best graphics card for "out of the box"

[Brett Johnson]

On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 17:28 -0700, NoOp wrote:
> Are Nvidia cards/graphics really "best out of the box" with
> Ubuntu/linux, or are they really best in class for graphics overall?
> Anyone know of a reasonably reliable link that compares "best out of the
> box" linux graphics cards?

The best "out-of-box" experience is going to be Intel graphics, because
the Intel drivers are FOSS, and relatively stable.  Nvidia's binary-only
driver is generally considered to be of higher quality/stability than
ATI's binary-only driver (fglrx).  However, ATI/AMD have now opened up
the specs for their hardware, and a number of folks are working on a new
FOSS ATI driver (radeonhd).  I expect that within a year, this will put
ATI's out-of-box experience on-par with Intel's, as the radeonhd driver
gets more stable, and supports more hardware features (it doesn't yet
provide any 3d hardware acceleration, for example).  Nvidia has shown no
interest in opening up their driver/specs, so I expect that Nvidia cards
will have the worst out-of-box experience for the foreseeable future.

-- 
Brett Johnson <brett at hp.com>
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
  Will Durant