Easiest way to change graphics card?

[Ari Torhamo]

> If he's using a different card from the same manufacturer, no change should
> be needed. If he's changing from (for instance) ATI to Nvidia , then 
get hold
> of the Section "Device" part of xorg.conf, e.g

The change is going to be from Ati to Nvidia (just temporarily, there 
was something wrong with his new Ati card and he'll use an old Nvidia 
card until he gets the replacement from Sapphire.

I think I read somewhere that if you manually edit a config file in your 
system, these changes wouldn't stay when you upgrade your system. I 
don't remember where I read this and if I remember right, but that's one 
reason why I thought that using dpkg-reconfigure would be better than 
editing xorg.conf directly. Could you tell me if this is not correct, 
because this bothers me always when I should edit some config file :-)

> Section "Device"
>    Identifier  "ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage Mobility M3 (AGP)"
>    Driver      "ati"
>    BusID    "PCI:0:16:0"
>    Option      "UseFBDev"     "true"
> EndSection
> 
> and change "ati" to "nv". You don't have to do anything to the 
"Identifier" line. That's just for the >human maintainer's eyes. The 
other options would be OK.
> 
> I'd be ready to bet that Ubuntu would detect the change anyway, and 
reconfigure the xorg.conf >file for you. But I'd also make a copy just 
in case.

Do you by this sentence mean that Ubuntu would detect the change anyway 
without changing "ati" to "nv" or without doing anything to the 
"identifier" line?

> Yes. Escape, or enter. The script reads the .conf file. It's all meant 
to be painless.

So if I just keep hitting "Enter", the only active thing happening would 
be the autodetection of the graphics card, otherwise it's just 
confirming the lines that dpkg-reconfigure reads from the xorg.conf and 
no changes would be done?

BTW, Do all graphics cards from the same manufacturer use the one and 
same 2D driver? It seems to me now that all the autodetection does is to 
identify the manufacturer.

Thanks :-)

Ari