[ubuntu-uk] Any recommendations for graphics cards?

[Alan Pope]

Hi,

On Tue, 2007-10-23 at 15:58 +0100, Kirrus wrote:
> I guess this is the difference between the two camps:
> 
> a) Want all software & hardware to be free/OSS
> 
> b) Want their computer working 100% without fuss, or caring about OSS stuff
> 

c) Want to support free and open software and where available will use
it, but sometimes will be pragmatic and use proprietary if there is no
reasonable alternative.

..is more my camp.

And b) doesn't always apply even with the nvidia binary driver.

I have a desktop which ran 32-bit ubuntu quite happily for some time. I
installed 64-bit Ubuntu on it and added the nvidia binary driver. As
soon as the 64-bit binary driver was enabled, both screens went black,
even after a reboot, even _during_ POST, there was nothing on the
screen. I could ssh into the machine, but from the point I installed
64-bit binary driver there was no output on the screen where previously
it worked fine under 32-bit ubuntu.

I posted a bug report on launchpad and unsurprisingly it was recommended
that I contact Nvidia. I did via their forums - which are not on
nvidia.com. I had replies from someone claiming my hardware was bad,
that I should go to the manufacturer of the video card, and there was
nothing at fault with the driver. 

Thinking the forums were not officially part of nvidia (they don't
_look_ it in any way), I got all my logs and traces and emailed the
linux support email box at Nvidia.

I got a particularly crappy reply from one of their support people
telling me that he had _already_ told me the answer on the forums, and
that emailing them wouldn't change that answer.

What irritated me most was that the guys nickname on the forum had no
real name on it, there was no real name in the email address used to
contact nvidia, so I could make no correlation between one support
system and the other. 

For their very first corporate communication to a _customer_ to be that
crappy I thought was pretty off. As a result I refuse to buy Nvidia
products. They lost a customer that day.

In the end I changed from DVI to VGA output on the card and it magically
worked again under the 32-bit driver. There is nothing wrong with the
cards, cables or monitors, all the same hardware works perfectly under
32-bit ubuntu, it's _only_ under 64-bit ubuntu with the 64-bit binary
driver that it b0rks.

Cheers,
Al.
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