I could not get Beryl to work with my Radeon 8500. I think if you look through the online documentation, the minimum recommended ATI card is a Radeon 9200. I ended up buying a used Nvidia GF6600 and it works very well. Enough so that I bought a 2nd one for another box. You can find a brand new GF6200 256M for about $60 online. I should think you can find one used for around $40 or less. These are all 3 or 4 generations old, so hardcore Windows gamers have them to unload. As far as "out of the box" goes, you're not going to find it. A default Linux installation will use an open source driver, but you'll need the closed source drivers from either ATI or Nvidia to make Beryl functional. The ATI driver is a PITA. Nvidia does a better job. That said, you can google detailed instructions to install either on your distro of choice. Clint Andrew Perry wrote:
I heard on the Linux Action Show podcast about the Beryl project, which seems to offer linux users both eye candy and improved functionality through a 3D user interface.
They say that Beryl will run acceptably with 256 MB and an ATI Radeon 7500, Geforce 3, or equivalent or better video card (seems like these are all a few years old, which is great for my budget.)Since my linux machine has 512 MB RAM but only on-board video, I found a used $20 Radeon 7500 on ebay and will try Beryl out. [Side note: I bought an "afordable performance pc" for linux from madtux.com for about $200, and am generally satisified but for the power supply which sounds like a snowblower. Very minimalist interior. Space for 6 HDD's, for example.]
My question: In case the Radeon 7500 isn't up to the task, or for future expansion, are there any particular low-cost video cards that anyone would recommend which are very well supported under linux ? By "very well supported", I mean that it should work "out of the box" with all of the major distros, at least if this is possible.
I'm sure that avid gamers would want only the best in video cards, but there are probably a lot of folks like myself who would like a pretty good video card for linux with no hassles.
Thanks in advance.
-Dr. Andrew B. Perry Dept. of Mathematics, Springfield College Schoo Hall Room 123 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 Work Phone (413)748-3193 _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug