[GRLUG] shopping for linux-compatible hardware

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> Near as I can figure, we're not to the "it just works" stage for 3D
> acceleration with recent hardware.  With Intel, if the chipset is a
> year or two old, it'll likely work well with Today's kernel.
> Depending on how old your distro's current kernel is, you may have to
> look farther back.
> Additionally, I've had experiences where my Intel chipset hardware was
> too *old* for the current batch of X11 drivers; With my old system, I
> had to use an X server targeted at i810, rather than Intel.  And the
> i810-targeted-server was deprecated, IIRC.

Yep, GPUs age-out.  So using a card vs. integrated is a good choice.
Once can always then just swap out the video card.

> If you *can* live without the onboard video, you have the option of
> getting a recent motherboard and an older video chipset on an
> expansion card.  The Radeon 9000 series, for example, is very well
> supported by the open-source drivers, which means less hassle setting
> up.

Ditto.