"Amos Shapira" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> My boss bought second-hand extra monitors for all of us and I now need
> to buy a graphics card which can support dual-head for Debian/Ubuntu
> (and Windows XP and Vista).
>
> Since there are always swings around about "best linux support" which
> I didn't follow, what's the order of the day? Should go with nVidia,
> AMD or maybe Intel? Any specific card families/models?
Intel, unless you need serious 3D performance[1], then AMD/ATI, since
they have released the spec for the cards and so open drivers are on the
way. NVIDIA last of all, because they are as closed as ever, recently
had a rash of hardware production quality faults, and the reverse
engineering efforts are great -- but never as good as the hardware
documentation.
> The computers are a mix of older (2-3 years?) to new (2 months old),
> so the system bus might be a bit limited too.
Find out what the video card connector is, since AGP vs PCIe is a real
consideration, as is the width of the PCIe slot.
OTOH, that also means AMD/ATI graphics: you still can't buy a discrete
Intel graphics part as far as I know.
Regards,
Daniel
Footnotes:
[1] As in games or 3D modelling, not wibbling windows type desktop effects.
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