video cards

[Leo Mauler]

--- Jon Pruente <jdpruente at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 5:19 AM, feba thatl
> <febaen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ATI might work for you; when I tried to use 
> > it I got nothing but problems, both on Windows 
> > and Linux. The same goes for everyone else
> > I've ever talked to about graphics cards on
> > linux. Nvidia, however, worked out of the box. 
> > I'm not going to argue that it's better to be
> > open source when possible; obviously that's 
> > the main reason most of us are here; but 
> > neither of those companies are very good 
> > options yet.
> 
> Recent personal experience (Dec/Jan):  ATI not 
> so fun, nVidia just worked.  I had purchased an 
> ATI HD2400 256MB AGP card for myself, and it just 
> wouldn't work in Linux with the ATI Catalyst
> drivers.  It also had a very hard time getting 
> up in Windows (I went so far as to install a 
> 30-day trial of Vista, just to see if it was the 
> hardware failing after trying for so long in 
> Linux).  I returned the card to MicroCenter and 
> purchased a 7600GS 256MB AGP card, which I 
> dropped in and Ubuntu found the binary drivers 
> for and just started working.

I think I have the same card.  Apparently the card is
so fast in 2D that I just don't care about the lack of
"3D acceleration" when I'm running "TESIV:Oblivion"
under Transgaming's Cedega.

> It's nice that ATI is going Open, but from what 
> I read about my problem it was likely to be an 
> issue with the AGP controller chip on the card 
> to translate the PCIe native chip to my old
> system.

People keep going on about "3D acceleration" in ATi
cards, but I've never gotten an ATi card to run in
Linux on anything other than the VESA driver (if
that), so I don't think I've *ever* seen how ATi
"gives 3D acceleration" to Linux graphics.  nVidia
cards in Linux are fast, even when the situation is a
3D game, so if I'm not getting 3D acceleration then I
salute nVidia for making 3D acceleration not matter in
the slightest to the pleasure of the graphical
experience.

I don't know about "illegal", but generally it seems
that when something is illegal in the computer world,
the *intent* is weighed just as much as the *act*. 
Cisco is just as much of a monopoly in *act* as
Microsoft, but as they don't behave (much) like a
monopoly in *intent*, no one talks about antitrust
lawsuits around Cisco.  nVidia doesn't seem to be
doing anything other than binary drivers for its video
cards, so it would appear that whatever the "letter of
the law" illegality of nVidia drivers, the spirit of
the law isn't being violated.

As for "obsolete cards lack drivers", this is true of
any video card for which the community lacks interest
in as well, source code or no source code.  The Ubuntu
free "nv" driver has worked fine for all the older
nVidia cards I've had lying around.  I suspect that
"obsolete" nVidia cards are largely a non-issue.  By
the time nVidia decides not to make a driver for a
particular card, that card will be like an ISA video
card today: no one uses it anymore.

nVidia just works.  There's an affordable nVidia card
in every store, and dropping it into an Ubuntu system
means you know it will work.  You can't say that about
ATi.

This somewhat goes back to my point that most of the
new Ubuntu/Kubuntu users are people who don't change
their desktops: insist that they have to jump through
hoops and attend computer night school just to get
their ATi video card installed, and they'll go back to
Windows.  Hand them a "drop-in" video solution from
nVidia, and Linux use will spread, possibly even to
the point of gaining the kind of market share that can
force open source drivers from nVidia.


      ____________________________________________________________________________________
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.  
http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com