[conspire] (forw) Re: June 25/July 9 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56 continuation

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:04:24 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: wood eddie <ewood111 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: June 25/July 9 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56
	continuation
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Just following up on that thought:

Quoting wood eddie (ewood111 at yahoo.com):

> Regarding the video card, found
> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/sys/2457735525.html that I plan to buy
> one of NVidia GeForce video card. To actually install this,  found
> http://wiki.centos.org/HardwareList/Nvidia_Graphics 

One of the things one must most beware of, in both seeking and giving
Linux help, is 'solving the wrong problem' syndrome.  The referenced
CentOS page provides a detailed solution to the 'How do I install the
proprietary NVidia video drivers for Linux?' problem, but first you need
to consider what problem you need to solve and why.

CentOS 5.6 provides X.org package (the standard open-source video
drivers set) version 1.1.1, which is software released by X.org in 2007.  
The reason that software is relatively old is that CentOS is an
unbranded recompilation of RHEL5 Update 6 (thus, 5.6), which is
enterprise software, ergo not very cutting edge[1] (a mild understatement).

The old-type X.org driver for NVidia cards back then, was X.org's 'nv'
driver, I'm pretty sure.  Within the last year or so, X.org cut over to
a replacement called 'nouveau', but the old X.org 1.1.1 included in
CentOS 5.6 probably doesn't have it.  Additionally, as with most cards,
you could (and still can) get pretty decent graphics from Nvidia cards
using the X.org 'vesa' driver, provided you aren't too picky.  What was
slow in coming to the open-source drivers, and is only now properly
arriving with the nouveau driver is 3D graphics acceleration on top of
regular everyday graphics ability, which _was_ always pretty well
supported.

So, in short, it is _not_ necessary to install Nvidia's proprietary 
drivers just to get decent basic X11 graphics.  What that driver set
gets you is access to advanced chip features the X.org people hadn't
yet been able to reverse-engineer as of X.org 1.1.1, notably 3D
accelerated graphics.


[1] The actual cutting-edge variant of RHEL is Red Hat's 'Fedora'
distribution, the development branch from which the enterprise RHEL
releases eventually emerge.  Fedora 15, available since late May,
includes X.org version 1.10.1, which was the cutting-edge X.org driver
set as of April 15th, the _very_ latest being 1.10.3, which emerged a
few days ago.

Access to cutting-edge open source video drivers would be one reason to
prefer Fedora over CentOS -- though at the expense of running a
development-branch operating system rather than a boringly stable and
bog-standard enterprise one.


----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from wood eddie <ewood111 at yahoo.com> -----

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:48:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: wood eddie <ewood111 at yahoo.com>
To: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: June 25/July 9 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56
	continuation
X-Mailer: YahooMailClassic/14.0.3 YahooMailWebService/0.8.112.307740

Hi Rick:

Again thanks for reply just in time, as I was about to make the purchase
of NVidia graphics card.  With your reply, shall check out other AGP
cards that not as hostile.

Thx. Eddie

----- End forwarded message -----