[COLUG] Video Cards

[Mark Erbaugh]

On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 10:03 -0400, Ben Gladwell wrote:
> On 20/06/08 11:52 -0400, Mark Erbaugh wrote:
> > I'm looking to replace the onboard video on an older computer and turn
> > it into a dual monitor Ubuntu workstation.
> > 
> > I found one dual monitor card, a Jaton 3D Force 6200 Twin which says AGP
> > 4x/8x. It uses a NVIDIA GeForce 6200 Twin video chipset. Does anyone
> > know how well Ubunutu supports this chipset?
> 
> AMD/ATI are making great strides to work better with Linux.  Supposedly,
> they will be releasing a full open source driver some time in the
> future.  That will be great.
> 
> However, at this time, if you want to use hardware acceleration, dual
> monitor support, and stuff like that, you're going to have to use their
> proprietary driver fglrx.  Its better in Ubuntu 8.04 than it was in
> 7.10, but it still has problems.  And it doesn't work at all with Fedora
> 9.
> 
> So if you don't care about openess of hardwire drivers (I don't), nVidia
> is much more pleasant at this point.
> I think if/when AMD/ATI releases an open driver to replace fglrx, that
> will be superior.  But for now, working with fglrx is sort of a pain.
> 
> -Ben

I am having trouble with ATI / fgrlx on my notebook (ATI Radeon XPress
200M) when in dual monitor mode.  I had it working pretty well with
Ubuntu Dapper and Gutsy, but it is not working with Hardy. The screen
saver seems to cause lockups. It will also lock up if you switch to a
text terminal and then try to switch back to the GUI screen.  Things
seem to work okay when the external monitor is not connected.

Mark