This is a pretty cool video of is being done with the Linux desktop. Take a look, you'll be pretty amazed, as this is done on Linux without a very expensive video card. If you have just about any Nvidia card produced within the last 2 or 3 years with 128 megs or more of memory you can run this fairly easily on several current Linux distributions. Nividia is pretty much required as they are the only ones with good Linux drivers for their cards. Development is ongoing to get this to work with ATI cards too, but it lags what can be done with Nvidia and requires a lot of configuration work. Clicky
no, i have an ATI grfx crd (64Mb Radeon 7k) & i've used a few distro's with no problem (Mandriva, Kubuntu, Vector, Xandros, Puppy, PCLinuxOS, FC5, Knoppix) Edit: i could list more distro's, but that's all i can remember trying will watch vid later, cos i'm dowloading Suse 10.2
ATI Works too. I've got it running on Kubuntu 6.06 with an ATI X1400 and there's no lag, my laptop handles it well. Nvidia isn't totally required, yes they do have better drivers but it works well with ATI cards too. There's some configuration involved, but if you find a good tutorial then the scripts etc needed are there for you and you just copy and paste the code, so it's not that hard. There's a thread with some posts about XGL. http://www.hardwareforums.com/kubuntu-god-i-love-14836/ And this next link is my laptop running XGL and Beryl. *Warning - turn your speakers down, I never realised it was that loud*
Mine work fine, weird... In XGL you don't get direct rendering though as the desktop is using that, so if you want games you ahve to start another session without XGL.
Ummm.... I beg to disagree. I've spent days trying to get this to run, and I can't. Why? Because when the kernel loads the fgrlx module at Xserver startup my screen goes black, the backlight comes on, and then the cpu goes into a race condition. I can't switch to another console, use the three finger salute, etc... to get out of this condition. How do I know the cpu goes into a race condition? About 15 seconds after the backlight on my laptop monitor comes on the cooling fan goes to high--it never does that under normal usage unless I am doing something that calls for 100% cpu usage such as compiling a kernel or something along those lines of needing computing horsepower--and then stays there while the air at the outlet vent keeps on getting hotter all the time. If I don't shut the system down it will shutdown on it's own--just power off.... ATI's drivers are so buggy that using them with certain combinations of hardware just isn't possible. My laptop is one of them.
Of course it depends on individual circumstances as ATI driver support in Linux isn't the greatest - but it is possible. It's probably much easier on Nvidia as the drivers are better and you need fully working drivers etc to get it working.
The fact that ATI makes bad drivers for Linux doesn't mean Linux is not ready for the desktop, it means ATI isn't ready for Linux. You don't have to take my word for it, but I have been running Linux as my primary OS ( on 2 PCs, 2 servers, and 1 firewall) for about 5 years now, not a trace of Microsoft. I can rely on my home network, as opposed to the Windows network at my work which has problems almost every day. What I'm trying to say here is that you're trying to use a Unix-like system for the first time when all you have is DOS/Windows experience, and they are quite different "under the hood". So, there is definitely a learning curve involved, although it's nothing you cannot overcome. As for the ATI thing, you're definitely at a disadvantage there. I've got ATI drivers working on many Linux systems, but they perform so badly that I sold all mine and bought NVidia some time ago. NVidia drivers on Linux perform about the same as they do on Windows, though since Linux has superior IO performance, many cross-platform games will run more smoothly on Linux. If you give Linux a real chance and see what it's made of, Linux will grow on you. My wife is a total non-techie, and she's been using Linux as her primary OS for longer than I have. The hard part for you initially is going to be the setup & configuration process, especially with ATI. After that, the system just works, and you're more likely to have your hardware die than a Linux OS fail. As proof of concept, my wife has had the same Linux install since I built her PC late 2002, and it runs as fast or faster than the first day it was installed.
If you will reread my original post you will see that's basically what I said. The clear implication of my post is if you don't want to run into possible problems use Nvidia rather than ATI video cards as no can tell beforehand if the drivers will work with their combination of hardware resources. Clearly, if you already have an ATI card it's worth trying to make it work as I did, but don't suppose it's always going to work. With a supported Nvidia card it's a pretty safe assumption. I even get 3D hardware accelleration with the open source radeon driver on my old desktop with a Radeon 7000. Besides Nvidia cards support aiglx (?) which is better than straight glx and the way things are moving. ATI cards do not.
With AMD purchasing ATI recently, we may see the at least partial open-sourcing of ATI's Linux drivers. That would mean that in a pretty short period of time, Linux developers would be able to bring ATI's drivers up to par with NVIdia's offerings... if they decide to do it. Intel has recently done the same, and we're already beginning to see the benefits.
To back up my previous post, I've tried many times before to get ATI drivers working. You can either choose the Ubuntu restricted-module way or the ATI installer. The Ubuntu didn't work, (either screen went haywire, or fglrxinfo kept showing that the driver wasn't installed properly). Using the installer, the first time it failed to install, the second attempt it worked (ish). I recently did the Cedega test to check whether everything was set up ok, and it failed the GL test. When I did get it working a while ago, the performance in ut2k4 was horrendous. Worse than the windows driver, which wasn't great either. </rant> Don't get me started about XGL...
