Hardware recommendations

[Bo Grimes]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2008, Arthur Johnson wrote:

> Pick up whatever PCI16 Nvidia card you can afford.

Probably good advice.  Over the years I have read good things about Nvidia 
and Linux, but my experience has been different.  For years I had trouble 
getting acceleration set up with every distro I tried with an Nvidia 
card, and I tried 7-8 at least.  In fact, I stuck with SuSe far longer 
than I wanted to just because it was easiest for me to get my graphics 
working.

Then I got a new computer for the kids.  Took their old one with an ATI 
and never had a bit of trouble with any distro (Mandravia, Fedora, Gentoo 
and Linux Mint) so far.

Now, this isn't scientific in the least.  I don't even remember what the 
Nvidia card was (a GeForce something, 4000 series I think), but because of 
my anecdotal experience, if I was building my own box, I'd probably try an 
ATI.

Of course I wouldn't trust my experience enough to not even bother 
checking the reviews and compatibility of  the ATI cards I was 
considering, but if you have good fortune with a printer, modem, graphics 
card, etc. you tend to begin favoring them.

So, for what it's worth I'd also consider an ATI card.  Mines pretty old, 
a Diamond Stealth S80 Radeon 9200SE Video Card - 128MB DDR, PCI, VGA, DVI, 
TV Out, Video Card, and all features work great.