wasting my time on it. – rcampbell – 2010-06-18T08:25:04.750
Let me be clear: I'm 100% sure I could get my video card to work. In fact, it was working for a couple weeks w/a prop. driver before an automatic upgrade broke it. My point is that I don't WANT to spend time "getting it to work". I want to throw some money at the problem and make it go away forever. – rcampbell – 2010-06-18T08:26:13.903
3@rrc7cz: kernel developers (and all linux users, really) would love you if you threw money at them to get the open source nvidia driver completed... – quack quixote – 2010-06-18T08:32:27.013
@rrc7cz: I also debugged a friend's bad machine that had a burnt PCI-e wide circuit, so booting Windows or Linux in VESA was fine and the box failed when switching to higher res (and did the same when the graphics card was swapped out). Just wanted you to be aware that such can happen. If the card works under some other OS, your MoBo is fine; just FYI and good luck. – msw – 2010-06-18T11:19:19.990